On Turnbull and the hard right of his party

Cara MacNish writes a letter to the Prime Minister: Re. “Is it time for Turnbull to pick a fight with the right of his own party?” (Monday)

Dear Prime Minister,

Tomorrow is the announcement of the marriage equality postal survey results, and the pundits are predicting a “yes” outcome. We understand you need a win. Please feel free to claim it. I just ask for one small favour. Sure, celebrate the result — just don’t claim it as a vindication of the process. Because to claim it as a victory for the process, you first need to evaluate the outcomes of the process. You need to look at how many people have called help lines in despair as their desirability in society is publicly challenged day after day, month after month. You need to look at how many young adults, struggling to understand their gender or their sexuality and just get by, have been told that they are representatives of some “radical ideology” that children need to be protected from.

You need to look at how many children will go through life remembering being told by people on TV that their parents are somehow inadequate. So, by all means go ahead and celebrate, but please understand that the ends and the means are not the same thing, and choose your words with some care.

On the possibility of boycotting Australia

Les Heimann writes: Re.”Loewenstein: Manus protest is failing, so let’s talk about a boycott of Australia” (Monday)

So now we have the proposition of a world sports boycott against Australia in support of Manus Island refugees. It will be about as effective as the so called BDS boycott against Israel.

Just another attempt to divide and not conquer. I remember well the cricket and rugby boycott against South Africa. That taught both Australians and New Zealanders at least how nasty, divisive and utterly unsuccessful were these actions. With political change in South Africa apartheid was, at least on the surface, ostensibly abolished.

However, those of us who experienced the civil disobedience, raging hatred, violence and hijacking by extremist right and left groups under the guise of “protests” learnt that extremism wins when polarisation is encouraged; and it doesn’t work anyway. No reasonable Australian likes what we are doing to those refugees suffering on Manus. Equally no reasonable Australian considers it acceptable to step aside from control of the borders of our country and allow people smugglers to determine who comes here.

This situation is a genuine problem not yet resolved. Of course we could easily ameliorate the situation by accepting the offer made by New Zealand and we could properly fund decent world standard facilities elsewhere and we could take more refugees from lots of place in lots of countries. There are ways.

We accepted refugees as a result of the Balkan wars and we accepted refugees from Vietnam, again because of war. We should be more pro-active in this area.

However, don’t start dividing this country with stupid, illogical and dangerous activities such as sport boycotts.