On the plebiscite

Peter Matters writes: Re. “‘Innovative’ plebiscite not the clearest path to marriage equality” (yesterday). Malcolm Turnbull believes in identical marriage rights for all people and does not agree with the plebiscite. Tony Abbott’s successful blackmailing of Mal on behalf of himself and the rest of the Coalition’s reactionary tail will  not stop the plebiscite legislation being tossed out by the Senate. As a result, 10% of the population will still have to feel pain and wait until the next election to achieve parity with the other 90%. Why? Because an obstructive minority will not understand that most religious edicts and the basic religious belief, Christian and otherwise, of ‘All People Are My Brothers And Sisters’ are incompatible.

On Immigration procurement

Joe Boswell writes: Re. “A timeline of the Immigration fuckups that brought us Nauru — and brought Transfield millions” (yesterday). Bernard Keane’s report about the Department of Immigration’s dreadful handling of offshore processing contracts over the past several years leaves no doubt there is not just an enormous unnecessary cost inflicted on Australian tax payers but a very bad smell from the whole fiasco. At least we can be confident our esteemed federal corruption commission is able to find out who was responsible and whether it is was mere world-class incompetence or something worse. Oh, hold on, there is no such commission! And neither Labor nor the Coalition wants one! Fancy that!