Dear STC, so long, and thanks for all the plays

I can’t speak for every Jew in Sydney, but, certainly, it has been my experience to be brought up in a family which values the arts. Which values freedom of speech. Which values challenges in artistic representation.

So I’m not going to have a go at you for some actors donning keffiyehs in solidarity with Palestine in respect of the current war. I understand that this was not a choice of the STC, and that it was beyond your control.

However, you should know the following:

1. If I had been in the audience that night, I would have been sickened. My two closest cousins in the world outside of Australia (thanks to the pruning of my family tree by the Nazis) are two beautiful women who usually live in small farming communities close to the Gaza border. On October 7, they were lucky to have the infiltrations to their villages stopped by a small civil defence team. They spent 48 hours in their safe rooms, with their children, imagining they would die. They have been evacuated from their homes and are currently living as displaced persons in their own country. They are both school teachers, and literally hundreds of their friends, neighbours and students have been murdered or kidnapped.
2. On October 8, before Israel had even responded to the inhuman assaults, we witnessed on the steps of the Sydney Opera House a gang of thugs chanting ‘gas the Jews’. My parents and uncle and aunt were at the Opera House that evening (being subscribers to the Symphony as well as the STC). I note that their parents, uncles, aunts and first cousins were, in fact, gassed. The event was triggering to say the least.
3. We (Jews) in Australia have felt totally abandoned by the progressive left. Our pain is to be understood or contextualised. And Israeli suffering is ignored.

So the STC actors’ “protest” is viewed by me, and by most Sydney Jews in that light.

We understand, in the words of David Baddiel, that for much of the arts community, and those who consider themselves “progressive”. “Jews don’t count”.

The STC – which has done so very much to show care for so many other minorities and historically disadvantaged groups (First Nations, LGBTQIA, Women’s voices) – has done precisely nothing to make this particular minority feel supported.

As far as I can see, in response to the actors’ protest, one unidentified “spokesperson” has been quoted in The Australian. Nothing on your website. Nothing on Twitter. Nothing on your socials.

So, as far as this one-time subscriber and supporter is concerned, you simply don’t care about me. Or Jews. Let alone Israelis. And that is your right.

But it is my right to judge you for it. And it is my right to decide where to take my custom. And it is my right to do whatever I can to encourage others to do likewise. And it is my right to remember these things when you next want to try to raise money or sell tickets or seek my support or endorsement in any way.

Because as far as I am concerned, we are in a moment that requires real moral clarity.

Certainly if Hamas and its Iranian overlords were to be victorious in their existential battle against Israel, it will not be a happy time in Gaza for the type of theatre that the STC, and its misguided keffiyeh-wearing actors, champion.

So until I see or sense a serious response to the greatest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, and the most toxic rise of anti-Semitism across the globe, especially by those who drape themselves in the feel-good cultural shield of the Keffiyeh (no cultural appropriation there?), it’s goodbye from me.

So long, and thanks for all the plays.

Daniel Grynberg, North Bondi, NSW

Cash, Coalition still in climate change denial

It appears the Coalition will mount an all-out campaign to the next election simply on the basis that it would bring down energy costs by forging ahead with fossil fuels, and “how good is nuclear!”

Michaelia Cash says, “The government has an obsession with renewable-only ideology.” Where is her evidence for this claim? While Chris Bowen has laudably announced the expanded Capacity Investment Scheme, the continued export and expansion of fossil fuel projects is sabotaging our emissions budget.

Further to Senator Cash’s attack on efforts to meet our international obligations, she accuses Labor of being “out of touch” with its nuclear energy policy. Has she caught up with the recent collapse of the US small modular reactor project enthusiastically promoted by her leader?

She is also “out of touch” with the science: we cannot wait a decade or two (for nuclear) if we are to have any hope of reducing temperature rise to safe levels.

The Coalition is still in climate change denial, believing we can afford “a sensible all-of-the-above approach” (including fossil fuels) “to ensure we do lower emissions”. Exactly how would Senator Cash achieve that?

Fiona Colin, Malvern East, Vic

Rise from the ash

The problem facing the Wagners is not new (“Wagners struggle to set concrete as environmentally friendly option”).

Australia is among the world’s worst users of fly ash to make concrete. Australia reuses only about 40 per cent of its fly ash, mostly for concrete. Other countries do better: India reuses 61 per cent, China 69 per cent, Britain 70 per cent and Japan 97 per cent.

Fly ash dumps are a potential environmental hazard in terms of the possible escape of the fly ash, and its heavy metal contaminants, into the environment from the dams in which it is stored.

Part of the problem lies with the big cement manufacturers in Australia, who can make more money making cement than they can by reusing fly ash. Concrete is one of the worst polluters in terms of carbon dioxide, and until government stands up to the vested interests and incentivises the use of fly ash, little will change.

Ross Hudson, Mount Martha, Vic

Pezzullo in wrong job

In praising Michael Pezzullo, the now former Home Affairs secretary, your correspondent Tom Burton has unfortunately missed the most fundamental point (“Government may rue unleashing this power play”).

That point being that Mr Pezzullo was working in the wrong job. Had he wanted to be a “provocateur” and a “player”, Mr Pezzullo should have done what your letters correspondent Bob Brown suggested Gina Rinehart do, and run for elected office.

That Mr Pezzullo chose to sit back on his paltry $931,893 taxpayer-funded annual salary and snipe from the sidelines might, in fact, make him much less employable than Tom Burton would have us believe.

The days of “hairy-chested” men sending “searing texts” to their favourite lobbyists and government ministers are long past, whether in government, public corporations and even the darkened halls of “strategic think tanks”.

Indeed, in his long-term mission to re-equip Australia’s defence forces in his own image, Mr Pezzullo may have inadvertently shot himself in the foot.

Ralph McHenry, Brighton East, Vic

Brown’s out of touch

Bob Brown’s personal attack on Gina Rinehart, accusing her of “unpopularity” and being “so out of touch”, is yet another example of the ignorance of the former Greens leader and his party.

In 2019, Bob showed an appalling lack of judgment when his convoy rolled into Clermont, a mining town in North Queensland. Bob and his convoy failed to understand that the good, hard-working citizens of Clermont, like every other community, depend on the resources sector for Australia’s economic stability.

It appears Bob has done little research since that embarrassing incident, not realising the mining industry is the largest Australian paymaster of essential services such as hospitals, nurses, doctors, ADF, you name it. Not to mention politicians’ salaries and welfare. Bob obviously forgot who was paying him when he was Dr Bob Brown and Senator Bob Brown.

Kate Chapman, Main Beach, Qld

Money doesn’t grow on trees, Bob

I’d suggest Bob Brown is the one who is out of touch. The Greens and fellow travellers would love for us to get rid of all Australia’s mining and fossil fuels industries, but if we did so, I wonder where the money for all our taxpayer-funded niceties would come from? You know, those extravagant things that mining pays for such as healthcare, nurses, police, pensions and so on?

Perhaps he hasn’t heard that money doesn’t grow on trees. But it flows nicely from our mining and resources companies who pay more corporate tax than all other sectors combined.

Aaron Denham, Craigie, WA