The election:

Wes Pryor writes: Re. “Election mantra ‘more hospital beds’ not what we need” (yesterday, item 10). Boyd Swinburn makes a strong case for additional emphasis on preventative measures in Australian health reform. More beds (this time around it really is just the beds, never mind nurses and doctors and other things to push all those buttons that go beep) is a perennial election sweetener, but addresses just a slice of the real need.

Prevention, of course, is one end of the spectrum. But rehabilitation care, home-based services, community services and addressing the structural disadvantages that people who leave hospital “different” face is the other end. And it’s arguably at least as important, and has barely metered a whimper in this election campaign.

It’s true that both parties have proposed policies on various sub-groups of disability services including mental health reform and care for young people with disabilities (just to name a few — a disability election list is beyond the scope of this mail but it would be great to see one). But when people have to wait six months or more for an appropriate wheelchair, have limited options for contemporary technologies for other assistive devices, modest budgets for home adjustments, limited community rehabilitation services (such as Physical and Occupational Therapy, Speech & Swallowing Therapy among others), then it is clear the balance is wrong.

Yes, some people get sick, go to hospital, go home, and resume their lives. But many don’t, and “more beds” is just “more cowbell” only with less cowbell and more beds. It’s raucous and populist. We can do a lot better.

Governments and oppositions would do well to remember that 10% of the population, more or less, are disabled. Capture their votes and whammo, you’re swinging like a novice Wii enthusiast.

David Hand writes: The Greens are giving a great service in this election.  They provide a praiseworthy platform to the left elites in the sure knowledge that they will never actually have to implement their programmes. Take Professor Swinburn’s quite superficial socialist rant about benighted political parties under the sway of evil corporations for example.

It’s hard to know where to start but I will make one point. It’s about the title of the piece regarding hospital beds not being the answer. The professor has fallen into the trap so many of his socially engineering focused mates do about preventative health. You can’t prevent death.

As most hospital resources are directed to people in the last year of their lives, you need to prevent the last year of people’s lives or you’ll still need the beds. Which is the more expensive way to go?  Obesity followed by a heart attack or a lingering decline with dementia when we reach 100 years old?  The analysis would be helpful to the debate but I have yet to hear about it from the preventative health industry.  (Make no mistake Professor, it’s an industry).

I absolutely support the main thrust of preventative medicine, which is that healthier lifestyles, exercise, diet etc will have a massive social dividend for our society and we will live longer, happier lives. But we still need the hospital beds in the absence of immortality.

Do the Greens have a policy that delivers immortality? They might as well because they will never have to implement it.

Niall Clugston writes: Re. “Bennelong dispatch: relevance takes a back seat in JA’s campaign” (yesterday, item 9). Margot Saville criticises the Liberal campaign (and the voters) in Bennelong for focussing on state issues. But most of the issues that matter to people are state issues.

She suggests as federal issues: “the economy, or Afghanistan or climate change”. As to the first, federal governments long ago abdicated economic power in all but fiscal policy. And the policy difference there is pure opportunism, as the stimulus package the Coalition condemns was devised by the Howard-appointed Treasury.

As to Afghanistan, both sides are observing radio silence on the various wars we may, or may not, be involved in.  In the case of climate change, there could be a real live issue, except that Labor has run dead. In fact there are hardly any genuinely federal policies at issue. Even the old stand-bys, health and education, are basically state issues.

No wonder people find this election boring.

Tim Villa writes: Re. “Keane’s Talking Points: the Libs’ risk-free strategy” (Campaign Crikey morning edition: Day 23, item 2).  Bernard Keane wrote: “Essential Research’s Peter Lewis asked Joe Hockey which economics books he had read lately. Hockey said he read a lot of briefing notes.”

One suspects that while Swan is reading the Fin from front page to the back each morning, Hockey is flicking through from front to back looking for the comics.

Matthew Brennan writes: I suppose it is an indication of what the electorate really thinks of this election, but why hasn’t any body noticed that one major party is campaigning with a slogan that arguably should to be illegal within 100 metres of the closest point on any boundary of land where there is a residential building, place of worship, school or kindergarten whilst the other lot appear to offering what sounds vaguely like a sure fire cure for foot blisters but could also possibly be a safe and effective laxative?

Miranda Devine:

Andrew Lewis writes: Re. “Media briefs: what was David Gyngell thinking? … Devine goes national for a song … life on the campaign trail …” (yesterday, item 21).  So Miranda Devine is leaving the SMH. Blimey, has she really been there nine years?

I can’t often read a Ms Devine column in full. Eventually the non-sequiturs just do my head in. Her latest article, which must have taken a good 40 minutes or so to write, is, well, hard to describe.

Ms Devine sneers, sniffs, huffs and puffs about the smug, arrogant, patronising progressives who “shower abuse on the conservatives”. She refers to the “dripping contempt of the left for people who don’t think like themselves,” and then proceeds to gush with contempt for those who don’t think like her. A particularly bilious letter writer is dismissed as wanting everyone to drink chai, wear tie-dyes and ride a bike. What?

Apparently these damned progressives, at their chattering-class dinner parties, were embracing sniffy complaints that the quality of Oz political debate is dismal. Frankly, I suspect she may have just made that bit up, as I can’t imagine that she was invited to any, or had a spy at all of them.

She clichés (wow, I just made a noun a verb, I could be a journalist too) about the faceless men, and then gives them faces (Bitar, Arbib, Shorten and Feeney).

The real prize of this piece though was her claim that the progressives “attitude, based as it is on a fundamental dishonesty, leads them to all sorts of self-delusion…”

The pot, the kettle, and black are words that just come repeatedly to mind while reading this article.

I must admit though, I can’t tell if she has written this with a straight face.

Janice Knight writes: You have made my day. Although we have lived in Adelaide for seven years now, we still read the SMH when we can get hold of it — not easy in this Murdoch dominated state.

Saturdays and midweek have been blighted by Miranda’s bizarre point of view, and space that could be more adequately used by people with ideas, has been wasted.

I wonder if Miranda is in line for an Elaine nomination at the Ernie Awards. She surely must fulfil the requirements for comment that are unhelpful to the sisterhood.

Gay marriage:

Marcus Vernon writes: If Blair Martin (yesterday, comments) re-reads my letter of last week he might come to understand that my main criticism is clearly aimed at the gay movement’s lack of political action, not the issue of gay sexuality.

Gay marriage is, by definition, a political question ­– the Parliament will decide it — and I am entitled to my political view on that, just like any adult voter in Australia. It’s called democracy, and it’s a nice way to behave.

I wish you well with your access to civil unions and/or registered partnerships, but marriage is not available. This was reaffirmed politically again only on Monday, on ABC TV’s Q&A, when prime minister Julia Gillard, stated that “the truth is … we believe the Marriage Act should be defined as between a man and a woman”.

Your comments underlined my central argument — that you and your community and supporters are much more interested in criticising people like me who have a different view to yours then you are in taking on the politicians. Yet it is the politicians who will give you want you seek, or continue to deny it to you. Not me. I don’t have to do a thing for the status quo to remain; the onus is on you to commit to action.

Election 2010 is nearly over, and your cause has not moved forward one centimetre. The left-wing, single, atheist woman you thought would be on your side opposes your cause. And if Tony Abbott is elected prime minister, your hopes will be put back for at least one term, but probably a decade at least.

You say the rally planned for August 14 is an annual event that was planned before the election date was called. Fair enough; but if you and your community were organised and energised, as you should be, you would have either brought the rally forward or, more effectively, added to it with extra rallies or marches.

Blair Martin, you say online and social media is your preferred battlefield? You mean you are going to tweet your way to a righteous victory? Good luck with that. And where do I start on this opinion poll that is consistently referred to as claiming 60% of Australians approve of allowing same-sex marriage? The politicians who matter don’t care for your poll, otherwise they would act on it. That makes that particular piece of paper about as useful as a used ticket to last year’s Sydney Mardi Gras.

I could just as easily point out that the leading global pin-up of the Left, Barack Obama, opposes gay marriage. Or that the vast majority of member states of the US, Africa and the United Nations don’t allow same-sex marriage, which means it’s available to about 4% of the world’s population.

So what say we make a date for Election 2013 to see how your cause is looking? Until then, keep polishing your silver platter.

Justin Templer writes: I agree with Blair Martin that the comments from Marcus Vernon were in part gratuitously insulting.  But Marcus writes nicely and has a very good point, in that the gay community does seem to be singularly disengaged from the issue of gay marriage.

I had thought that it might be a generational thing, in that Michael Kirby seems to care — as a standard bearer from another generation. But then I asked some 70-year old gay friends of ours — “Who cares?” best sums up their reaction. The philosophical issues around the denial of the same rights afforded to heterosexuals seemed not to excite them.

Nor did these issues of equity excite our lesbian Minister for Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water. It seems every gay except Michael Kirby is satisfied as long as they receive hetero tax allowances — bugger the principle of the thing. It is dumb that this annoys both Marcus and me but it does.

Mungo:

Chris Virtue  writes: Re. “Mungo: a farcical plot line with heroes and villains interchangeable” (yesterday, item 13). Mungo MacCallum’s piece reminded me that the only newspapers on offer in Qantas club at Sydney domestic on Saturday were Murdoch papers. Not an SMH, Age nor AFR in sight. Curiously, the copy of the Oz I picked up had the Brisbane supplement.

John Newton writes: Could you ask dear old Mungo why he never mentions the Greens? Don’t they exist in his  political universe?

A black hole:

Gavin Greenoak writes: This is just a note of unsure interest. But have you noticed how few leaders anywhere in the Western World, and with the best will in the world, are getting any traction. They want to, and their failure attracts raucous criticism. I’ve noticed this both nationally and internationally this failure of traction.

The notion of investing in the future of a Nation is somehow obvious, a sure thing, yet inaccessible. It’s “The Markets” that obsess. The failure to connect is almost palpable.

It occurred to me, that we are witnessing a Black Hole Effect, of people collapsing in upon themselves, and unable to send anything out, and this is not a trivial problem. It is a cultural problem. We are no longer “A People”, but only an aggregate of competing individualities, sucking in everything we can get, as if with our last breath. And not because we are inherently mean or bad, but because we are the legatees of paradigmatic habits and a sense of the world with which we have made it.

Instead of questioning the momentum, we are carried away by it to this crisis of value I am calling the Black Hole Effect. I have no idea whence on the event horizon a singularity might redeem us, but we might start with an awareness. And a moments’ pause before we point the finger.

Oh, and my new T-shirt: “Down with Gravity, Descend with Conviction”.

Marshmallows:

Bronwyn Humphries writes: Re. “Daily Proposition: toast marshmallows, the no-fail tried-and-tested candle-lit way” (yesterday, item 20). Amber Jamieson made a great start but finish off in your usual style please!

Melting marshmallows is only step one.

Step 2 and 3 are placing the toasted marshmallow on top of a graham cracker (or plain biscuit0 that has A SQUARE OF CHOCOLATE ON IT).

Yep, the toasted mellow melts the choice and you have heaven in winter.

Only Americans would think of this process that I experienced whilst on exchange there years ago. Every child I have introduced this too ‘outside only’ has loved it.