Is it time to start ignoring Israel Folau?

On Folau’s furore

Mark Newton writes: Carrying on as if Folau’s religious beliefs are important, or his sermons are important, or what the left says is important, or whether the right responds is important, or whether this is some kind of momentous free speech battle is specious self-serving nonsense which plays directly into Australia’s idiot culture-wars. Australians (under the guidance of the trade union movement) made completely defensible decisions about tolerance for vilification of minorities in workplaces more than a generation ago, and we have extremely clear laws about its unacceptability. It is immensely tedious to see Folou’s case being inflated in importance as if it has some kind of wider significance. It’s instructive to ponder how long Folou would have expected to remain employed if he’d said “jews” instead of “gays”, and ask ourselves why one of those minorities is more acceptable to attack without consequence than the other.

John Hall writes: True — he is boring and deluded as it should be his right to be. That said I would dearly like to hear a few words from Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts (and perhaps Peter Dutton?) so that they can make it clear to their constituents as to what the hell is happening to make so many burning bushes appear in their backyards- a message from god perhaps?

On productivity

Mark Dunstone writes: Its a worry that successive governments are more interested in improving the numbers of imperfect economic measures like GDP and productivity instead of people’s lives. It seems to me that the federal government is only really interested in mining all the economic surplus of families for the benefit of the users of the labour market — i.e. capital — and getting more paid work from the aged is just the next step. Why not increase economic output by reducing the school leaving and minimum working age to 12 years, or increase the standard working week to 60 hours, or cut annual leave to five

Richard Thompson writes: Mr Frydenberg may well wish to make himself more visible but he has a real problem of delivery. Whenever I hear him speaking I think that I fall asleep, or I am hypnotised by one of the most boring speakers I have ever heard!