Political correctness is akin to border protection. Defending national borders maintains a country’s autonomy: political correctness protects an individual from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. In other words, everything from slights to intellectual challenge. The more robust among us deal with slights and welcome challenge. Sadly, political correctness precludes fragile people from acknowledging their vulnerability and dealing with it.
Elizabeth Moser, Newtown, Vic
After living overseas for the past 20 years, I returned recently to retire. I have found, to my consternation that the tough, resilient, feisty country to which I came as a migrant in 1961 has changed almost beyond recognition. It has become the land of the self-righteously perpetually offended who, in a frenzy of political correctness, take umbrage at every turn.
Walter Puccetti,
Adamstown Heights, NSW
How do the French cope with their language in these enlightened times? All nouns have a gender.
Robin Southey, Port Fairy, Vic
I believe that Malcolm Turnbull’s challenge to get real about his non-negotiable changes to superannuation will be accepted by former Coalition contributors and voters. His hubris will present him and many other government members with the opportunity for a career change after July 2.
Art Raiche, Killara, NSW
Growing super revolt
The budget superannuation changes were introduced without notice, without proper examination and without consultation. Had proper process been followed, the government would have realised the larger funds were amassed under rules that no longer apply. So why target self-funded retirees with pensions less than half of the amount the typical retiring politician receives?
Senior Coalition frontbencher Arthur Sinodinos warns that a re-elected government will have a mandate to proceed with these ill-considered changes. Assistant Minister to the Treasurer Alex Hawke dismisses this as a niche issue. Those affected are told to get real.
Nothing is more annoying to self-funded retirees than ministers claiming the changes are not retrospective. They all recall the scrupulous care with which the politicians’ super fund was grandfathered. Not only is the heartland disturbed, so are aspirational voters.
David Flint, Bondi Beach, NSW
Judith Sloan has cut to the nub of the glaring flaws in the Coalition’s hastily cobbled policy to reduce our capacity to grow our retirement savings and to tax superannuation pension flow after retirement (“Rethink super thought bubbles or risk jeopardy”, 2/6). She highlights the economic stupidity of a plan that is designed to undermine the previous objective of encouraging retirees to be self-sufficient and be independent of any taxpayer funding.
The Prime Minister has dug in on this issue and now tells us retirees to get real, it’s only 15 per cent tax.
Those in their forties and fifties who have set their plans for retirement income are now to be prevented from achieving their goals. All designed to feed this government’s need to keep spending.
Sloan demonstrates that this policy is a thought-bubble plan to tax those among its supporters who it believes will have nowhere else to go. She tells us that the Coalition expects us to just suck it up.
But it might receive a surprise on July 2. I am among those retirees who think that, by this ill-considered policy, this government has abandoned its principles and its supporters.
David Lidbetter, Gerroa,