A little philanthropy goes a long way

October 29, 2026 — 8:00pm

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They say philanthropy begins at home. I’m wondering what Victoria’s rich list (say those with $5 billion or more) are doing to support those in need in our state and what they pay in tax. That people fleeing domestic violence are being asked whether they can sleep in their cars and homeless people are being offered tents (″⁣People in need of housing offered tents amid crisis″⁣, 29/10) is an indictment of our social contract. Obscene wealth is an indicator that our capitalist system is broken. Philanthropy is a Band-Aid, but one that has the potential to alleviate much suffering. Will our billionaires stand up like Warren Buffett and Melinda Gates have done and show the way to others?
Lynn Frankes, Kew

Being homeless is not their fault
Homelessness Australia chief executive Kate Colvin’s assertion that “there are now so many points of vulnerability in our housing and homelessness system that the cracks are starting to join” is a dire assessment of the respective systems that have fallen by the wayside due to protracted neglect by state and territory governments – a long time in the making of the “cracks joining up”.
Crucially, one of the primary reasons that women can’t leave a violent relationship is because of a dearth of alternate safe and available housing is tantamount to a choice between homelessness and violence as previously identified and documented by Dr Anne Summers report (2022) “The Choice: Violence or Poverty”.
Needless to say that “years of policy failure that has created the crisis we are now seeing is “feeding on itself” (ie vicious cycle) with catastrophic human consequences to an expanding number of people experiencing homelessness in our country through no fault of their own.
Jelena Rosic, Mornington

This is not the education state
With disgraceful decisions like this, how can we call ourselves the education state (″⁣Schools left shocked by disability support cuts″⁣, 29/10)? I am a retired grandmother who does partial homeschooling for her grandson because schools are already underfunded and struggling to provide the additional support to many students need as it is.
This underfunding has now been enshrined until 2034 in the new bilateral funding agreement with the federal government. With disability inclusion funding now also cut, how on earth can teachers, education support staff and principals, teach and support children how they want/need to?
The government is reducing student-level funding rates by 2.5 per cent, and for mainstream schools only, a reduction of $850 per term for eligible students from 2027. Our children are the future, they are our culture bearers, our decision-makers, our future business owners, teachers, nurses, and trades people. How can we step into the future when our Victorian government can’t even fully fund and take care of our schools now.
Premier Ben Carroll’s decision is shameful and a disgrace, and does not reflect the values that an education state should demonstrate. I urge the premier to immediately reverse this decision and ensure every student in public schools has the funding they need and deserve.
Rosemary Charleston, Yarraville

Think outside the box
Petrol up, food up, and there is speculation the Reserve Bank wants to raise interest rates again that will hit home loan borrowers with yet another increase. Where some of those extra payments are coming from defeats me. Young people with a mortgage do have to eat and commute. Can the ″⁣economic experts” not think outside the box and suggest another tactic that doesn’t penalise the already struggling?
Wendy Hinson, Wantirna

THE FORUM

Invite more to debate
The Age reports (29/10) that the premier and the leader of One Nation in Victoria are ready for the first debate, while Jess Wilson will not be attending. Given Warren Pickering is not even in the Victorian parliament and was chosen by a Queenslander, not the Victorian members of One Nation, then it seems appropriate that the leader of the Australian Democrats who will be contesting this election as a party, the leader of the Greens, and the leader of the Socialist Party should also be included in the debate. Seems only right that there is a bigger representation than the narrow view of those already attending.
Bruce McMillan, Grovedale

More balance, please
Jess Wilson is quite correct in arguing that the leaders’ debate be only between the premier and the leader of the opposition. They are the only likely leaders of the state after the election.
Insisting that the One Nation leader be included is a continuing ploy by Ben Carroll inferring that an alternate government can only be a coalition of Liberal, Nationals and One Nation. I note, however, that the Greens are not included in the debate as a possible partner in a potential Labor government. Some balance in this discussion is needed.
Peter Norman, Glen Iris

More than one debate
Opposition Leader Jess Wilson appears reluctant to attend a televised debate. Residents of Jess Wilson’s electorate of Kew may be wondering if they witnessed a warm-up for this when Wilson chose to not attend a recent ″⁣Candidates Community Forum″⁣ about climate and energy policies.
A state government needs to be capable of managing many issues beyond headline grabbers of potholes and crime rates. Our safe futures depend on sound, evidence-based plans on managing climate impacts and the transition to clean energy.
These policies need to be presented and debated. Surely communities deserve a better level of respect.
Greg Davies, Glen Waverley

Different visions
For a young person, Jess Wilson is surprisingly mired in the past. Her youth is not per se an impediment to being a good premier (Lara Giddings was 39 when elected premier of Tasmania) but I would have expected that Wilson’s policies would reflect that we live in the 2020s, facing existential threats from climate change, environmental degradation, cataclysmic political change with right-wing populism, and the knowledge that the country has failed its First Nations Peoples in many ways.
Instead, Wilson is going back to last century policies to dig for gas to keep the lights on. How long will it take to find gas, build infrastructure, build new electricity plants and new transmission lines? How much environmental damage will this cause? I abhor One Nation, but it exists, and ignoring the party won’t make it go away. Wilson must engage with its leader in debate even while rejecting any suggestion of power sharing. Tearing up Treaty and replacing it with a government department has failed countless times at state and federal level – so many departments of Aboriginal Affairs, so much money, so few positive outcomes. Labour is a tired government, but it has had a vision for the future; the Liberals have a vision for the past.
Louise Kloot, Doncaster

Not egalitarian
So let me get this straight, at the top end, people are buying homes for between $5 million and $150 million, while at the other end women fleeing domestic violence are offered tents because there is no room for them elsewhere. How has it come to this where the richest live in a bubble, while those in need are discarded.
Australia likes to say it’s egalitarian but the above proves otherwise and it breaks my heart.
Samantha Keir, East Brighton

Renewable benefits
Renewed calls for nuclear power ignore economic reality, even if you ignore the long-term environmental impact. It may have made some sense in 2012, but since then, thanks to the EV revolution, even the previous prohibitive cost of battery backed renewables is now competitive. The wholesale cost of electricity has recently dropped due to continued adoption of renewables and battery storage. Checking my household electricity bills from before the current government was elected, I see my rates have hardly changed at all. So, talking of higher prices leaves me personally baffled.
Daryl Budgeon, Hadfield

Dazed and confused
In these difficult days with costs rising in everything from food, petrol, mortgage repayments and a third of the population living with food insecurity, it is forecast that the public are about to spend millions to celebrate Halloween. Strange days indeed.
Peter Roche, Carlton

Mind the birds
We manage to spend an estimated $500 million on Halloween in a country where some can’t put food on the table and all face rising bills and inflation. Halloween is fallout from the US and results in more plastic landfill and rubbish – gone in a few days – not to mention the risk of the “fake spider webs” to bird life.
Christine Barnett, Highton

Cut military spending
It was refreshing to read Ross Gittins (Comment, 28/10) point out the need for the government to tax the export of our minerals and fossil fuels and avoid wasteful spending in order to avoid inflation and balance the economy.
One area of spending he did not highlight was the waste in government spending on the military and in particular the billions of dollars being spent to support US military strategy in our region as part of the AUKUS alliance. The use of our bases by the US military is not in Australia’s best interests.
The military is one important possible area for cuts in government spending, and it would help balance the budget.
Bruce Henry, Moonee Ponds

How to help
The charity Foodbank reports that around one-third of Australian households are experiencing food insecurity, defined as irregular access to sufficient nourishing food (“For millions, Australia is the hungry country″⁣ , 26/10). This is a disturbing finding.
What can be done to ameliorate the suffering? The federal and state governments could increase their funding of Foodbank in each jurisdiction. The Commonwealth could raise more taxes from our energy exporters, and use this revenue to reduce taxes for low income earners and improve the JobSeeker and pensioner allowances. The Commonwealth also needs to find ways to create more competition in the energy and insurance sectors, whose charges these days account for big hits on family budgets. Assisting households to become less dependent on the energy grids by going solar is a good start.
Cutting migration significantly is not an answer, as it would cause labour shortages in key industries, including agriculture and food-processing, and hence increase inflationary pressures.
Andrew Trembath, Blackburn

The Trump effect
Further to your correspondent’s contribution (Letters, 29/10), I agree with their premise that social media has provided a “safe” opportunity to voice hatred that has in fact always simmered below the waterline. I would, however, add that the rise of Donald Trump in US politics from 2016 has given, first Americans and then the world, the licence to be abusive, to mock people for their looks or disabilities or even gender and to be disrespectful just because others hold alternative views.
Furthermore, Trump has legitimised rejecting anything when it does not go your way and that truth in communication has virtually become an irrelevance. Unfortunately, his influence in this sphere seems to have increased exponentially since he was first granted “legitimacy” in US politics by US voters and his sycophantic Republican acolytes.
This decline in our social fabric is now clear to see in Australia.
Mark Thomson, Beaumaris

More things change
Recent letters have lamented the standard of behaviour of our representatives in parliament. I’m re-reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, first published in 1850.
In one scene, when young David is in school and the class is seriously ″⁣mucking up″⁣ he observes the hapless schoolmaster ″⁣endeavouring to get on with his tiresome work, amid an uproar that might have made the Speaker of the House of Commons giddy″⁣.
It seems not much has changed in 176 years.
David Smith, Cheltenham

Just turn off, 1
Columnist Kylie Moore-Gilbert is spot on in holding the online domain largely responsible for the current popular addiction to hatred and violence (Comment, 28/10), but her solution to redesign internet regulation and legislate, is too tepid, and by her own description, politically implausible.
A simple, cost-effective way, which avoids politics altogether and is available to every individual and business, is just turn it off.
I can’t hear the protests because I’ve turned it off, but everyone I talk to agrees with me.
John Laurie, Riddells Creek

Just turn off, 2
I’m an old lady but I remember my mother saying, “Never write down on paper anything you wouldn’t want read out in court.”
If she were alive now, I’m sure she would say the same about computers. Many people today would do well to heed that advice.
Pamela Pilgrim, Highett

Money or your life?
People who say we should keep on using gas, coal or even nuclear energy because we can’t afford “unreliable” alternative energy reminds me of a question I ask my students: Would you rather have $1000 or your life?
They understand the answer.
Suzanne Palmer-Holton, Seaford

AND ANOTHER THING

Politics
If Pauline Hanson has a vision for the country she hopes to lead, it must be hidden in her Bluey colouring book.
Annie Wilson, Inverloch

Among Jess Wilson’s promises, will she promise to slow down and stop when shaking anyone’s hand in the future?
David West, Essendon

Columnist Shaun Carney (Comment, 29/10) should be compulsory reading for all Coalition, One Nation and fearful Labor voters. We are no different, and in many cases better off, than the rest of the world.
Randall Bradshaw, Fitzroy

Furthermore
OK America, this is your chance to save yourselves and the free world. Make Donald Trump impotent for the next two years.
Graham Fetherstonhaugh, Fitzroy North

I almost reported a truck driver going down South Road in Moorabbin for bad driving until I realised he was just avoiding the potholes.
Peter Venn, East Bentleigh

My late father used to say there would always be wars as wars make money but only for the arms manufacturers.
Susan Munday, Bentleigh East

Have doubts about everything should be foremost in everyone’s thoughts in this social media, AI era.
Richard Crago, Burwood East

The mind boggles – women fleeing domestic violence will receive a tent (″⁣Services offer the homeless tents″⁣, 29/10). It is to hoped they receive a bucket and spade as well.
Margaret Skeen, Ocean Grove

Why are the lower-income members of Australia the ones who pay the penalty of increased interest rises, while the wealthy benefit from the extra earnings? When will this be changed?
Bruce Dudon, Woodend

Finally
Israeli election ″⁣on edge″⁣. Seems to me, the whole world is on edge, and it’s putting my nerves and teeth on edge.
Myra Fisher, Brighton East

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