Postpone stage three and focus on the cost of living

This will attract criticism from the Coalition, but it will ring hollow for anyone to try to detract from measures that relieve the financial stresses of young families.

Derek Norquay, Pelican Waters, Qld

Many advantages in 30pc top tax rate

A warped perspective from Laura Tingle. Josh Frydenberg missed a great opportunity to bring forward the stage three tax cuts in place of his excessive and poorly targeted pandemic stimulus. Tingle should be looking elsewhere to fund further tax cuts for low-income workers. Think the NDIS and superannuation, for a start.

Keeping the top marginal tax rate on incomes no higher than 30 per cent for 95 per cent of the population has many advantages. Incentive for tax avoidance is reduced, and work is fairly rewarded. Integrity of the taxation system is greatly improved.

Graeme Troy, Wagstaffe, NSW

Axe the cuts, don’t worry about votes

For economic reasons that would be supported by most people, Anthony Albanese shouldn’t fear losing votes from richer voters if he cancels the tax cuts due in July next year. The rich don’t vote Labor anyway.

Malcolm McDonald, Burwood, Vic

Why business is on the nose

This has been a bad year for the public standing of Australian business: PwC, Qantas, Optus. As hope for the future, The Australian Financial Review has now ordained Gina Rinehart as top business person for 2023, with Boris Johnson the headline speaker at the awards ceremony. Really? Australian business has many fine exemplars of modern, innovative and inclusive commercial operators who offer a practical path to a sustainable future. To those who lament that business is on the nose with the public, I say: Look in the mirror.

John Buchanan, Artarmon, NSW

Uncertainty is part of doing business

I almost choked on my cornflakes reading about top CEOs in your weekend edition, where Woodside’s Meg O’Neill was quoted as saying: “The uncertain regulatory environment is creating pressure. Businesses need certainty so we can invest.” Really? Regulation is required to protect us from greedy, unscrupulous businesses that would push beyond set boundaries. Besides, none of us in business get “certainty” for our “investment”. What you want is a term deposit with a whole lot of upside. The rest of us understand that people like you get paid big bucks to work with uncertainty and to resolve problems – legally and within your social licence.

Philip Carman, West Perth, WA

Roskam: pot calling the kettle black

It is a bit rich when our mate John Roskam (senior fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs) preaches to the masses about “smart people secure in their supposed intellectual superiority over everyone else ignore what is bang in front of their faces”. For 30 years Johnny and the IPA ignored the science and banged on about climate change being a hoax, and still no apology.

Jon Griffin, Notting Hill, Vic

Better products would boost productivity

The AFR View is right in saying “productivity is actually falling” – and, along with it, our manufacturing. It’s fallen to only 6 per cent of our GDP, because no one wants the boring and unimaginative products we mostly make. We need to smarten up and start making more interesting products from our abundance of raw materials. We have everything from textiles to minerals. But what is galling is that our competitors are adding great value to our raw materials, which they then sell all over the world, and also back to us. Surely we have designers who can create better products that can fill those 780,000 empty shipping containers that we currently send overseas.

Jeffrey Newman, Ivanhoe, Vic

Tipping point in Gaza

Wielding fake piety with unbecoming sincerity, you editorialise: “A point will come where it is hard to balance the horrendous suffering of Palestinian civilians with even the best of Israeli intentions.” Sad you missed it. It has come and gone.

Ramani Venkatramani, Rhodes, NSW

Sam Harris’ double standards on Islam

I refer to the article “The Islamic double standard” by Sam Harris. Sam starts with a straw man definition of Islamophobia, goes on to dispel the official definition, and then ends up lecturing Muslims to accept Islamophobia as a consequence of following Islam.

He conveniently ignores the UN definition of Islamophobia “as a fear, prejudice and hatred of Muslims that leads to provocation, hostility and intolerance by means of threatening, harassment ... Motivated by institutional, ideological, political and religious hostility that transcends into structural and cultural racism, it targets the symbols and markers of being a Muslim.”

Islamophobia is real, and the UN General Assembly has designated March 15 as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia.

The Islamophobia narrative is daily enforced by the likes of Sam Harris and understood through long-enduring imagery via movies, advertising, literature and the internet. Through these processes, Muslims are dehumanised. They are turned into caricatures, relegated to tropes depicting them as violent and incapable of governing.

Harris demonstrates double standards and discriminates on the basis of religion when he lashes out against antisemitism but wants to ignore Islamophobia. Both are abhorrent and should be rejected by the world.

I am deeply disappointed that you decided to publish such an article that exacerbates hatred towards Muslims at a time when the word demands a ceasefire in Gaza.

Yusuf Mansuri, Yarralumla, ACT