Cathy WilcoxCredit:Cathy Wilcox
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This is the future of tennis – Ash Barty, Matteo Berrettini, Jannik Sinner, Alex de Minaur, Daniil Medvedev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Denis Shapovalov and so on (Novak not required). So much talent and respect between players and spectators on display.
The black spot on this brilliant Australian Open was the embarrassing crowd behaviour during matches involving Nick Kyrgios. Thanasi Kokkinakis needs to decide, does he want to be an entertainer with a small, aggressive following for four weeks of the year or a respected, professional tennis player all year round – maybe with his own singles career?
Wendy Tanner, Footscray
A racket in their hands is deplorable
Empty vessels make the most noise. What ever happened to the Australian adage of ″a fair go″? Crowd behaviour was deplorable, unacceptable and irreverent.
Jeanette Thompson, Shepparton
The inspiration that is Ash Barty
Ash Barty’s fight and determination were inspirational. Her humility and grace, without even one profane word being uttered, stand her at the top of the Australian tennis world. I didn’t watch the doubles match because I find the behaviour of one particular pair to be so childish and disrespectful that I changed channels.
If tennis wants to maintain an image as a civilised sport, it should enforce manners and good behaviour. If it wants to pursue a path of being reality television, it can just keep going down the greasy pole, that is, declining societal standards. Smashed racquets and profanity do nothing to enhance tennis and do more harm than trying to green-light vaccination refusers.
Douglas Potter, Surrey Hills
Medvedev showed grace in losing
I hope everyone watched Daniil Medvedev’s press conference after the marathon final. He was generous to Rafael Nadal and made no excuses for losing. There is no big Russian diaspora in Melbourne so he doesn’t get the support that Greek or Serbian players do. He does not fake injury or take ″convenient″ toilet breaks or regularly stack on huge tantrums. He is a very talented player who has worked his way up to the top of his sport and expected some respect for doing so.
The many local heroes who hissed before he served at key moments are just bullies. I thought tennis was becoming like the footy, where some of us boo First Nations players. But no, it’s more like the wrestling we used to get on the TV. Medvedev is a person and deserves minimal politeness at the very least. Aussie fair go? Long gone.
Marysia Green, Hawthorn East
The fault is in some of our ‘stars’
Many folk go to watch world-class tennis players and want to watch their superb skills, and pay good money to do so, and there are those who attend who feel compelled to display their hoon-like behaviour to all. Medvedev is within his rights to call these people out (The Age, 31/1).
Australia was considered to be a country where everyone was entitled to a fair go, but those who consider that the special Ks provide the future of tennis must question whether this allows, indeed, encourages the hoons to give a platform for their boorish behaviour.
Bruce MacKenzie, South Kingsville
From a super event to a super spreader
Now the tennis is over, it is the wait for the COVID cases that is the worst. All those unmasked people yelling and shouting. Why pretend there was any effort to police the wearing of masks in the stands? People jam packed for the finals, all yelling and shouting and on their feet. A recipe for disaster.
Doris LeRoy, Altona
FORUM
Teachers’ aid
As a parish priest employer of primary school principals, teachers and staff for 30 years, I’ve long been convinced that teachers are significantly overworked, underpaid and under-resourced. Grattan Institute’s Dr Jordana Hunter makes a compelling case for very achievable reforms (Comment, 31/1). She suggests basic solutions such as using non-teaching staff to supervise extracurricular activities and reducing unnecessary tasks. It’s absolutely true that ″we are pulling teachers in so many different directions that many find it hard to find the time to teach the core curriculum well″.
Fr Kevin Burke, Sandringham
Action, not inquiries
The Victorian Education website says there are more than 138,000 active teachers as of 2021. There are 374 teachers in the ″spares″ pool returning from retirement or inactivity (The Age, 31/1). As a retired, and not returning, maths teacher I doubt that the 0.27 per cent available replacements will be enough to keep the education system topped up.
They are just a few drops in the face of the looming drought of teachers. Teaching as a profession needs to be improved by actions not inquiries.
Dennis Fitzgerald, Box Hill
Care for the aged
There are huge problems with aged care facilities. COVID is wreaking havoc, and the lockdowns are causing untold emotional and mental health harm.
Is it not possible for a fully vaccinated member of an aged person’s family to do a RATs test and then go into the home and provide some care and emotional support to their loved ones.
From my view as one involved in pastoral care, we are actually being quite cruel to patients and their families. We can and must do better.
Fr Graham Reynolds, Soldiers Hill
Still a woman
Who benefits from this change of language naming women ″non-male″? It’s linguistic smoke and mirrors. I agree with Julie McPherson (Letters, 31/1). Women know the consequences of disappearing from the language and how easy it is then to be ignored and dismissed. No more sleight of hand, I’m still a woman.
Cathy Wheel,
Castlemaine
Worthy explanation
I am a woman, mother and volunteer breastfeeding counsellor. The issue of desexed language in female healthcare has been very difficult and destructive. The arguments against desexing the language of research and support have been largely overlooked and it has been hard to explain what is happening. Thank you Wendy Tuohy for your article (29/1), which was not inflammatory but simply explained the situation. The Age will probably be accused of publishing ″transphobia″ so felt it was important to share that I value the newspaper’s commitment to covering important and relevant issues, rather than being silent or afraid of causing offence.
Madeleine Munzer, Mona Vale
Faded future
As a 71-year-old feminist I am deeply disappointed and disheartened by the lack of progress in the position of women and girls in society. The social revolution I imagined, hoped and believed would happen has not occurred. I am angry and immensely saddened by the devastation of domestic violence, murder, abuse, misogyny, denigration and disrespect still suffered by women and girls. This is not the future I imagined in my idealistic and hopeful 20s. If brave young women like Grace Tame need to speak truth to power very forcefully that is because it needs to be said very forcefully. I salute the magnificence of these courageous young women.
April Baragwanath,
Geelong
It is not all right
The article (The Age, 31/1) covering Daniil Medvedev’s troubles with the Australian audience is terribly revealing. Bullying is not all right, whether it is our own crowd jeering at sport starts while Daniil Medvedev played at the Australian Open, at Adam Goodes during his matches, or bullying refugees and asylum seekers, behind the scenes and in public. No, it is not all right. Maybe the ugliness was always there, or perhaps it is because certain public figures have promoted themselves as being tough and unwavering bullies. Who knows? We should do better. We know better than that and most of us are ashamed to see it.
Rosaleen O’Brien, Toorak
Living with exclusion
Women being described as ″non-male″ (Letters 31/1) took me back to the 1970s. I married a Catholic and was referred to as ″non-Catholic″. I never thought of Catholics as non-Presbyterian and always felt excluded.
Belinda Burke, Hawthorn
No welcome here
Scott Morrison said anyone coming to his house should give him a smile. What about the thousands of women who visited Parliament House who did not even get a hello.
Maria McKinnon, Northcote
Too late to the problem
Well said, Elizabeth Grgacic (Letters, 30/1). I know for certain that coral bleaching was evident in the early 1980s, probably even earlier. That’s when phasing out of fossil fuels should have begun.
Virginia Barnett, Mount Waverley
The cost of profits first
In the report on animal cruelty in the livestock industry (The Age, 31/1) a federally employed vet says, ″At times it feels as if the overriding rationale is that the government and industry just want the exports.″ Can-do capitalism at work. We see this mindset of ″industry first″ (synonym ″profits first″) time and time again not only with animal welfare but with habitat destruction, aged-care infrastructure, climate change, etc, etc.
Vicki Jordan, Lower Plenty
Get priorities right
If the federal government ever wonders why it’s on the nose with the electorate, it might do well to ponder this. “A federal Health Department spokesman said where there is an outbreak, the department works with vaccine providers to prioritise affected care homes” (The Age, 30/1).
In case it still fails to see the problem, it might reflect for a moment on whether it might be more sensible to prioritise aged care homes before there is an outbreak.
David Francis, Ivanhoe
Take responsibility
The hide of Barnaby Joyce. His government’s anti-Chinese rhetoric led directly to Beijing imposing $20 billion worth of tariffs on Australian products yet he has the temerity to demand Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese call on China to remove the tariffs (31/1). Joyce, it’s a problem created by your government, you fix it.
Phil Alexander, Eltham
The hydrogen bomb
Building a factory in Victoria to manufacture hydrogen-powered vehicles is like opening a video store in the 1980s.
Battery technology is improving so rapidly that both price and battery weight will drop dramatically and fast. Noxious ″blue″ hydrogen use will give it a bad name as fossil-free energy shortly comes to dominate electricity production.
I give it 10 years before it’s a stranded asset.
Julia Thornton, Surrey Hills
Tell us the truth
It’s a simple question, but one to which no government in Australia has ever provided a sufficient answer: on what basis are asylum seekers imprisoned in Australia? Take away the rationale of needless fearmongering, and there isn’t much left.
Bernie Millane, Box Hill North
Not kindness at all
Congratulations on the explainer, ″Limbo, What’s happening to refugees still in immigration detention?″
With a federal election approaching, those of us who regard this issue as ″on the nose″ need to keep letting the two major parties know that they will not get our vote until there is a major change on refugee policy. We have become one of the most inhumane countries in the world; a cruel irony given that many of these people selected Australia because of our perceived kindness as a nation. The major parties need to stop treating refugees as a political football, and find a humane long-term solution. Accounts of children escaping war-torn countries and fleeing for their lives, only to be locked up for nine years by our government are simply unconscionable.
Sue Lyons, Carlton North
Human rights denied
During all the excitement of the Australian Open, how confronting it is to read of asylum seekers “rotting in hotel detention” (The Age, 28/1). It is a fundamental human right for people who fear persecution or death to flee their home and seek asylum. Yet here we lock them up and treat them as criminals, even to the extent of tinting windows to prevent them seeing outside. How cruel is that?
This policy denies basic human rights and in addition, is at great cost to us, the taxpayers. Hussein, I would like you to know that many of us care very much about your plight and we call on the government to put an end to this indefinite detention.
Elizabeth McKay, Camberwell
The dismal science
I was surprised the article about psychic power (31/1) didn’t include economists, who also claim to be able to predict the future. I still recall the global financial crisis and their collective failure.
Graeme Madigan, Brighton
Saw that coming
As a sceptic, my guess that research would show that the accuracy rate of predictions, by so-called psychics, is very low has been proved correct.
Harry Zable,
Campbells Creek
Channelling Julius
Rafa: vaxi, veni, vici.
Heather Gridley, Brunswick West
AND ANOTHER THING
Detainees
The tennis is over, so we can forget all over again the detainees being held with no hope of refuge here. That is our value system neatly packed away out of sight, again.
Tony Haydon, Springvale
Politics
How many car parks are being promised for the Great Barrier Reef?
Barry Brown, Brighton
″One-third of donations to parties from secret donors″ (31/1). Not so much donating as buying influence, with the cash aimed at installing the best politicians dodgy money can buy.
Lawrie Bradly, Surrey Hills
COVID
Living with COVID – becoming blase to COVID deaths.
John Walsh, Watsonia
Are we so beaten down by COVID deaths that we no longer seem to care that hundreds of people are dying, particularly in aged care. Shame on us all.
Philip West, Jan Juc
Surely, a Rapidly Ageing Test must be just around the corner.
Bernd Rieve, Brighton
About time Richard Colbeck moved into Aged Care.
Keith Lawson, Melbourne
Tennis
Sorry Novak. To the vaccinated go the spoils of tennis.
Harry Kowalski, Ivanhoe
Not only has Novak Djokovic lost his opportunity to become the holder of the most male slams, he now has to win two more to surpass Rafael Nadal.
Alan Inchley, Frankston
There’s glitzy circus entertainment. Then there is Rafa.
Kenneth Ralph, Belmont
Just remember Nick Kyrgios, sporting events draw big crowds but so also do housefires and trainwrecks.
Don Relf, Mentone
Australian Open crowd behaviour. It’s your fault Tennis Australia.
Graham Cadd, Dromana
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