On Gallipoli

Richard Smith writes: Re. “The old and the new of ANZAC amnesia” (Friday).  Bernard Keane makes the snide comment about Peter Weir’s film Gallipoli that “the Kiwis were strangely absent from the film”. While the film has several historical inaccuracies, it essentially follows the adventures of a few members of the 10th Light Horse Regiment, which was raised in WA, in the leadup up to the attack at The Nek. The 8th Light Horse Regiment, raised in Victoria, was the other regiment slaughtered in that attack. Perhaps it could be argued Victorians were strangely absent from the film, but NZ troops were busy getting killed or maimed at Chanuk Bair in a contemporaneous attack. While I think Bernard’s criticism is consequently misplaced, I do wonder what aural and visual cues he used to determine the ethnicity and citizenship

On Scott McIntyre’s sacking

Les Heimann writes: Re. “Turnbull dobbed in sacked SBS reporter over Anzac tweets” (Monday). Malcolm Turnbull’s dobbing of Scott McIntyre’s tweets that caused his sacking by SBS was an unnecessary act. That, in itself, is just Turnbull. More to the point the tweets content. A “sackable offence”. Of course not. His views on the behaviour of some Australian soldiers on leave in Egypt are, to my understanding, historically correct. The nuclear bombing of Japan by the USA that McIntyre regards as terrorism is absolutely true and the best defenders of this indefensible wholesale murder of innocents can provide by way of justification was that this action shortened the war; a war that was already won by the murderers. However, the most important tweet, that Gallipoli was in effect perfidious Albion once again blundering in the bushes butchering hundreds of thousands of the flower of every country stupid enough to offer up victims; was spot on.

McIntyre was colourful but correct. He didn’t blame the troops (with the exception of those who should be blamed) and he wasn’t disrespectful of Australia or the Australian people or those who died, utterly unnecessarily in someone else’s war. He spoke — in his language — what any reasonably intelligent Australian knows to be true. For this, he was sacked. Sacked and trashed by cowards who refuse to speak or support what privately they know to be true. This is Australia today!

God help this country, we have sold the farms, sold what lies under the ground, refuse to make anything ourselves, copy the USA in our language, embrace selfishness and discard mateship and still support the Royal family. We are still sending our troops to other country’s wars; Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (twice), Afghanistan and now Iraq again. We pretend to “stop the boats” by imprisoning refugees in concentration camps, we allow our governments to pry into our lives and lock us up without any charge and there’s more and more injustice. And a journalist gets sacked for telling the truth. Tell the truth in Australia — you bloody idiot; but I for one applaud you.

Helen Mackenzie writes:  Myriam Robin supplied the MEAA’s response to Scott McIntyre’s sacking by SBS: “MEAA believes that employers must recognise that their employees are entitled to a private life, with their own beliefs and opinions; opinions that should be able to be expressed without heavy-handed retribution by the employer.”  I wonder how long an employee of the MEAA, identifying herself as such on her twitter account, would last in the job after sending five successive tweets, supporting the work of the Heydon Royal Commission and commenting that it was high time that corrupt unions and their officials got their come-uppance?