Your say: week beginning May 11

Every day, we publish a selection of your emails in our newsletter. We’d love to hear from you, you can email us at yoursay@theconversation.edu.au.

Monday May 11

The politics of fear

“How can we take a politician seriously if all she has is stirring up hate on immigrants and Indigenous people with no other stated policies? Apparently, it seems quite easy. In his book Goliath’s Curse, author Luke Kemp cites countless examples of individuals taking leadership roles by stirring up fear of external threats to take our ‘lootable assets’ (jobs, houses, and anything of physical value). Surveys across eight modern, high-income countries found that around 10–25% ranked as highly authoritarian. We, it seems, might be on the cusp of going the same way with the surge of extreme right-wing politicians in Australia using the external threat as their only policy.”

Paul Campbell, West End QLD

The great tax debate

“To tax or not to tax? Presently, the reason for not taxing gas exports as I understand it is to keep faith with our trading partners. From my experience in competitive markets, when economic circumstances change and costs go up there’s a choice. You can put your prices up and if that makes you more expensive, then the market will react and you then have the choice of accepting less market share and retaining profit margin or accepting a lesser margin and retaining market share. Either way, a tax will benefit the Australian public and industry, either from increased federal revenue or greater gas supply at lower prices.”

Hugh Kushner