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 November 10
Managing pain
“As someone who has lived for decades with chronic pain that is severe, wide-spread, and present for over 90% of waking hours, I am one of that small group of people for whom ongoing opioid therapy for pain management has been life changing, yet your article pretty much denies my existence. I don’t take opioids because they are fun, or because they are some kind of quick, easy fix. I have to consult regularly with my pain specialist, and attend the same pharmacy every week to get my prescription filled. I’m fine with the regulations and rules around access to opioids, but it is a shackle that makes it difficult to travel, and that exposes me to gaslighting about addiction and substance use disorders from other medical professionals and misinformed but opinionated others.”
Name withheld
Practicing kindness
“Thank you Gary Mortimer et al, for sharing your study into reducing retail abuse – a timely reminder to genuinely connect with each other as human beings as we head into Christmas! It seems the more digital connections we have in our lives, the less capable of this we have become – the drop in community engagement and volunteering being another symptom of the same disease. In the face of global challenges human connection, empathy and seeing each other as equals will provide the solution.”
Sarah Murton, Sunshine Coast QLD
Cop criticism
“Why do you include a dig at the Liberal Party in your editorial on COP30? It’s quite unnecessary to the story and out of place in a publication reliant one way or another on public funding.”
Peter Murray 
Tuesday November 11
Put paid to this
“I am offended when I read about people being ‘paid’ vast and incomprehensible sums of money for their ‘work’. Do these people somehow have more hours in the day than others? Do they work harder than anyone else? These people don’t ‘earn’ the money. They receive it or are given it. They exploit us for their own selfish ends, evidencing their extraordinarily maladjusted mental and emotional states in their greed. Let our language reflect reality please.”
Ann Britton
No oxygen for billionaires
“I find it so disappointing billionaires are given so much time in the media. If I read about how they are helping mankind, I probably would read the articles, but that seldom happens. I, for one, don’t wish to give them any oxygen. I’d prefer to read about scientists or people making a worthwhile difference in our world, not characters like this. Or am I missing something here?”
Sue Muspratt
How many million?
“Thanks for the article on billionaires and influence, I enjoyed reading it. There is an error in the article: ‘Gina Rinehart has also sought to influence politics, urging the Liberal Party to adopt Trump-inspired policies and donating A$500 million to the party in 2024.’ While Gina is generous for selected causes, she’s not THAT generous! It was 0.5 million or a $500,000 donation.”
Victoria Haritos
Ed: Quite right and thank you for spotting it Victoria. We’ve made the correction.
Wednesday November 12
BBC edit
“Like a moth continually flying towards a lightbulb by mistaking it for the moon, I keep coming back to The Conversation seeking enlightenment only to keep getting burned by all the so-called ‘progressive’ bias and hostility to true ideological diversity. Your article on the BBC is typical elitist groupthink. ‘Mistakes’ and ‘lapses’ were not made – it was a malicious splicing of Trump’s words, designed to slander the Trump demon. It was misinformation, a manufactured lie, of the highest order.”
Phil Shannon, SA
Remembering Gough
“I am 93 years of age and I remember Gough’s dismissal as if it had happened yesterday. Margaret and Gough were friends of ours – we all lived in Cabramatta. It was a shock then, it still is. Both were highly educated and forward looking people. Margaret and I (with another friend) started a classical music club – the Fairfield District Music Society. At first, we held concerts in our home, then it became quite large and we had to hire a hall. He would attend and also greet and welcome newcomers. He was there for everybody and everybody admired him. Never before and after has a Prime Minister been so welcomed, he was a people’s man. We were nearly all of the opinion that it was a dirty trick not only on him, but on us all. He would have been the best Prime Minister Australia ever had. Who will remember Malcolm Fraser in years to come? Nobody will forget Gough Whitlam.”
Cecilia Hoppenjans
Thursday November 13
Ley’s dilemma
“I’m not a supporter of Sussan Ley, but I can’t help thinking that Ley would never have been put in this situation if she were a man. Her party is stuffed full of blokes who (with rare exceptions) just won’t take leadership from a woman. Even the moderate voices calling for party unity aren’t saying that she as leader deserves to be listened to.”
Bobbie Oliver, The University of Western Australia
BBC backtrack
“I had to laugh when I read that the Murdoch media and Trump’s White House were so incensed about a little editorial licence taken by the BBC years ago. Talk about ‘he who is without sin, cast the first stone’! My goodness, what a chuckle! And the article reminded me of Trump’s laughably-named ‘Truth Social’ – what an enormous oxymoron! But what would one expect from one of the World’s greatest morons?”
Stuart Kennedy, Bli Bli QLD
Where should our war memorials be?
“I fully support the use of public toilets as war memorials. If the people of a country fight to allow their communities to continue with their everyday lives, then toilets are a fantastic memorial – practical, useful and integrated into daily life.”
Rhonda Daniels, Sutherland NSW
Friday November 14
Costing net zero
“While polls show many Australians have serious concerns about the impact on the cost of living, they also show overwhelming support for net zero emissions by 2050. When countries first made electricity available to the masses 120 or so years ago, poles and wires weren’t free. Same for phones, the internet and streaming services. But most consumers today access all of those technologies without issue. There’s a cost to progress, but in this case the cost of not addressing climate change could be catastrophic.”
Steve Amesbury, Nowra NSW
Net zero by… 2070?
“Hey Liberals, don’t dump ‘net zero’, just extend the target date. Even I, a staunch Labor man, would support ‘net zero by 2070’ to allow more time for the transition.”
Ted deBoer, Southport QLD
How do you spell Coalition?
“It seems that literally and figuratively, you can’t have the coalition without ‘coal’.”
Ang Ung