Letters to the editor: Readers’ letters on Paul Keating and Australia’s standing in the economic world, the myth of ever-growing productivity; magical thinking in the debate over Palestinian statehood; the market’s overreaction to inflation data; and the need for investment in quantum computing.

It is a mystery that Paul Keating, in contrast to his thinking on security and defence matters, remains unable to contemplate a “monstrous dose of reality” when it comes to

The animal spirits of capitalism and the free market did not invest in creating in Australia the innovation, intellectual capital, skills, value-adding and complex products and services associated with states in the core of the global economic hierarchy.The clear lesson of history is that the free market primarily invests in Australia as a farm and a quarry. Thus, at best, it leaves Australia in the semi-periphery of the global economic hierarchy.

Productivity cannot just keep rising forever; it will gradually slow down its rate of increase and plateau out. Stop flogging it as some infinitely expandable number.There is no debate in Australia about the war in Gaza, just a whole bunch of people flying tattered slogans that are as likely to crash into the crowd as not. , financial markets appear to be over-reacting to a small piece of information in a manner which the bank itself is unlikely to do.

My mission impossible of winning the jackpot lottery of even a half-decent awards flight has been tantamount to threading a camel through the eye of a needle, or a dalliance with the Beatle’sThe Qantas Plus fevered dream of free flight could still transmute into the “pie in the sky” dud that lands with a thud. I remain sceptical: Qantas furnishing 20 million award seats with no new planes and additional staff could hold a sting in its tail, that of short-changing passengers paying full fares.

Belgique Dernières Nouvelles, Belgique Actualités