I was a member of the crew which was flying Sir Robert from Melbourne to Canberra. The PM and the captain of the aircraft dined and then we, the lesser members of the crew, ate our dinner.

As we were dining, Sir Robert came back and talked to us while we finished our meal. A few years later I met the then current prime minister at a Mess function and his perceived attitude was "why introduce me to the small fry, I wish to talk with the big fish!"

Ken McPhan, Spence

Paul Malone realistically wrote that Islamic terrorist killings "may go on for decades but this will not be World War III" ("Terrorism hysteria blurs the truth", Sunday Focus, April 3, p19).

The truth is the government is writing laws to legitimise the breaking of the law. We have steadily, incrementally, been losing our rights, our protections under the law, in a most frightening way.

This is not under some new threat of terrorism. Before Communism, the Red Brigades and the IRA, it was called anarchy over a century ago. Before that it was Luddites and sabotage. Such threats are perennial, witness Guy Fawkes.

Now all that's needed is reasonable cause for suspicion and that did not start with 9/11. It started with Reefer Madness, the movie. The state, convinced that civil rights, the protection of the law, should be voided for what it deemed crimes against society, legislated the right for police to stop and search people in the street for no other reason than reasonable suspicion of possession of a weed.

Now, for no other reason than reasonable suspicion of conspiracy or instigation thereof, people can be incarcerated for weeks and it is a crime for anybody to disclose that they are so detained.

Crimes against society, even conspiracy thereto, need due process. All else is, even with the best of intentions, creeping totalitarianism.

Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor

With due respect to Paul Malone, I don't think it is fair or appropriate to equate "... the threats we live with every day" with the threats of terrorist attacks.

To put it in "perspective", I don't know of anybody who, in a premeditated manner, got up in the morning, got drunk, got into his/her car and smashed into another car/pedestrians with the intention of causing a maximum of death and mayhem.

Conversely, we are made painfully aware of the consequences of drink-driving and, comparatively speaking, spend vast amounts of resources trying to discourage drink driving, domestic violence, workplace accidents, etc. In other words, we are engaged in a continuous daily fight to minimise the effects of those "every day threats".

We don't catalogue as hysterical the victims of domestic violence. Indeed, we talk about the issue in terms of "crisis level" and pour vast resources in our attempts at minimising the tragedy. Why should we dismiss the effect on society of terrorist attacks as "hysteria" or "nuisance"?

And why don't our governments make a greater effort to get to the source of the problem to try and minimise its tragic effects, instead of engaging in indiscriminate bombing of one side and the other?

John Rodriguez, Florey

I absolutely agree with Colin Groves (Letters, April 3) that Australia does not need to lift its fertility rate, and for the reasons he cited.

Our national fertility is currently 1.8 but because it takes decades for less-than-replacement fertility to translate into negative population growth, we still have about 145,600 more births than deaths each year. Combine that with net overseas migration, and Australia grows by 313,200 people annually, at 1.3 per cent, about twice that of the OECD average.

Given the grave state of the planet, particularly the threats posed by climate change, we need to stabilise global population as quickly as possible, and see it reduced to a sustainable level – 2 billion or less. We can do it without coercion as long as women have education, power and choice. This is a tall order in many countries but not in ours where contraception is readily available to those who seek it. If we could implement a voluntary one-child policy we could lower fertility rates significantly.

By all means prioritise refugees in our immigrant intake, as Grove suggests, but the overall immigrant intake needs to be cut substantially to somewhere around the emigration rate of 80,000 or so.

Jenny Goldie, Michelago

Having just returned from overseas my attention was drawn to Gary J.Wilson's letter of March 21, criticising mine of March 17 which posited that if the maximum allowable alcohol limit for drivers was doubled, road deaths would increase, and by analogy, deaths would increase in the drugs area if illegal drug laws were eased.

Wilson concluded illogically that my argument meant that outlawing alcohol for drivers should reduce alcohol-related road mortality to zero. Nonsense.

I have a professional approach to reality and am pleased to have my thinking on alcohol in synchrony with the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, who are recommending the blood-alcohol limit for all drivers should be reduced to .02 and then to zero, and also to raise the drinking age ("Doctors push for cuts to blood-alcohol limits and higher drinking age", Sunday CT, April 3, p6).

These are strong recommendations and should be welcomed by all who want to reduce drug use and the harm it causes.

Colliss Parrett, Barton

I was saddened and dismayed when I read the article about the young woman who, apparently, communes with aliens and is, herself, part extra-terrestrial.

I was sad because it seems that this young woman, with so many years ahead of her, is not getting the medical help she so clearly needs.

I was dismayed that The Canberra Times would devote any space at all to this story, let alone the three-quarters of a page given to it.

I would think that, sadly, this sort of story is very common in psychiatric units around the country but to have it presented as a serious article in The Canberra Times is unacceptable.

Barbara Bankovsky, Kaleen