I often see people who develop psychiatric injuries caused by their significant workloads, bullying and other pressures, who are then subjected to destructive behaviour on the part of their employer in the form of muck raking to find past examples of alleged poor performance. People can be easily put off if they don't know where to turn, even when they have a legitimate case. Too much media space is dedicated to claims that are not legally novel but instead attract the eye.

Focusing on fights over coffee cups can make great headlines, but they probably don't tell the whole story and deal a massive disservice to genuine cases of injured workers who continue to be denied coverage even when the sole or dominant cause of their injury is their employment.

Geoff Wilson, special counsel, Maurice Blackburn

I commend Judy Bamberger for her letter (July 29) castigating the Royal Australasian College of Physicians for its focus on the consequences of spanking while ignoring the far worse mental health plight of refugee children.

The college does care deeply about all children, including refugees, and it has done its best to publicise its concerns.

There are two press releases addressing this issue, the first, released on May 2 in response to a Four Corners program, and the second was released on World Refugee Day on June 20. These can still be viewed on their website racp.edu.au. Unfortunately spanking always seems to attract more publicity than the plight of refugee children - perhaps because we can relate to it more easily?

Sue Packer, Lyons

David Crosbie (''FBT, cars and charities - what an overcooked mess'', Times2, July 29, p4) says the ''not-for-profit sector'' deserves better than the changes to FBT on cars.

This is the sector where, on his figures, fewer than one in 12 gets a car in their salary package. The benefit of the rort has always been for workers whose car use is mostly private: the rort pretended their use was mostly business. Workers with a lot of deductible use of a car don't benefit from an FBT package, and mostly they aren't offered one either.

So why is Crosbie floating the ''equity'' of giving a higher tax threshold for workers in ''charity''? A tax-free threshold would give most benefit to the highest paid in his clientele: a clientele that seeks to blur the distinctions between public benevolent institutions, charities, and businesses that don't distribute profits to shareholders.

That's because the benefit from a higher threshold is at the top marginal rate: low for the underpaid, high for the top paid.

Fix the FBT anomaly. Get rid of unmeasured and inappropriate FBT rorts that let the higher income few in any sector substitute low or no tax benefits for normally taxed wages.

Christopher Hood, Queanbeyan

The best way the Prime Minister could thank all military personnel for their selfless service is to ensure their superannuation maintains parity with the age pension, with the same increase methodology that more accurately reflects cost of living increases. Most military personnel do not realise until retirement how poorly off their pensions are compared to the age pension, as military pensions gradually erode.

This also applies to the widows of service personnel killed in action receiving their husband's pension. But Rudd is just electioneering and shamefully attempting to buy votes with false appearances of support. The media is complicit in that the PM is rarely challenged over this scandalous inequity.

David Galbraith, Lieutenant Colonel (retired), Kingston

Congratulations to Jake White. He is an outstanding coach and has done a phenomenal job with the Brumbies. A huge congratulations to the Brumbies on their magic win against the Bulls in Pretoria. George Smith is absolutely a Brumbies legend.

I'm sure we woke up the neighbourhood jumping and cheering in the early hours of Sunday morning. The Brumbies are in another Super Rugby final because of their composure under pressure and the belief they have in themselves as a team. It's just magic to watch as a supporter.

We have every confidence the Brumbies will beat the Chiefs on Saturday and we will be with you every minute of the game. All the very best, Brumbies.

Alison Gerrard, Macquarie

One hopes John Doyle's TV series on historic houses will be more accurate than Ron Cerabona's article ''Built to last'' (Panorama, July 27, p8).

John Lanyon did not start grazing cattle near what is now Tharwa in the 1820s. He and his partner in business, James Wright, did not arrive at the property until 1835. Lanyon went home to England for family reasons a few months later, never to return. He left only his name, and had nothing to do with the construction of the Lanyon Homestead which presumably will feature in the series. Ironically, many places in the Tuggeranong Valley carry the name of a man who lived in the area for only a few months.

After Lanyon's departure, Wright continued to operate the pastoral property, but due to a combination of bad luck and bad management he went broke in the mid-1840s. The property was sold to Andrew Cunningham, who moved there with his family in 1848. They succeeded where Wright had failed. By 1859 they were well enough established that they could build the homestead which still stands.

Fred Roberts, Hughes

Canberra's taxpayers can be thankful that Attorney-General Simon Corbell has so far not capitulated to the noisy and persistent lawyers' and judicial lobbies which want a fifth judge (''Call for action on legal case backlog'', July 29, p1). These lobbies never provide actual or offer volunteer efficiency dividends. Why? An educated guess from anyone who has witnessed Chief Justice Terry Higgins' modus operandi and past political affiliations for half a century can deduce that additional taxpayer largesse will always be his solution.

So, before the Attorney-General is suckered in, let me suggest that he institute an efficiency review of the courts. A panel would be populated by well-read men and women who have been ''around the block'' but have never been anywhere near any kind of law school. Thus, products of the common, canon, Roman/Napoleonic, military, sharia or police academy law, et al, must be excluded from it. In lieu, these products must make themselves available for cross-examination.

''Bush'' lawyers and unreconstructed economists should be kept at bay, too. And, just in case the legal profession is content to remain afflicted by self-serving myopia, let me add that my concerns are not confined to suffering a Canberra court take several days of testimony before concluding tenuously that on a glorious, cloudless, winter midday the sky is blue. Parallel riveting conclusions about the blindingly obvious, supported by tonnes of documentation thin on substance, must be exposed, reined in and probably discarded.

A half-decent history faculty would suffice in determining what's important and what's not.

Patrick Jones, Griffith

Veronica Giles (Letters, July 26) is the one who is kidding us with her condescending statements about women in the public service at executive level who also have the responsibility of a young family (and by the way, men share the responsibility also). What would Ms Giles have the parents do? Raising a family and working to make a living is a juggling act.

Many others like friends, neighbours and grandparents help out with child responsibilities when they can. But there are a number of things that Ms Giles does not mention: when you leave work earlier than 4.51pm, you are not getting paid for it; time off work (also unpaid) can be for voluntary work at the school or within the community; and how is she able to determine that there will be institutionalised inefficiency and failure if every senior female works less than 36 hours and 45 minutes a week? Or is she alluding to the opposite opinion of most in society by suggesting that there should not be gender equity in employment because a woman has a family?

Steven Hurren, Macquarie

My husband and I had a great belly laugh about ''Veronica'' Giles's scathing letter on women at senior levels working part-time. Written with no idea about the innovation that great leadership and flexibility can create. Written with no idea about surrounding yourself with high-performing teams. I'd love to work for someone who works flexible hours so long as he or she is a great leader. Are Canberra's public servants so incompetent that they can't cope with a leader working flexible hours? Not in my experience. Actually, my experience is that the crusty old dinosaurs who refuse to move with the times are the ones put in charge of nothing significant.

I note ''Veronica'' Giles is a prolific letter writer. Once we stopped laughing, some googling revealed snide references to a chubby Nigella Lawson while Charles Saatchi is flogged by feminists (Letters, July 11). ''Veronica'' Giles has also written with great authority on light rail for Canberra (Letters, October 5, 2012). In that letter ''she'' educated us all that passenger interaction etiquette is the same as in lifts and urinals. Urinals? Really? Do women know about urinal etiquette? Do women think to comment about urinal etiquette? Perhaps women who hold such opinions about other women do. Fascinating. Yes, of course women can be intolerant of other women. The alternative hypothesis, that these opinions are peddled under a nom de plume, is too bizarre.

''John'' Selig, Fadden

It is remarkable that during the time of Craig Thomson's rise from obscurity to notoriety Labor moralists did not at least suggest, like Caesar's wife, that Mr Thomson should resign if he was not above suspicion. One would think that a stern moralist like Kevin Rudd, and a fighter for justice like Andrew Leigh, would swiftly have been on the case. It would be a good sign if the present member for Fraser showed at least some of Jim Fraser's qualities.

And what would Jim Fraser's attitude have been towards asylum seekers in boats? Mr Rudd is perhaps beyond all but clinical help, but Mr Leigh ought to be prepared to man a barricade or two.

Roy Darling, Florey

Rosemary Walters (Letters, July 26) shoots a few notorious and outspoken individuals in the foot on climate change, Tony Abbott and Alan Jones among them. But the analogy she uses to demonstrate the danger of two major culprits of unfavourable climate change, carbon dioxide and methane, is not a good one.

Climate change is not about breathing increasing amounts of these gases. A room overloaded with these two gases will surely kill anyone in the room through asphyxiation, the time depending upon the oxygen content, and not because one might be toxic or both can absorb IR radiation from the earth. Harmless nitrogen gas, argon or helium, for example, would do exactly the same because there is no oxygen to support life.

Greg Jackson, Kambah

The public debate regarding the ACT's nurse-led walk-in centre last week has highlighted the benefit of bringing rigorous, evidence-based discussion to health care services.

I was lead author on the article which sparked the debate. It examined transfer of evidence from one setting into the development and implementation of policy in another setting, focusing on areas where this transfer was hampered by local factors, including medical interest groups.

Overlooked in the debate is strong evidence for the value of nurse-led models of health care. Although Australia lags behind the rest of the world in nurse-led models of health care, the ACT is the leading jurisdiction rectifying this lag.

The ACT has the highest proportion of nurse practitioners per capita in Australia; these and other advanced nursing roles are an important way of optimising health care provision, as well as addressing the shortage of GPs in the ACT.

The ACT nurse-led walk-in centre is an innovation bringing the ACT up to speed with its international colleagues. Use of findings from the independent evaluation, in conjunction with public discussion, can only strengthen this and future models of health care.

Jane Desborough, Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute, ANU

I am somewhat bemused by the ACCC's warning about the Coles/Woolies duopoly taking over the petrol retail market.

Hasn't the ACCC repeatedly declined to take any action over the duopoly so far? Haven't they refused many community pleas to limit the scope of the duopoly, even where other businesses have suffered massive extinction events?

Haven't they recently said it's quite OK for the duopoly to discount milk by more than 60 per cent? So what's the big deal about discounts of around 3 per cent per litre of petrol?

Or to put it another way, why is the ACCC stroking petrol retailers while the dairy industry, and many others, cop the back of their hand?

S.W. Davey, Torrens

BIG-NOTER

Kevin Rudd went to Afghanistan to announce a troop withdrawal that was already well under way.

Necessary, or just big-noting himself as usual?

Ian Morison, Forrest

NOT THE FIRST LADY

Therese Rein was not the first Australian prime minister's wife to visit a war zone (''Flak jacket fashion as Rein sets war zone first'', July 29, p2), not even the second (that distinction goes to Bettina Gorton, wife of Liberal PM John Grey Gorton, who travelled to Vietnam in June 1968), she was the third.

Pattie Menzies was the first prime minister's wife to visit a war zone when she accompanied PM Bob Menzies to London during World War II. I don't know why journalists nowadays don't check facts before rushing to report something the current PM's wife did was a ''first''.

Carole Lawrence, Belconnen

KNOTTY QUESTION

Am I imagining things or is it the latest, silly fad for younger men to wear their neckties with about a half-inch space between the top button and the knot? If so, why? Since they serve no useful purpose and restrict the windpipe, it would make more sense to dispense with the stupid things altogether.

D.N. Callaghan, Kingston

U.S. OF AUSTRALIA

Since the US government is so determined to make Australia a state of the US, perhaps it should give Australians the right to vote in US elections?

Simon Kringas, Forrest

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

Solution; defined by my dictionary as: ''A method for solving a problem''. So what or whose problem does the Papua New Guinea solution solve?

Graham Downie, O'Connor

NO FRIEND OF FACEBOOK

In her article ''Criado-Perez forces social media to wake up'' (Times2, July 30, p5) Jenna Price writes: ''A good Facebook community is highly interactive. And every interaction requires attention. That attention pretty much needs to be 24 hours a day.''

In a life not particularly notable for significant cognitive achievement, I am further convinced that the smartest thing I ever did was to refuse several requests from relatives and others to become a Facebook friend.

Bill Deane, Chapman

NAME THE DATE

Memo to Kevin Rudd and Bill Shorten: I will not vote for you now or ever! Stop stringing the Australian public along and name the election date.

A.C. Driscoll, Jerrabomberra, NSW

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