With reports of pay rises, retention bonuses, free return flights and other inducements being considered to tempt APVMA staff to make the move – at considerable cost to the taxpayer – there is even less reason for the move.

It is not too late for the Prime Minister to show some leadership by stepping in and cancelling the move.

Don Sephton, Greenway

I was somewhat surprised to read ("Bonus plan for Armidale", December 27, p1) that a public relations agency had been engaged by the Deputy Prime Minister's department to "undertake the media relations on the move" of the APVMA to Armidale. This appears to be a waste of public money and underscores the inability of this government to explain what it wants to do and why it wants to do it, and take responsibility for its decisions.

Why is the department's communications area and relevant senior executives, and the Deputy Prime Minister's office, including the media adviser, not taking responsibility for media relations on the move?

J. Grant, Gowrie

I have always thought of Barnaby Joyce as a rather amusing, slightly eccentric but basically harmless bod. After his recent efforts to undo the Murray Darling Basin Plan and now his alarming decision to move the APVMA to Armidale, the centre of his electorate, at enormous cost to the taxpayer, I view him as dangerous and his leader, Malcolm Turnbull, as spineless. The lunacy of this decision is topped off, I learn from the CT, by the fact that Agriculture has employed a public relations firm, Sefton's, "to undertake the media relations on the move". I wonder if Don Burke works for them?

Timothy Walsh, Garran

If it wasn't so serious, the plan to move the APVMA to Barnaby Joyce's electorate would make a great episode of Yes Minister. Blatant pork-barrelling by Joyce has resulted in a decision with no merit. High costs, disruption to the expertise of APVMA and now apparently a resort to bribery of staff to move makes this whole sorry episode an indictment of the Coalition government and of Prime Minister Turnbull.

If our PM cannot make a stand against this kind of nonsense, why should he be leader of any political party, let alone our national government? Come on, Malcolm. You should be better than this!

Re-boot your integrity and confront the extremists and bottom feeders in the Coalition and you will find broad support in the electorate.

Keith Croker, Kambah

Human decency compels us to express sympathy for the damage caused to the Australian Christian Lobby offices in Canberra last week.

Alas, the initial reaction of the group's managing director, Lyle Shelton, was very disappointing. He seemed to pre-empt the police investigation by assuming, prima-facie, an ideological cum anti-Christian motivation for the attack.

While that may well be the case; surely wisdom dictates sobriety and discretion — "show me the evidence first, please"?

Christianity is not just another product to be marketed, nor another political play thing to be imposed. Mr Shelton's response was politics, not Christianity, writ large.

Fr Peter Day, Queanbeyan, NSW

I hope one of the Prime Minister's New Year resolutions will be to meet more Australians from all walks of life.

His gesture of giving out Christmas lunches, paid for and prepared by others, to the poor and homeless had a Judas touch to it. A better gesture would have been to sit down and talk to them, ask them about their problems and what they needed to help lead more rewarding lives. That is what Christianity and Christmas is all about.

Audrey Guy, Ngunnawal

Robert Willson's claim (Letters, December 26) that our laws are derived from the Bible reveals a simplistic historical perspective. Does he really believe that sanctions against theft, murder and lying had their genesis in Neolithic Jewish culture and were absent from all other human societies? Amongst humans, only psychopaths exist outside a world imbued with ethical considerations. The democratic enterprise aims to shape universal laws and protocols blind to religion, ethnicity and gender – Amen to that.

Peter Robinson, Ainslie

Simon Cobcroft (Letters December 27) is wrong to claim that vegetarians are botanical butchers. They prefer their food to be alive before they prepare it to be eaten. They delight in tipping baby potatoes into scalding water or slicing a knife through the living flesh of tomatoes. These are live entities ... bury them in moist warm soil and they will grow. Green plants are the highest form of life. Only they can transform sunlight into food. Flesh eaters kill their food before before preparing it to be eaten. They exist on a lower moral plane than the autotrophs.

Where lies the vegetarian plane?

Peter Snowdon, Aranda

Does Simon Cobcroft play the "but plants suffer too" card to reduce the debate to a farce in order to avoid the uncomfortable issues? Or does he genuinely believe that plants suffer and value their lives like animals do?

An object or an organism may "react" but that's totally different from an animal feeling pain, stress or fear for his or her life.

A garden hose will react to being cut by releasing water. An electric bell will react when a current is passed through it. But neither feels pain.

If Simon truly believes that fruits and vegetables suffer as animals do let him place a live kitten and a tomato on a bench top and give him a knife with the instruction to cut one of them in half. Finally, if plants were able to feel, a vegan diet would still be the kinder option as, calorie for calorie, many times more plants are used to feed farmed animals than are consumed by vegans directly.

Mike O'Shaughnessy Spence

I went to two church services on Christmas Eve: one with children and a liberal use of tea-towels re-enacting the Christmas story, and one with an adult team of Pacific islanders doing the same, but employing rhyming couplets.

I very much appreciated this opportunity to meditate on the brilliance of that well-known story-line. Concern about its historical truth melts away as its themes of humility, simplicity, lack of fuss, generosity in the face of oppression, appreciation of beings from various ethnic groups or species, and of hope, when all seems lost, once again took me to a special place.

I remembered Michael Leunig's poem describing our "journey to where the real things are". I also discovered his entry for January in this year's calendar with his yearning to be "creaturely" rather than merely "human". Do we still need to listen for such voices as we pause for our holiday season?

Jill Sutton, Watson

I'd say Robert Willson (Letters, December 26) is correct in attributing the spirit of our laws as he does simply because an accretion of effective rules of behaviour tends to occur in one millennium after another. Thus, I can't imagine a rite of converting by murder being popular a thousand years from now. That likelihood, however, does not make the good laws God's laws, as I suspect Robert would have us believe. Personally, I'd buy JCa lemonade but I'd cross theroad to avoid his dad.

Barrie Smillie, Duffy

I can reassure Ken McPhan (Letters, December 24) there is nothing wrong with my powers of observation.

It matters not when or even if the northern approach to the William Slim roundabout is completed, as the unfinished work extends only as far as the northern end of the bridge over Ginninderra Creek (at a guess, less than 50 metres). Once finished, these works (to the left of the original left lane) will have zero observable effect on the current or future use of the right lane in the morning peaks: now that the (unmodified) right lane is a right turn only lane, southbound through traffic must (now and into the future) abandon the right lane many hundreds of metres before the as-yet-unfinished new works will provide any alternative. The morning peak snarls will be of biblical proportions, and someone needs to lose their job over this.

Mark Raymond, Manton, NSW

ACT Transport and City Services informed me "we need a year to prepare for the [container deposit] scheme, and [to] develop any necessary legislation and have it passed in the Assembly". So we cannot expect to have collection point operators, or reverse vending machines until some time in 2018.

South Australia has had container deposit legislation for 40 years. On February 21, 2015 NSW announced it would start up a CDS from July 2017, the NSW EPA is busy planning and drafting legislation.

The problems with delaying a scheme in the ACT are many; importantly for small to medium ACT businesses, residents will travel to NSW, redeem refunds and then may shop across the border.

Matt Ford, Crookwell, NSW

A point not explicitly made in "Swimmers warned after Cotter death" (December 27, p4) was that many, possibly most of the drownings at the Cotter recreational weir – tragic as they were – occurred when the sign clearly declared it unsafe to swim.

For this reason, the decision to destroy the popular facility in 1991 was controversial, with the usual "nanny state" debate occurring. My recollection is also that the minister defended his decision along the slightly disturbing lines of "I'm just doing what the police said I should".

However, the ability of children to assess risks for themselves and – as your article highlights – the danger that police had been subject to in (bravely) undertaking rescues must have been significant factors.

On a lighter note, as a newcomer to Canberra in the mid-1980s, the name Casuarina Sands seemed exotic and appealing so I soon went to check it out. Being fresh from Sydney's beaches, it was bewildering to see people sunbaking on what was essentially dirt! But you soon adapt; the photo circulating for the Canberra centenary of crowds swimming and lounging at the Anzac Parade roundabout takes the cake, though.

Ian Douglas, Jerrabomberra, NSW

ACTION is unquestionably Australia's worst transport system. "Management" instituted its Christmas holiday timetable on the 19th, deciding this when the Christmas holidays started! In that vein, perhaps management could change the entire timetable at Halloween, it's probably a holiday somewhere.

And the failure to fix the "real-time" scheduling screen at interchanges, which work only intermittently, is also deterring people from using the network.

Keep up the great work, "ACTION" so we can look forward to a new year full of route number changes, delays and confusion, inconveniencing working people, students, and tourists.

D. Shirley, Narrabundah

Which part of "cyclists should give way to pedestrians and other users at all times" on shared pathways does Michael Adler (Letters, December 28) not understand when he suggests that pedestrians step on to the verge to avoid cyclists? The uneven surface of most verges increase the pedestrians' risks of injury compared to the relatively stable surface of the path. This is particularly so for the frail and elderly.

Peter Snowdon, Aranda

WRONG RIVER

The otherwise excellent historical article on drownings at Casuarina Sands ("Swimmers warned after Cotter death", December 27, p4) was marred by an incorrect headline. Casuarina Sands, where the Christmas Day drowning occurred, is on the Murrumbidgee River not the Cotter. The ABC report on the drowning made the same mistake.

Doug Hynd, Stirling

NUCLEAR MADNESS

There's only one word to describe a nuclear race between Trump and Putin. MAD.

Denis Waters, Nicholls

ARMCHAIR CRITICS

I refer John Stirzaker (Letters, December 27) to my previous observation that armchair critics are free only to hold forth because someone is dug in, in harm's way, defending his right to free speech.

I am ex-Royal Navy, and give thanks that someone is doing for me what I cannot do for myself anymore.

Ian Jannaway, Monash

CORPORATE DIFFERENCE

The mere fact that corporate chief executives receive "compensation", as opposed to wages, reeks of arrogance and superiority, akin to biblical Pharisees who declared (Luke, 18:11) "God, I thank you that I am not like other people" ("2016 a wake up call on executive pay", BusinessDay, December 27, p20)!

Albert M. White, Queanbeyan, NSW

SILLY SEASON AMUSES

I laughed so much at Simon Cobcroft's letter (December 27) about vegetables screaming as they die. Yes, we really are in the Silly Season.

Susan MacDougall, Scullin

ELECTION WARNING

Happy New Year to all of us who are about to lose our part-pensions in the new year. We can rejoice that our paltry few thousand dollars a year will help to cut the country's deficit. And having to pay in full for driver's licences, car registration, rates, etc, will boost the coffers of state and territory governments.

What a privileged lot we are! But we will remember, Mr Morrison, come next election day.

Anne Waight, Macquarie

UN ACTION JUSTIFIED

The UN Security Council resolution concerning illegal settlements on land in occupied Palestine is justified, and Benjamin Netanyahu has made a fool of himself calling in the ambassadors of countries which voted for the resolution. Well done, progressive New Zealand and the other three co-sponsors of the resolution.

Adrian Jackson, Middle Park, Vic

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