Canberra Times Letters to the Editor: Trump makes the right call on useless, expensive Paris accords

The highly reliable Copenhagen Consensus Centre has calculated that the Paris Accords will reduce world temperatures by 0.17 degrees by 2100 and over the next 25 years the world will spend $2.5 trillion in renewables subsidies to reduce temperatures by just 0.02 degrees.

If we really do face a climate problem, surely something better than wildly expensive but useless gestures is needed, and affordable solutions that actually work must be found.

Doug Hurst, Chapman

I was interested to read ("CSIRO backs fasting", May 30, p3) that the CSIRO has launched a new diet in collaboration with a pharmaceutical company.

A CSIRO spokeswoman defended lending their name to the meal replacement company's product by stating "the 'I' in CSIRO stands for industry". It took a long search to find the costs of the individual meal replacement items, but having done so I calculated their cost at around $66 per person per week to which would need to be added the cost of milk, ingredients for six evening meals and one full day's food. I can see why the 'I' in CSIRO is a capital 'I'!

Alan Robertson, Canberra City

With our 30 more troops going to Afghanistan, which as we all know is 9500 kilometres away from our border and which produces 90 per cent of all the opium distributed around the world as heroin and which the US surprisingly has allowed to increase by 43 per cent under cultivation in 2016 alone, we again go through the lapdog status we have shown to this terrorist USA for 75 years.

Next we see a disgruntled has-been, John McCain, a jaundiced failed presidential nominee and grovel yet again with our slippery PM acting once again as the US doormat.

When are we going to insist on a level of independence in our foreign policy?

We are not the 51st state of the USA.

Rex Williams, Ainslie

In a recent chat over a cup of coffee with a small group the conversation invariably got around to the perils of Muslims in this country.

When I threw into the mix that the country was swimming in drugs and was more at peril of them than any "problem" that may be "created" by Muslims it hardly registered.

Which left me wondering, was the drug problem just to hard to sort out whereas Muslims were easy targets that take the focus of the drug cancer eating the country?

D. J. Fraser, Currumbin, Qld

It is difficult to comment about the findings of the Sydney siege inquest without fitting into the "armchair expert" category, yet the account of a tactical assault officer entering a hostage situation in a very confined space with a single target to take down and firing 17 single rounds in rapid succession – that is, pressing the trigger 17times – is quite troubling.

It's probably fair to be thankful that the ricochet from that volley of bullets did not hit more people.

I express no judgment whatsoever because those genuinely feel like the actions of minds strained to the extreme, and to me those officers are among the many victims of Man Monis' folly.

A combination of wrong assessments and critical leadership failures appears to have forced those front-line officers to operate almost in the dark and under punishing pressure for far too long, a pressure catastrophically exacerbated by patchy and flawed intelligence.

Thomas Zinn, the partner of Tori Johnson, highlighted it better than anyone: "Under the benefit of hindsight, throughout the inquest, they [leaders of the NSW police force] have proven that they didn't understand the consequences of their actions."

Luca Biason, Latham

Trevor Willis might be correct that "most of the present white population had nothing to do with the bad treatment" of ourindigenous compatriots (Letters, May 29).

However, I suspect there are still a large number of my fellow Baby Boomers whose attitudes, like my own. had been unfavourably affected by some of the perniciously patronising bigotry still widely prevalent in the '50s and '60s when we were growing up.

Thanks to the influence of some much better informed and more enlightened friends and acquaintances, I eventually came to recognise the cringeworthiness of some ofthose now abandoned attitudes.

I can only hope that this has also been the fate of most of my fellow sufferers.

David Wilson, Braddon

As of May 28, according to my television, Australia is home to the oldest civilisation on earth. Previously it was just home to the oldest living culture on earth.

Before that the claim was simply the oldest culture on earth, irrespective of the antiquity of the San people, or Bushmen, of Africa.

Indigines, previously referred to as Aborigines, now prefer to describe themselves as the First Peoples, implying a social, racial and historical integrity that never existed among the approximately 250 distinct native languages with some 600 dialectic variations (tribes) which are estimated to have existed in 1788.

There is just one major point of contention. On what basis can the lifestyle of a group of palaeolithic, hunter-gatherer tribes be considered a civilisation?

Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor

Shame on St Edmunds for suspending a student who was organising a strike over proposed changes at the college.

It seems the critical thinking and initiative encouraged in young people can only be exercised with institutional approval.

As schools are facing market demands like any other businesses, they would do well to adopt a (more) humane approach that ensures students have a voice.

Maura Pierlot, Campbell

There is no rational reason for the Victorian police to have taken so long to act in the Malaysian Airlines bomb threat. ("Police under fire", June 2, p1).)

Look at the weak arguments put forward by the Police Commissioner.

"There could have been bombs fixed to the doors": any crew member could say whether or not a device had been attached to the doors.

"There might have been other bombs on the plane": all the more reason to use the emergency evacuation slides to get passengers off as soon as the plane was surrounded. "Police tactical teams could have faced risks should there have been other 'terrorists' among the passengers": there has never been a single aircraft hijack attempt where the security forces have been the primary target.

One of the most difficult problems in a hostage siege event is getting accurate information from inside: no difficulty here, they had a full cabin crew they could talk to whenever they wanted to.

This fiasco demands a full and independent inquiry, not a whitewash under the guise of national security.

Roger Dace, Reid

The police are getting it in the neck again over their response to the Melbourne Airport incident, just as they did over the Lindt Cafe. An anarchist streak got into society in the 1960s. It's still there.

The police force is the bete noire of anarchists. Whenever they get the chance, they (anarchists) put the boot in. The police should get credit for doing a difficult job well.

Reg Naulty, Hawker

The incident at Melbourne Airport reminds me of some lines from the Gendarmes Duet – "We're public guardians bold yet wary, and of ourselves we take good care. To risk our precious lives we're chary, when things go wrong we're never there!"

Jack Monaghan, Lyneham

How long will Australians continue to allow Mr Dutton to present false information and defame innocent asylum seekers?

Truth is still a value is this country and Mr Dutton presents himself as a loud advocate of "Australian values".

There are many asylum seekers in Canberra today, stressed, defamed and put in an impossible situation by Mr Dutton's recent accusations and demands. It has been the government that stopped them applying for visas before now.

It is Dutton himself who has withdrawn the essential legal and translator support and set them up to fail.

It is also Dutton who has cut staff in his department and made it impossible for them to cope with a sudden rush of applications.

This is a farce. It is purely a political exercise to defame asylum seekers before they have a chance to present their appeals.

Dutton might fool some of the people some of the time, but Australia is smarter than this.

It is my hope that Australians of all political persuasions will stand up for truth and Dutton will be exposed for his fake news.

Meantime innocent people suffer.

Jane Keogh, Downer

Initially, I considered the Dutton proposal to increase the level of difficulty of English testing for immigrants seeking citizenship as an outrageous, unreasonable impost ("Labor MPs divided on citizenship changes", June 1, p4). I thought about Anne Aly's comment regarding the English language abilities of many Australians and concur that too many of them would be greatly challenged by such a test. But it might be appropriate to use the members of Parliament, both houses, as a testing ground, a trial for such a test.

If new Australians are able to match the average level of proficiency attained by the members then they should be welcomed.

Conversely, if the members set too low a standard then they should be jettisoned.

W. Book, Hackett

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin has warned of an "exponential rise" in terrorist activity in Australia inthe past two years.

He cited the fact that there were 19 terrorism-related police investigations conducted in 2014, growing to72 in 2016 ("Politics live: Turnbull govt confronts spies, lies and refugees", canberratimes.com.au, May 31). Based on the commissioner's numbers, an unkind casual observer might suggest government efforts to stem the incidence of terrorism related activity are having precisely the opposite effect.

That said, we can't really be certain of that without knowing what percentage of the investigations actually resulted in successful convictions.

The Australian Federal Police would not be the first government bureaucracy to successfully justify large investments of taxpayer funds based on levels of "activity" rather than real "outcomes".

John Richardson, Wallagoot, NSW

There may be "Strategy sought in Afghanistan troop boost" (May 30, p9), but that's not been accompanied by a boost for civilian aid.

Afghanistan's people live in a country strewn with landmines and other explosives.

In 2012-13, Australia helped clear 4.14 square kilometres of Afghanistan's contaminated land.

This benefited 102,465 people.

However, new mines are constantly added as territorial control shifts between Afghan government forces and militia groups.

There are more than 4300 minefields remaining (to be cleared of their explosives).

The presence of mines and explosives reduce the economic potential of affected areas.

The land and resources remain unusable for growing food or generating income.

The minefields also restrict access to market routes and infrastructure.

Despite Afghanistan's unpromising future, Australia's help for its civilians has been steadily declining.

(It fell from) $131 million in 2014-15 to $87 million in 2015-16 and is currently $82.7 million.

Our aid has helped Afghanistan's people walk their land in safety.

More please.

Peter Graves, Curtin

MESSAGE MISREAD

I suspect that Len Goodman (Letters, May 31) may, like too many of us, have grown so used to our debased, media-hollowed and lobbyist-hacked political discourse that he misreads the undifferentiated mumbling and muddling of the major parties in response to the Uluru Declaration as "bipartisan and well reasoned".

The natural corollary of this error is to mistake the rational decisiveness of the Greens for impetuousness.

In clearer-thinking times it would be recognised as leadership.

Felix MacNeill, Dickson

SAFETY SECURE?

There is no public or criminal record or set minimum for detention when crimes in NSW are excused plea of insanity.

Mental Health Tribunals manage the perpetrators, including paedophiles, killers and even terrorists in secrecy.

Why is the situation allowed when laws are stringent (draconian even) in other ways, for example, detention without trial during terrorist investigations?

Is psychiatry sacrificing public safety?

Linda Vij, Mascot

UGLY ENDURES

Perhaps it's time for an update of the 1958 hit novel about blundering US diplomacy, The Ugly American.

Eric Hunter, Cook

ILL WIND

To Trump climate science is fake news.

Thos Puckett, Ashgrove

HANSON BLOW

Pauline Hanson must be devastated that the person who was responsible for the scare on MH128 wasn't a terrorist.

It seems he was a very disturbed 25-year-old Sri Lankan national.

D. J. Fraser, Currumbin, Qld

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