It refused a national heritage classification for our national capital in 2022. Most recently, the Foreign Affairs Department refused undertaking annual maintenance of Walter Burley Griffin's grave in Lucknow, India. This was despite private maintenance undertaken in 2023 by Professor Peter Stanley and his alternative suggestion, "Should Walter Burley Griffin be Brought Home to Canberra" (Letters, October 27).

A welcome initiative by the National Capital Authority may help develop this present-day Australian pride. The NCA is intending to recognise the contribution that both Marion and Walter made to the design of Canberra. It will also acknowledge the broader contribution of the Griffins to city planning, architecture and landscape design.

Canberra is more than a successful regional city. Designed by the Griffins, Canberra is the national capital in the national interest.

Perhaps the public sector workers of the Department of Health should be proud of the name 'Sirius'. As we know, HMS Sirius led the First Fleet of British settlement in Sydney. It had been entirely provisioned by the commissioners of the navy. According to Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore, "it had been a government affair from start to finish". It more or less worked, although those who arrived had a hard time of it after they got here.

However, the Royal Navy did not relish being a human rubbish-disposal mechanism. All transportation from the Second Fleet to its end in 1868 was done by the private sector. But the Second Fleet was nearly a complete disaster. Of 1006 prisoners who left Portsmouth, 267 died at sea and at least another 150 after landing (Hughes, p145).

The company responsible, Camden, Calvert and King, had broadly relevant experience transporting large numbers of people in the slave trade from Africa to the Americas. They undertook to transport, clothe and feed the convicts for a flat inclusive fee of £17 7s 6d a head, whether or not they landed alive in Sydney. And when the Second Fleet did arrive, the captains immediately opened a market on shore, selling leftover food and clothing to the earlier arrivals.

Perhaps they did not adequately re-engineer their business processes for the new function, nor adjust their customer focus. Or perhaps some jobs are best undertaken by the public sector, as the task completed by the HMS Sirius reminds us.

More people are rejecting the arguments for a "big Australia", according to the latest survey by The Australian Population Research Institute released on April 9. Data was collected last December from a random sample of 3000 voters matched to the national distribution of age, gender and location.

On the question, "do you think Australia needs more people?" a decisive 71 per cent said "no", well above the finding in the 2022 survey. Furthermore only a minority supported the planned high level of immigration and the oft-quoted arguments that it is needed to offset population ageing or skills shortages.

Arrivals will drop from last year's record high, but ABS projections still show our population increasing from today's 27 million to between 32 and 38 million by 2050. The government needs to heed the views of the electorate.

Judy Bamberger has inadvertently proven the folly of relying on Hamas's statistics for information on the Gaza war (Letters, April 9). She notes that of the 33,137 Gazans Hamas claims have been killed, "merely" 12,000 are Hamas fighters (which is actually a better than usual combatant to civilian ratio than in recent urban warfare), with 13,000 children and 9000 women.

This adds up to more than the total.

Even allowing for some double up between children and Hamas fighters, given Hamas uses child soldiers, it means that Israel has somehow managed not to kill men who weren't fighters.

Hamas claims about Gazans starving are similarly unreliable, and while there are serious shortages, these are largely from Hamas stealing food aid.

The immediate end to the war demanded by Judy would leave Hamas in power, and able once it recovers to start the further wars it has promised.

And that's not in anyone's interests, Israelis or Gazans.

On April 10, 1998 (26 years ago) the Good Friday Agreement was signed, setting in place peace in Northern Ireland, fragile at first but now enduring. That peace was born of an understanding that both Protestants and Catholics needed to coexist within a framework that accorded fair recognition of each side's beliefs, rights and needs. Barbarous tit-for-tat killings were not ever going to give lasting peace.

With that in mind, how should we view Penny Wong's call for an independent Palestinian state? Yes, the issues are far more complex and the fissures deeper, but it is very probable that her call is right, being the only way forward.

There needs to be a partition of all the holy lands. Whether the new Palestinian state is across the middle of Israel east to west, or through the centre from north to south, or (as I suspect) a right-angled state incorporating the West Bank (devoid of Israeli settlements) plus southern Israel including Gaza.

Given neither Israel nor the militant Palestinians are likely to agree on the shape and boundaries, the United Nations needs to appoint experts to decide, on the basis that once determined the international community will enforce those boundaries and oversee peace. It seems there is no other way to put an end to the centuries of hatred, with its mutual suffering and accelerating death tolls.

Andrew Barr says great cities are not built on bus lines but conveniently forgets all the great cities were built hundreds of years ago in the days of horse and cart, narrow muddy streets and no motor buses.

Trams were the answer when they evolved and grew. Move forward to 2024 where technology has moved to battery-powered buses, able to use modern roads. No inconvenient power supply systems, more services over suburbs, no new bridges and a fraction of the cost and time. And since when have we been a great city?

Our teenage grandson sat at the same table his mother had sat at not so many years ago. There was homework to complete. He had his tablet set up; neat, no clutter. He showed me resources to choose from and questions to respond to. But when he scrolled to the tasks - poof. The resources were no longer visible. So scrolling back and forth he worked through the assessment. Clunky.

At the same table his mother would have had an A4 sheet of guidelines, a class workbook recording discussions and responses, and possibly an open textbook or library loans spread about. She wrote her draft, possibly typing up the final version.

The long-ago assessing teacher could rank the work, shuffling the pile of papers, even spreading them on the floor - handwritten comments added as she read.

We are asking a lot of our kids when we give them screens. I can only imagine the dismay of parents trying to help, especially in homes where English is a second language.

Bring back learning clutter.

While I would concur with Frank Longhurst (Letters, April 10) that buying "The Tav" (as I've always known it) in Jerrabomberra is an odd way to enter your target market of Queanbeyan, his criteria for saying Jerrabomberra is not part of Queanbeyan (postcode, school, shopping centre, pub) would surely render many Canberra suburbs not part of Canberra.

I used to describe Jerrabomberra as part of Queanbeyan local government area, but suspect the forced amalgamation with Palerang shire means we are no more closely attached to Queanbeyan town than, say, Braidwood.

Lobbying, the attempt to influence politicians with "sweetened" arguments, is an accepted method of persuasion. Lobbyists even have passes giving access to MPs.

Lobbying has always gone on but once upon a time it was not official. In his Diaries 1991-2001, Tony Benn relates the story of two MPs who, in July 1994, accepted 1000 pounds to ask a question in Parliament. They were trapped by a journalist planted by The Sunday Times, and the issue was treated as a scandal. The prime minister, John Major, suspended the MPs and initiated an inquiry. It was treated as corruption.

Doug Hurst (Letters, April 10) says modern civilisation is a fantastic deal. The downside is that it's for a short time only. Already it's clear there's not enough for everyone, and the more fantastic bits, like not sleeping on the ground, are increasingly reserved for rich elites.

Your report "Everybody's a target: rights groups" (April 8) quotes critics of Israel's rules of engagement. But experts such as Colonel Richard Kemp (commanded British troops in Afghanistan) and John Spencer (chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point) say no country has done more to prevent civilian casualties. They praise Israel's civilian to combatant casualty ratios.

Peter Dutton, in a vitriolic and divisive speech at the Sydney Opera House on Wednesday evening, said "something is rotten in the state of Australia". He's right. It's him and his Trump-like approach to campaigning for power.

I'll remind Des Parkyn (Letters, April 11) that the Western Australia government previously waged a war on sharks with its baited drumline policy. It slaughtered the majestic great white, bull and tiger shark indiscriminately. That policy cost Colin Barnett his job as premier as Mark McGowan ensured the drumlines were removed.

Des Parkyn (Letters, April 11) asks whether the great white shark will be next for culling, after Kosciuszko National Park's feral horses. If feral great whites turn up in Lake Burley Griffin I will join any call for them to be culled.

Bill Thompson says AWOL is an Americanism (Letters, April 11). My parents were both in the British defence forces in World War II. They said AWOL, and didn't sound out the letters AWL.

I'm not anti-Semitic, just anti-Netanyahu - with his frightful, desperate idea that the only way to be sure of killing every member of Hamas is to kill everyone in Gaza.

How odd. The two finalists on a recent episode of Hard Quiz had as their respective subjects Julian Assange and rare Australian parrots. The parrots won.

The AFL has got a lot of things wrong over the years but they got the Jeremy Finlayson one right. With his upbringing and what he's been through he should have known better.

Stephen Barnett (Letters, April 10) complains our governors-general get paid too much. It could be worse, we could be saddled with the UK royals who for mainly smiling, cutting ribbons, and attending the theatre, get a taxpayer-subsidised luxury lifestyle.