Why is the ACT government persisting with funding the release of bettongs into unprotected areas (June 2, p5)? It is quite obvious bettongs reared in a protected environment and then released into unprotected areas will end up killed by predators.
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It shouldn't take the ACT's Scientific Committee to determine that. While Mulligan's Flat has had a highly successful bettong breeding program, it is still essentially a zoo. It is fenced, managed and its animals are protected from predators. Why would we need to construct more fenced bettong sanctuaries?
We do not need further bettong zoos. There are many more important environmental programs for the ACT government to spend our money on. Feeding bettongs to foxes is not one of them.
Gina Pinkas, Aranda
China tragedy hasn't ended
This week marked the 30th anniversary of the so-called Tiananmen Massacre.
But the tragedy for China did not end there. Over the past 30 years the Communist party has greatly tightened its political control over the Chinese population. The police, censorship of media, CCTVs, detention camps, and the so-called "social credit system", are all used by President Xi to control the thoughts and actions of Chinese citizens.
And these controls do not stop at China's borders. Beijing uses a complex array of instruments to determine how China is perceived by the world at large.
In Australia these include control over locally-produced Chinese language newspapers, establishment of Confucius Institutes in our universities, and "inducing" federal politicians to trot out the Beijing propaganda line.
All the more power, therefore, to the small but valiant band of academics and other citizens who resist pressures from China to tell us what is really going on in the Peoples Republic. I suspect the ghosts of Tiananmen will be cheering them on
Geoff George, Greenway
Memorial's role in glorifying war
As the Australian War Memorial continues to honour machines such as the F1-11 along with our war dead ("'Best in the world': Jet added to war memorial collection", May 31, p11), the memorial's focus shifts more and more to a glorification of warfare itself rather than a commemoration of those who have fought and died.
Military museums - as distinct from memorials - serve a legitimate purpose in displaying old military hardware. The F1-11 is to be displayed in the short-term in the AWM's annex at Mitchell. However, we are told it will eventually have "pride of place" in the proposed $498 million demolition/expansion of the AWM. If it can be displayed at Mitchell in the short term, why not in the long term?
Why must it be placed alongside the memory of our veterans who have died, as if the machinery of warfare has a claim on the nation's gratitude and respect equal to that of people who have died?
How convenient all this is for the war profiteers, including Thales, the weapons company which AWM Director Brendan Nelson serves as a member of their advisory board.
Unless there is reversal of the current proposal to knock down part of the current AWM and rebuild a hugely expanded version, the war profiteers will receive a further gift in the form of taxpayer-funded display and promotion in one of our most hallowed institutions.
Dr Sue Wareham, President, Medical Association for Prevention of War
Escaping post-election blues
Thank you Ian Warden for your column ("Unknotting our political knickers", Panorama, June 1, p2), in which he expresses so well the post election mood of depression in so many Canberrans we encounter. Ian loses himself in classical music and thoughts of Jacinda's enlightened rule across the ditch.
A simpler survival tactic is to just watch the full hour of Antiques Roadshow each weeknight, which means you miss the TV news completely and escape into the glorious and distant past, avoiding having to face the awful reality of who now rules us in Australia.
John Davenport, Farrer
Sun moth devastation
I am appalled that the habitat of the golden sun moth is to be cleared and the ACT government's submission to Department of Environment and Energy callously states that there is no alternative as the government is committed to selling the land.
I am horrified that a critically endangered species can be treated so.
Victoria Lilley, Monash
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