Friday night's game against Hawthorn at Manuka Oval was played at times in light snow. While this provided lots of amusement for the commentators and no doubt for interstate viewers, it is simply unfair on the Canberra football public not to schedule these games for Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

We ratepayers of the ACT pay large amounts of money to have three GWS home games played in our city each year, we deserve a better deal from the AFL. Winter afternoons in Canberra are generally chilly but crisp and clear - perfect for a family day at the footy.

A West Australian federal politician, Mr Patrick Gorman MP, was reported in Sunday's Canberra Times as seeking an occasional change in the location of parliamentary sittings away from the national capital of Canberra.

Has he any awareness of how and why the Canberra location was selected in the first place? Perhaps he may wish to consider the Australian Territory of Christmas Island as a suitable alternative following its recent and costly refurbishment.

One recent glaring faux pas made by a sports columnist demands correction. The colours of the Hawthorn Football Club are brown and gold. To quote the late, great Allan Jeans: "There is nothing yellow about this football club".

The report Climate Change and Land, from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), urges us to eat less meat and more plant-based (vegetarian) food ("UN wants shift from meat-heavy diet to save farmlands", August 10, p 24). This would help to curb greenhouse gas emissions and free up land for more sustainable uses such as food crop farming.

The report also points out that agriculture, forestry and other land use cause 23 per cent of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Prominent among these uses of land is cattle farming for beef. Australia is a major beef producer, and vast areas of native forest are cleared each year for cattle grazing.

This process is even more alarming in Brazil, where 739 square kilometres of forest was destroyed in May 2019 alone.

Cattle are prolific emitters of methane, which as a greenhouse gas is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Therefore, we are destroying large carbon sinks (forests) and replacing them with 'carbon' (carbon dioxide and methane) producers.

Australians who crave red meat should consider the harvesting of kangaroos where their numbers are excessive, or even farming them. Their meat is delicious and very low in fat. They are also far less damaging to the soil and to river banks than are cattle, and emit little or no methane. Using kangaroo meat could be a win for our health, for the environment, and for our wallets.

The suggestion that the ACT government should somehow try to make commercial use of the many thousands of kangaroos it slaughters every year, both directly and through licences issued to landholders, is contemptible ("ACT government sends $80k of kangaroo meat to tip after annual cull", July 28, 2019).

The government slaughter of these ecologically critical animals, not for environmental reasons, as it sanctimoniously claims, but only to win dollars and votes from farmers and developers. The science clearly shows killing kangaroos does only harm to the environment, and the cruelty of the slaughter is abundantly clear from the many eye witnesses who have seen its outcomes for ourselves.

Indeed, the fact that the cruelty of kangaroo killing has to be explicitly exempted from prosecution under the ACT Animal Welfare Act says it all. The slaughter has to stop because it is both monstrously cruel and environmental catastrophic.

The last thing the ACT, both people and ecosystems, needs, is yet another commercial incentive for this disgusting slaughter to continue in perpetuity.

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