The original bill of itself was an indication of the slime and gutter politics of both Labor and Liberal parties and their contempt for the lives and sanity of human beings who came to us as refugees for help.

At least as it was it offered some vague potential of emotional reprieve for those unlawfully in prison.

Horse trade if you must Lambie for the sake of your constituents, but do they realise that what you are contemplating is akin to slave trading for social benefit? Is a new community centre or a swimming pool of more value than a human life?

What have we become Australia?

Christopher Smith (Letters, October 2) considers it hypocritical for a letter writer to criticise Australian farming practices without also criticising those in Asia.

This is a complete inversion of the definition of the word, which is when a person criticises others for behaviour without abstaining themselves (for example, a smoker counselling against tobacco use).

However, this confusion does not surprise me.

In recent months some letter writers have argued that only those who abstain from long-distance travel have any right to hope for a greater role for renewables in supplying our energy needs.

Accusations of hypocrisy are an effective way of shutting down debate.

Christopher Smith (Letters, October 2) has misinterpreted Jenny Moxham (Letters, September 28).

She was referring to Canberra's new laws that state animals are sentient.

I have never met Jenny Moxham, but over many years I have read her compassionate animal letters. She cares about any source of cruelty inflicted on animals worldwide.

Dogs tortured, killed and eaten in Asia would be high on her agenda, as are the atrocities that are perpetrated in intensive farming of caged chickens and pigs anywhere in the world.

But on this occasion she was referring to conditions in Australia. She is so far from hypocritical, just because she has no room to list every single animal cruelty issue. I'm sure Jenny would agree with you that cruelty abounds.

Recently we've had royal commissions into child abuse, the banks, and currently caring for the elderly.

They have proved to be extremely useful in getting at the truth and giving us options for the best way forward.

If we are facing a climate emergency, then what better way to face up to that and separate fact from fiction than by having an independent royal commission examine the matter?

That really would be money well spent. I nominate, to lead the commission, Professor Ian Chubb AC FAA: a distinguished Australian scientist and academic who was ANU vice chancellor between 2001 and 2011 and the chief scientist from 2011 to 2016.

China has nuclear weapons, a sophisticated space program, huge military forces, total amorality in its dealings with its neighbours or rivals and ruthless efficiency in controlling and, where necessary, oppressing its minorities. Just what a nation needs to get on in this world.

Toss in unjustified territorial ambitions, an understandable historical chip on the shoulder and the total absence of the rule of law.

Not a developed nation? Pull the other leg.

I am sorry to say that I, for one, do not share the adulation given to Greta Thunberg for her speech to the United Nations.

Her speech was not that of a naive 16 year old schoolgirl, it had all the hallmarks of a professional speechwriter from the green fringe using her as a tool to further their own alarmist agenda.

Sorry Greta , but I believe you have been deceived.

There seems to be a lot of noise about climate change lately. Whilst obviously important, how about the importance of having a society in a frame of mind where 50 years down the track life is enjoyable and valued enough for them to actually care if the world is environmentally imploding?

The youth are transfixed by their devices, both socially and at work; their moods swaying with every swipe or scroll, resulting in mental health and anxiety becoming out of control.

Parents are feeling a huge lack of control over their well being and the resultant lack of physical activity culminating in a looming obesity crisis.

The youth look around now and see next to no chance of entering the housing market, infrastructure reeling from over population in the cities, world "leaders" acting like schoolboys, threats of nuclear war, a school curriculum system starting to becoming agenda based that distorts or ignores the facts and continuous party politics from our politicians that restrict major improvements in many areas.

If things don't change society is at risk of imploding before the planet does.

It is disgraceful when the stigmatisation of people with mental conditions is used as a political lever in an attempt to discredit causes with which one disagrees. Views should be assessed on merit.

Greta Thunberg, whose only crime is a different opinion on action for climate change, has no right to be respected or heard, whatever she says on issues of public importance according to Bill Deane (Letters, October 3) and others.

Her words are dismissed as a "rant" solely due to her mental condition. On this logic we are entitled to disrespect and marginalise the political views of the 20 per cent of Australians who show symptoms of mental illness in any one year.

Forget about Andrew Bolt and his absence of logic or the Swedish girl with a blunt manner. The evidence is before us.

When our stock perishes, our crops fail, our rivers die, our skies turn red with dust, our reefs fade, our eucalyptus forests turn to ash, and our lungs fill with smoke for days at a time, then something is up.

Sure we've seen it all before but never to this severity or frequency. Add to that there is plenty we haven't seen before. Bats falling dead out of trees, devastating fish kills, more and more record temperatures, winter water restrictions and a record early fire season.

The evidence suggests it is not a case of "business as usual" for our environment.

The evidence supports multiple climate models and those models forecast even greater and probably irreversible changes in climate with subsequent increasing impact on the environment and the economy.

PM Morrison please crawl out from your cherished self-imposed bubble, put aside the fictional pub-polls, roll up your sleeves and tell us what is happening and what we as a nation can do to lessen the impact of climate change.

Ignorance is no excuse and LNP arrogance will solve nothing.

Of course Greta Thunberg is being attacked. She has called out a bare-faced lie: that the world is doing enough to confront the environmental catastrophe.

The emperors at the UN, and their hangers-on, are naked liars in their pretence of appropriate leadership.

In their embarrassment they attack the teller of the truth.

I, for one, am happy to see them shamed.

Re: "Trump asked PM for help on Russia" (canberratimes.com.au, October 2).

It amazes me a junior diplomat at the Australian High Commission who was introduced to George Papadopoulos would be bothered meeting him.

And then, having reported the meeting to Downer, the High Commissioner would agree to meet Papadopoulos.

Mr Downer admits he passed on one element (his word) of the conversation to the Americans.

Two months when the FBI opened the Russian probe the floodgates opened.

And leaks from the Trump White House continue to trickle out.

Apparently Michael Petterssen MLA wants to hear from us about how we can make our community even better, including potholes and street signs. Turning the place into a pothole? Of all the problems facing the world, what a shameful legacy.

In cutting the interest rate this week to the lowest of the Lowe, the Reserve Bank is only confirming what people have been telling the government for a while now: we have zero interest in your negative policies.

What's new about a right wing PM buying into US partisan politics on behalf of his US counterpart? In 2007 John Howard said a vote for Obama was a vote for terrorism. Morrison's enthusiasm to assisting Trump and the Republicans is no surprise.

Re the suggestion of Peter Harris (Letters, October 3) that the suburb of Downer be renamed, he may not know that it was named after Alexander Downer's grandfather, Sir John Downer (1844-1915), who was a premier of South Australia and a member of the first Australian Senate in 1901.

The media is good at reporting births, deaths and marriages, sports results and the weather. When it comes to news that needs interpretation they are influenced by editorial policy and the need to maintain circulation and ratings. One of the few areas where President Trump is correct is his references to fake news.

No one is denying the benefits of coal-fired generation in the 19th and early 20th centuries, D. Zivkovic (Letters, October 4), but it has become a dangerous and outdated technology. The history of humanity is a history of technological change.

But, D Zivkovic (Letters, October 4), there is also non-coal-fired electricity generation. And the sooner we switch to it completely (the ACT has already done so), the better for all of us.

When Greta Thunberg bothered to attend her school she at least learnt something useful; fluency in a second (or even third) language, English. I have not once heard her utter "like yeah, you know, like, er um, you know".

How hypocritical is the ACT government? It limits rental increases to the CPI when rates and taxes have risen at about 10 per cent per annum for at least five years and pay packets have been virtually stagnant.

The Australian Border Force has a new threat. The damage to our economy ($50 billion over 10 years) if swine fever enters the country vastly overshadows any supposed harm from the refugees from Biloela, or medevac cases in urgent need of attention.

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