Judging by the letters pages, most CT readers know them already. The leader of Leigh's own party apparently needs convincing, though. Any party leader who still can't say no to the Adani mega coalmine, and reinforces the myth about coal being good for jobs, just doesn't get it.

The refusal of both our two biggest political parties to commit to phasing out fossil fuels with absolute urgency, as our country burns around us, is leaving much of the rest of the world incredulous.

Please take your message to Mr Albanese, Andrew.

Recent examples of snobspeak and reverse snobspeak. Prince Harry: "The decision that I have made for ... I to step back ..."

Ian Warden ("Republicans and their imaginations", Panorama, January 25, p2): "Can it be that us ... are getting carried away?"

What is really making my blood boil is that I keep reading about all these beautiful people standing in the ruins of their homes saying how hard it will be to build a house because they have not got any money and having applied for many grants, etc, some are borrowing caravans to live in or sitting in motel rooms.

Yet we also read of the extraordinary generosity of the Australian people and companies giving millions of dollars to help.

The amounts raised are enormous but yet the money seems not to be getting to the dear people who have lost everything.

These people can be identified in each area and therefore should be given at least $200,000-plus as start to help them now.

Why are the holders of the donated money holding on to it?

I can just see that down the track there will be the usual scandal exposed of donations going missing and people who have lost everything still sitting in caravans waiting.

While I admired the message in Joanne McCarthy's article "Learning to treasure what's in the trash" (Sunday Canberra Times, January 26, p18), it was undone by the ensuing Relax section and its photos and articles on how to stylise a home.

It was difficult not to notice that within the section and as highlighted in the plethora of television home and garden and stylising houses for sale programmes, the art promoted consists of splashes of imported colour, massed produced for retail furniture stores.

Please why can't we promote and buy Australian original art, either recently completed by cash-poor artists or recycled original art promoted by galleries in Canberra and elsewhere?

Australia's Prime Ministers Scott Morrison has had a large amount of expert advice on climate change and the fires.

Recently, just for example, the Academy of Science, 80 Australian Research Grant Laureates and the retired fire chiefs.

All of this advice, along with Australia's leading business organisations, are calling for more action by the government to reduce carbon emissions.

However, Mr Morrison in his Press Club speech on January 29, without any proper consideration of this advice and without consultation with experts and the public, proclaimed there would be no more efforts on emission reductions and that adaptation and resilience is the only way to go.

In other words, Australians, you just have to suck it up and tough it out. This could mean our children and grandchildren facing temperature increases of at least three degrees or a lot more by 2100, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other experts.

How dare this one person stand up on the podium and purely through his own ignorance tell us our fate.

The sooner he is voted out the better.

If the coronavirus outbreak had occurred elsewhere on planet, in Europe or North America for example, would we be evacuating our citizens to Christmas Island for 14 days? Just wondering.

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