While we all need to take some of the financial burden, we see that landlords and banks have been placed in the one basket to share the financial pain.

We are a married retired couple who owns one commercial property in Fyshwick. This property makes up one third of our retirement income. As soon as the announcement was made, the large commercial company who is our tenant immediately asked for consideration to not pay the rent. We have no choice morally to say anything but yes to this request.

While this was happening, our own household has taken two relatives into our home due to financial hardship. So our domestic costs have now increased.

When will the ACT government share this financial pain? We pay some of the highest rates and land tax in Australia. It is now time for them to halt rate payments to assist people like us who are playing our part.

It is time for the ACT government to show leadership and care of its residents.

I note the concern about building a temporary car park at Cooleman Court to cater for Molonglo residents without a supermarket ("Loss of urban open spaces leads to frustration", March 15, p6). Compare this situation with the development at Ginninderry, which also doesn't have a supermarket. Completely different!

City Services Minister Chris Steel has provided Ginninderry a shuttle bus for for the journey from Strathnairn to Kippax Fair and return. If the Minister provided a similar service for Molonglo residents there would be no need to denude the environment for a temporary, heat-bank car park.

Ian Warden, in his typically imagination-stirring literary work "Social distancing at last? Bring it on!" (March 22, p15), mentions pumping "one's imagination up to the size of Skywhale". David Pope has beaten Warden to the punch(line).

In Pope's Narooma poster, there are wonderfully life-like images of four airborne humpback whales, one accompanied by its calf. To complete the idyllic picture, the four adult whales look much more than two metres apart, and to have no need for concern about flying coronavirus.

Governments are correctly listening to medical science but hardly listening to to climate science, nor are they acting to avert the looming peril of a nuclear war.

The COVID-19 virus may potentially claim the lives of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people worldwide. It is not the only threat. Between 1998 and 2017, 526,000 people across the world have died due droughts, fires, cyclones and other extreme weather events caused by global heating. If it continues, climate change could lead to the demise of billions of lives. At the same time an accidental or deliberate nuclear war may destroy civilization and much of nature.

Governments need to listen urgently to all the warnings science is issuing regarding these dangers, before it is too late.

David Groupe's frustration about the tardiness of the Morrison government's response to the bushfires and now the COVID-19 pandemic is understandable (Letters, March 21).

There will always be opposing and complimentary views about the performance of a government of any persuasion that's in power, during times of crisis.

But the impression I get from David Groupe is that he doesn't think people want to hear clichés at press conferences that communicate vital information, as if it were a marketing and advertising campaign with a political spin, but to listen to experts. People expect governments to be highly efficient and effective, in its performance and delivery of outcomes, given that scrutiny and accountability is the order of the day.

While the Morrison government may been slow to act in times of recent disasters, it has at least established a COVID-19 plan of approach and mechanisms. Obviously conveying accurate and consistency of information to avoid mixed messages is crucial.

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