Clearly no distancing, or crowd control numbers. A clear disregard of the rules outlined. The absolute opposite we have all abided by in these frightening times.

These young people were not moved on, clearly not abiding by queuing or crowd requirements, nor the venues closed down with suitable large fines imposed for flouting the rules. I find the comments by ACT government health officials quite amazing in The Canberra Times.

Seeing the smiling Chief Minister serving the first beer added to my anger and disbelief. A clear breach of isolation rules occurred in our city over the weekend! What will be the result?

That said, I was able, for the first time in many lonely months, to sit and enjoy my much missed latte and cake at my favourite cafe at Tuggeranong last week.

The owners were abiding by crowd distancing, limiting numbers, and taking contact details of their customers.

What is going on with the federal government? What do they have against creative people and the arts?

What about history and sociology? What about literature? What about music? What about life itself, the enjoyment of which depends on the arts?

The government's announced plan to more than double the cost of a humanities degree while trying to track people into "jobs" degrees, regardless of their interest or aptitude, makes no sense.

Without the arts, history, literature, and music, our lives are diminished every single day.

The government's proposal is discriminatory and undermines everyone's sources of joy and mental wellbeing. Education is much, much more than job training.

Congratulations on your editorial "Unemployment is only going to worsen" (canberratimes.com.au, June 19).

It's not just unemployment, of course, it's underemployment and participation rate. So many people have simply given up looking for work.

There is a need for a post-COVID-19 economic recovery, but we cannot return to a high-carbon economy. A couple of Australian organisations, notably Beyond Zero Emissions, have come up with suggestions for a renewables-led recovery that will create up to a million jobs.

And the CEO of the prestigious International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, has warned that, if we are not to have a post-COVID-19 surge in emissions (after plunging 17 per cent in April), then the world needs a green recovery.

The IEA has provided a blueprint for such a recovery, with a focus on green jobs such as retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient, installing solar panels and building wind farms. Birol says this is more effective than pouring money into the high-carbon economy.

As Sam Fankhauser, executive director of the Grantham Research Institute on climate change at the London School of Economics, says, governments must not try to "preserve existing jobs in formaldehyde", rather they must provide retraining and other opportunities for people to "move into the jobs of the future".

On February 4, the ABC reported that rebuilds of bushfire-destroyed homes would take up to five years to complete.

I do not think this time span considered the repairs to properties that had been partially damaged, such as my partner's home in Malua Bay. To date our insurance company has settled on some items and property damage, and we are still waiting for them to finalise our claim for retaining walls which were destroyed by the bushfire that swept through our region on New Year's Eve.

Prior to the Morrison government's announcement of the HomeBuilder grant, we thought we would have replacement retaining walls completed close to Christmas 2020. Now we are not so sure.

What seems to be missing from the current discussion is how this announcement would impact on all those destroyed and damaged properties in Queensland, Victoria and NSW.

Never mind that the benefit from this grant is certainly not aimed at those who have lost or have damaged properties, and seems to be aimed more at the higher end of homeowners. This will probably cause more delay to those affected by the bushfires.

It is seems likely to me that builders will prioritise HomeBuilder grant applications, if for no other reason than that there are very tight parameters time-wise attached to this construction work whereas no timelines are applied to fire-damaged properties throughout the three states.

The Australian government has opened negotiations with the United Kingdom for a so-called free trade agreement between our nations.

Those of us with long memories will recall how the United Kingdom sold Australia and New Zealand down the river in the lead-up to the UK's entry to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973 as part of the price the UK willingly paid to join the EEC.

It was a price paid at the expense of Australian and New Zealand primary produce exporters to Europe in particular.

Much has since changed. Amongst other things, Australia has greatly diversified its export markets, including export markets for its primary produce, since then.

We no longer depend on the UK for export markets or investment to anything like the same extent as then. Australia's trade and investment flows with the remaining members of the European Union are in aggregate now worth many times what they are with the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile the UK, having turned its back on Australia as a market since 1973 and having now Brexited the European Union, is desperate to boast it can conclude trade agreements with the rest of the world.

It is, in effect, a mendicant state in any future trade negotiations with Australia.

I hope the Australian government bears this in mind in any trade negotiations with the UK; especially the interests of Australian primary producers so arrogantly set aside by the United Kingdom when it joined the EEC.

The reports "Australia target of ongoing cyber attack, says PM" (June 20, p8) and "Prime Minister's message was aimed squarely at China, says security analyst" (June 20, p9) suggest China is the primary suspect.

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian said the "false" accusations of Chinese cyber espionage originated with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), which receives some funding from US arms companies.

But why would ASPI make such accusations if it knew them to be false? It would make the organisation look incompetent, and would risk losing its funding. I leave the reader to judge who is telling the truth.

B. Bailey (Letters, June 20) discussed smoke haze deaths and COVID-19 deaths in Canberra.

There is a much larger, and very serious aspect, to this matter. Climate-change-related impacts have already killed a lot more humans than coronavirus.

In Australia the ratio of deaths from the fires alone, compared to COVID-19, is about five to one.

If the world does not get to net-zero emissions by 2050 or earlier, human deaths from climate change will be astronomical, human civilisation could collapse, and countless other species will become extinct.

Moreover, there is a high likelihood coronavirus will be defeated. Climate change is irreversible.

Why are politicians and the media totally focused on COVID-19 and virtually ignoring climate action?

Doctor Audrey Guy thinks the declaration of academic qualifications would see an improvement in, and more intelligent, parliamentary debate. Does she have evidence to support her claim academic qualifications would lead to intelligent debate?

My personal opinion is that there are many "unqualified" people out there who would run rings around the supposedly academic elite when it comes to basic common sense. This is what is required of our leaders, rather than academic qualifications without life experience.

Whatever makes Jeff Bradley think students don't provide different answers unrelated to the question? (Letters, June 22). As a former IELTS (International English Language Testing System) examiner I must have graded hundreds of scripts so clearly off-topic they bore little relationship to the question being asked. And that was just the overseas students. They can't all be budding politicians.

ASPI boss Peter Jennings has impressive academic and bureaucratic credentials and has chosen to add his own anti-China views to the known hostile views of the Australian media and presumably the Australian government. It's not clear how this will influence China, which has so far been relatively restrained over Taiwan and the South China Sea, in contrast to Jennings' alarmist judgments about possible hostilities.

Add to the list of national standards (Letters, June 22) a "death with dignity" option like that of the successful same-sex marriage survey of 2017.

The pictures of a dishevelled Trump returning to the White House after his less-than-successful inaugural campaign rally were priceless. From rooster to feather duster in a day.

The Coalition has morphed from being self-proclaimed Muppets into now fearless Philistines ("Humanities shouldn't suffer for jobs", canberratimes.com.au, June 20).

Whoa, Ian Pilsner (Letters, June 19). Media Watch is a highlight of Monday evening viewing.

The federal government's decision to force people away from arts degrees makes me think of Ukrainian-American Yakov Smirnoff's comedy routine. It would be something like: "In Soviet Russia the government tells you what you dream you will be when you grow up".

Shane Rattenbury could look at how Bungendore slows traffic in school zones. It has yellow flashing lights that operate when school students are entering and leaving, not for the whole day. It works. If they can afford it then surely we can.

The sooner we divest ourselves of the belief the US is a faithful ally and that what's good for America is good for us, the sooner we will be able to understand who is doing what to us on the geopolitical scene.

If we are going to rehash the debate as to the relative merits of statue desecration (Letters, Ian Pilsner, June 16), can we agree "antifa" does not warrant a capital A. It is, at best, a vague concept championed more often than not by the far right to frighten the horses.

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