Trump organised three treaties between Israel and Muslim countries and moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, something Obama had promised to do, but didn't, because he thought it would hurt the Palestinian peace process.

Trump held China to account for unfair trading, forced NATO countries to pay their own defence bills rather than relying on the US taxpayer. He got the US troops out of Iraq and exposed Obama's multi-billion dollar deal with Iran for the farce that it was.

Trump also reduced taxes in the US and supported more gas and oil exploration. This turned the US into a net energy exporter. The stock market went into overdrive. Unemployment rates, especially with blacks and Latinos went down. He also introduced Australian-style border protection laws to ensure the US decided who could enter the country, not the people smugglers.

Biden may very well win the presidency, and is sounding very presidential, proclaiming there are no red and blue states, and he will govern for all.. But if he wins it will be by a tiny majority. The saving grace is that the Republicans still control the Senate. That means that they can pretty much block any trendy lefty legislation they don't like and block any new judicial appointments.

Biden will be hamstrung, unable to meet the demands of his party's extreme left wing. The US is now a totally divided country, 50.5 per cent to 49.5 per cent.

The final decision may well be made by the US Supreme Court, after voter irregularities have been exposed. It seems there is a God after all.

I think the most important issue which has come out of the US election is the absolute necessity for voter identification, either by facial recognition, finger print or other irrefutable evidence of a valid ID.

In this age of technology we can't escape this conclusion.

This issue effects us all: Australia, US, UK, in fact every credible western government.

Donald Trump refuses even to countenance the possibility of electoral defeat and by lending credence to baseless conspiracy theories he seems hellbent on inciting civil war. The Republican Party and the US Supreme Court are both going to have to make a critically important decision that will determine the USA's future democratic status.

What's more important? Protecting the USA's fragile democracy, or the Narcissist-in-Chief's fragile ego?

Geoff Davidson (Letters, November 3) is right to say "Snowy 2 is a waste of time, money and energy". But he fails to adequately address the concept of baseload energy storage.

Yes, battery technology with appropriate conditioning can rapidly bring megawatts on line for a few minutes but prove useless when we require sustained gigawatt capacity for days or weeks.

That's the reasoning behind the adoption of that "something from the 1950s and 1960s", the clean, reliable and long-term solution of hydro-electricity.

When Davidson offers "batteries with the same or bigger capacity" has he contemplated the environmental damage from the mining and fabrication requirements for GWh batteries? Or noted that batteries tend to have an operational life of only 10 years?

The failure of Snowy 2.0 is that it should have been implemented as a series of ocean pumped hydro reservoirs dotted around the coastline making use of the essentially limitless (and free at source) resources: seawater, sunshine and wind. The operational life would have been measured in centuries given the longevity of Snowy 1.0.

I agree with Allan Gibson regarding the Prime Minister's attempt to redeem his error in not returning from his Hawaiian holiday earlier than he did (Letters, November 7).

However there were earlier errors including refusing to meet with 23 former fire and emergency leaders to discuss the approaching fire threats.

Seeing Gladys Berejiklian now upbeat on TV and dutifully urging ongoing caution about Victoria (shouldn't it now be the opposite?) demonstrates how the contemporary news cycle operates to the great advantage of political and bureaucratic dubiousness.

It is reminiscent of how federal and state bureaucrats and ministers were one day deservedly under pressure over their criminally incompetent handling of the Ruby Princess, but somehow completely off the hook the next.

Ms Berejiklian seems to have managed a complete exoneration in a week over really serious issues of probity.

We don't just need savagely independent, resourced and virulent ICACs to keep all these people on the straight and narrow. With or, more likely, without oppositions taking a leaf out of Cato, we need an unrelenting Fourth Estate able to keep the pressure on no matter what else piles up on the front pages.

Barry Avery (Letters, November 3) asks why CSIRO closed down its apparently successful cloud seeding program.

Several decades ago I put the same question to a friend who had been deeply involved in the program for several years.

He told me that if rain followed cloud seeding, they could never be certain if it would have rained anyway.

We are lucky living in the "Canberra bubble". Where else in the world would you see a region's top politician strolling down the street without a minder any where to be seen?

Chief Minister Barr on Tuesday morning was obviously heading for a morning cup of coffee when I passed him on a Civic street.

There wasn't a suit with ear plug and bulging pocket, anywhere to be seen, let alone a blacked out van with shadowy figures inside.

May no one ever pop our "bubble".

Further to Albert M. White's "(Natural) gas-led recovery" (Letters, November 4), I suggest that federal and eastern state governments seriously consider a hydrogen gas-led recovery from the COVID-19 recession.

There have been several reports in recent weeks about the difficulties experienced by the National Electricity Market (NEM) in coping with the huge and growing input from solar farms and rooftop solar panels.

At times this input has exceeded demand, and the NEM has been forced to dump surplus electricity.

These surpluses can be put to good use by producing hydrogen, an entirely emissions-free fuel, by electrolysis of water. This process can be switched on or off in synchrony with fluctuations in demand in the eastern Australia electricity grid.

Fresh water suitable for electrolysis is cheap, and the electricity to drive it would effectively be free. We should not miss this opportunity.

There is an irony underlying Bill Deane's use of the term "virtue signalling", an expression of contempt often used by those from the right of politics (Letters November 6).

The term originated in evolutionary biology to describe the efforts of male animals to attract females during mating.

Each species will display the most colourful feathers or whatever represents the most attractive characteristic to pass to the next generation.

Virtue signalling is a form of transaction between the male and the female, in other words: you impress me with your genes and I will mate with you.

One useful framework for understanding human behaviour divides interactions into three types: relational, transactional, and performative. Most people have all three options open, perhaps with more of an emphasis on one of them.

For primarily transactional people, relational often makes no sense - empathy and concern don't seem to get you anything of real value in return, like money or power.

So in the mind of someone steeped in the transactional mode, any expression of empathy and concern for others only makes sense if it's a signal to others that I'm a great person, because it has no practical value.

The irony is that if this is true, choosing to use the term is itself an example of virtue signalling to your own crowd.

Virtue signalling is contemptible in you, but not in me.

We all have these blindnesses to our own prejudices, a bit like Pauline Hanson believing that she's "only saying what everybody thinks".

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