Once I saw a pair of swans near the shore turn sharply and hiss as a platypus swam closer, startling it and it disappeared underwater. Then it emerged right in front of me and I clearly saw the duck's bill.

Another time a platypus was swimming downstream, parallel with the small beach and dived right underneath the jetty. I have seen water rats in the same area, too. Maybe both live nearby. The APMN has a number of sites around the ACT and Queanbeyan areas and might need more volunteers if anyone wants to do weekly platypus spotting, by the way.

As a technician at the Orroral Valley tracking station for many years, and a long-time private pilot, I am puzzled by the delay in reporting the fire.

Private pilots report fires all the time when travelling cross-country. It would have taken less than two minutes for the helicopter to reach a height that they could have reported the fire to the control tower at Canberra Airport, and less than 15 minutes to land at the airport.

Civil aircraft use VHF frequency radios, and the military use UHF frequencies radios. Was this the problem? A mobile phone could have been used to contact the tower. There must be an inquiry to this disaster.

All very noble intentions, incoming member for Yerrabi, Leanne Castley, that politics should be about "ordinary battlers" ("Just a chick from Charny", canberratimes.com.au, December 3). And yes, the perks and privileges and the deferential treatment you identify are just that, taxpayer-funded privileges whether they be travel allowance, vehicle allowance, electoral office, human and other resources and not to mention the very generous remuneration package. These must be used in an accountable and transparent manner.

Let's hope that you remain true to your public declaration that you will hold yourself and your colleagues to a high standard of integrity. I guess we can have some sense of reassurance that the ACT has an Integrity Commission, so that our Assembly members are indeed kept to those high standards.

Minister Fletcher has thrown the ABC a list of 15 questions about its recent Four Corners coverage of senior politicians' alleged extra-curricular activities and the damaging impacts that aspects of their behaviour have on women working for the federal parliament ("Government demands 'Canberra bubble' answers from ABC", December 2). At the end of a very busy year, marked by major cuts to funding and staffing, a two-word reply from the ABC board chair should suffice: "Public interest."

Your editorial "An absurd, damaging climate approach" (December 3) should strike a very vulnerable spot in the federal government's anti-climate-action defences. Since 2014, when the Abbott government repealed Labor's "carbon tax", a carbon pricing scheme that was reducing both emissions and electricity prices, Coalition governments have proved unable to decide on a definitive energy and emissions policy.

We have seen then-Treasurer Scott Morrison's fondling a lump of coal, the rise and fall of the National Energy Guarantee (NEG), the birth of a technology-led COVID-recession recovery, and its cuckoo-like displacement by the gas-led recovery.

However, there is no mention of a renewables-led recovery. This is despite Australia being blessed with unlimited solar energy, generous wind power, world-class renewable energy technology, and access to the latest battery and pumped-hydro storage technologies. The federal government seems unable or unwilling to leave the (early) 20th century behind.

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