I have met Anthony Albanese (in a Kingston restaurant): he is approachable, friendly, and instantly likeable. However, his performance as Opposition Leader has been disappointing. He will not take the fight up to Prime Minister Morrison on the most important issues when presented with an obvious opening. He has so far failed to offer attractive and viable alternatives to Morrison's most misguided policies, such as action on climate change.

The polls indicate that Mr Albanese has every chance of winning, but the short answer to Nicholas Stuart's question is yes. Tony Burke, Richard Marles, Chris Bowen and Tanya Plibersek are all potential Labor leaders.

From his first speech to Parliament on July 16, 2014, Nationals senator Matthew Canavan said "I started talking about my family tonight because that is the reason I got into politics. I wanted to do something where my children could see the difference I was making". Well Matt, I reckon that if you were to get out of politics, that would be worth at least 0.5 of a degree Celsius toward the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit for global warming. Your exit would make the difference your children and the world are looking for. Do us all a favour and get out of the emergency room.

I have just spent four nights in TCH, rushed in through emergency when I failed to respond to antibiotics to treat a viral infection. I was very quickly allocated a bed in emergency and necessary treatment, drips etc set up. The treatment and care afforded to me over the next few days was without fault and I am grateful to all involved in my care. I particularly want to thank the nurses on Ward 6A who showed me such kindness which went beyond just doing a job.

The reputation of a school takes years to establish and five minutes to demolish. The poor decisions of a few year students from St Edmund's ("Students take part in 'vile' scavenger hunt", November 14) have tarnished the end-of-year celebrations for the remainder of their classmates. Just as not all NRL players are domestic violence perpetrators, the few stereotype the remainder. St Edmund's is not a bad school but clearly some students just don't get it.

In many ways a private school is a community school and the school and the community has high expectations of graduating year students. Clearly these few students have let themselves and their families down as well as their fellow classmates, teachers, the school and the wider community.

Some of the reported tasks this distasteful scavenger hunt required demonstrates just how important are the social awareness and social maturity programs that are included in their curriculum.

It is to be hoped that the lessons learned from the consequences of the scavenger hunt poor choices will be the things they should have paid more attention to during classes.

How much we would appreciate

A man who does not obfuscate,

Could smirklessly communicate

A clever way to navigate

Or prudently facilitate

The climate change debate.

Given what I have seen at faculty of engineering "show and tell" events, many of our university students are perfectly equipped to perform an EV conversion to our (RWD) Ford Territory.

Our youngsters compete internationally with the EV racing cars they have developed, they understand batteries and charging/recycling, managing high voltage/current safely, modern electric motors and can design/manufacture the associated electronics.

Letter writers often speak of "electric vehicle manufacturing blah, blah, blah". A less risky alternative might be to fund a few ($10,000) final year engineering EV conversion projects, with the design(s) free and open source.

If it has legs, our vast and creative automotive after-market industry "can do" and take it from there. The main impediment will be the licensing and insurance bureaucracy of the clever country.

Will our prime minister fund some redundant Ford engineer to hold the hand of students in producing: "This document specifies a compliant and federal government sanctioned DIY Territory EV conversion"?

Probably not, dismiss me as "senile ravings of an ageing white male" (Letters, November 15).

The COP26 Glasgow climate talk-fest dashed many hopes, including the hope that its failure would signal peak climate stupidity. But not so.

The smug EU and UN still sanctimoniously continue to tell the poor in India and elsewhere they must stay poor and not burn coal to become part of the modern world, and still arrogantly cling to the ridiculous belief that by guessing future CO2 levels they can predict 2050 temperatures in a world with a billion more people, an estimated 50 per cent increase in energy demand, and a climate still mostly dominated by solar and oceanic variables beyond human control.

And at home we have pressure to increase our emission reduction targets despite China, India and Russia, the generators of 50 per cent of world emissions, refusing to take any action and planning to pump out every increasing amounts of CO2 for decades that will swamp anything we do.

Obviously, nothing we do will make any difference and proponents of further reductions are clearly motivated by politics and ideology, not practical environmental concerns. Peak climate stupidity is still years away.

Re "Is it time to make tracks on light rail in Canberra" (November 13). What we know now is that Malmo, CRRC in China, and Brisbane Metro all have or are acquiring some like and with similar capacities to the tram at significantly less cost than our red rattler. That is hardly unproven technology.

It is obvious that the minister has not ridden on a bus before. I were a bus driver, I would be rightly upset with comments like "rude, grumpy" drivers, noisy, smelly etc. What is true is that we've been conditioned to jump in the car to get around and that public transport will never compete. Yes, they look nice but they are a means to an end for a significantly small population that has to support this expensive mode.

Gold standard minister? My gold standard means everyone has a roof over their heads, a medical system that is responsive to peoples' needs, and transport that will get users to their destination quickly, swimming pools and other community facilities, not a very expensive transport system that will rob future generations of their community facilities.

I have to agree with M. Flint's letter (November 14) in which he points out that whatever the PM does for the environment the left-leaners are going to criticise him. So called "progressive" countries like Canada and New Zealand have not reduced their emissions by anywhere near the amount Australia has over the past 20 years, but no criticism of Saint Jacinta, from the ABC and The Guardian, as M.Flint stated, who are full of biased journalists.

The other major hypocrisy of electric vehicles is that they rely on fossil fuels to mine the batteries and metals that make them and when they are charged, which can take at least two hours every 400 kilometres, they are relying again on fossil fuels to provide that charge. This fallacy about ACT being 100 per cent renewable is just that, less than 10 per cent of Canberra's power comes from renewable energy and probably a lot less at the moment with all the rain and lack of sun. The other 90 per cent comes from coal and gas from NSW power plants.

I think a lot of people will still prefer to have a car they don't have to wait hours to charge up either at home or along their journey, especially during holiday time. I can see a lot of blackouts happening especially during summer school holidays if everyone has an electric car and we are relying on renewable energy to power us up.

The PM is telling us he is opposed to Labor telling people what to do. Is he opposed to telling people to get vaccinated? Should people be told to fasten seatbelts in a car? Should they be told to observe speed limits? Should they be told to drive on the left-hand side of the road?

Harrumphing ex-PM giving scripted banausic responses before an uncritical media audience, dirty great unfriendly military power poised in our backyard, and threatening Chinese sabre-rattling noises...

Maybe we should refresh our insurance policy, which looks dusty now? Supporting a carrier battle group or two wouldn't hurt.

I am writing to congratulate Queensland on hitting 70 per cent vaccinated at the weekend. Beautiful one day, still miles behind the game the next.

David Hobson might want to look past the Australia Institute as the source of his "research" (Letters, November 13). In a recent interview, the CEO of AEMO, Daniel Westerman, said that over the last decade, nine out ten dollars of energy investment have gone to renewables.

So Prime Minister Morrison has had an epiphany regarding climate change. Now he is preaching electric cars, charging stations and carbon recapture. There must be an election on the horizon.

The article by Jasper Lindell headed "Time to put rubber on the road" (November 13) is some years too late. The article would have had more currency if he had written about the hiatus which will be caused by the destruction of City Hill. However, the concept of "rubber on the road" does have considerable appeal.

Like F Marris (Letters, November 12) I too am excited at the prospect of Canberra having its own "quartier parisien" however I suspect the sight of "les chiens excites" on the boulevards might be a little too much for the staid "citadines" of Manuka.

It was reported on Sunday that Queensland is "charging towards" having 90 per cent of its eligible (16+) population having received one COVID-19 vaccination dose. Well, whoopee do. While it is admirable progress is oh-so-slowly being made, the ACT reached the 90 per cent single-dose threshold over seven weeks ago.

After reading Jack Waterford and Ebony Bennet (Forum Feb 13) I wonder how can we now know what are "core" and what are "non-core" truths and policies? If we don't know how can we vote for any of them?

Models aren't always as good as they're cracked up to be - examples include that of the Gilbert and Sullivan modern major general and those being relied upon in relation to the pandemic.

Neither are politicians, PM ("Scott Morrison says ABC not above scrutiny", online, November 15), and your tired old holier-than-thou approach to the ABC won't wash anymore, either.