ACT human rights complaints process needs to be expanded

It is the first, and in many ways still the best, in any Australian jurisdiction.

However, there are no rights without remedy, and those remedies have to be accessible, affordable and mandated where necessary to be effective.

Some of our most disadvantaged residents - prisoners, public housing tenants and First Nations people, among others - are falling through the cracks in the very system set up to protect their human rights.

The ACT government's human rights agenda will continue to break new ground in the run up to the ACT Human Rights Act's 20th anniversary in 2024.

Civil Liberties Australia has lobbied extensively on expanding the ACT's human rights complaints process and we know that MLAs understand this issue. Now is the time for them to live up to the understanding that they have.

The "No rights without remedy" petition covers every right under the ACT human rights act and would allow ACAT to mandate remedies where necessary. The result will be a fairer go for everybody.

G Williams (Letters, October 20) uses some good arithmetic to illustrate the nonsense of Australia's "poor world-leading" per capita emissions. To appreciate this nonsense, look out your Australian window to the sky and compare this, as I have, to China, India and Russia, for example.

The rare appreciation by Williams that our coal exports are counted in our emissions, and not where they are emitted, is one factor in this nonsense.

Another factor is the choice of denominator referred to by Williams. Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in terms of changing atmospheric concentrations. They are not measured in per person terms, but relative to the atmosphere. Australia has a lot of atmosphere above its land mass, in contrast to our relatively small population.

The denominator for emissions should be the atmosphere, not the population. If it were Australia would likely be the "best world leading" per atmosphere measure emitter.

I couldn't help but notice the PM's clarion call that "now it's time for governments to step back and for Australians to take their lives back". The PM also declared it was time for the governments of Australia to allow people to make their own choices.

Inspiring. I wonder whether Senator Zed Seselja and his federal Liberal colleagues will now follow the PM's lead and support ACT electors being given the freedom to decide on voluntary euthanasia?

To not do so would appear hypocritical and disloyal to the PM.

All of us, including our political leaders, would do well to remember that the population of Melbourne is in excess of 5 million. Even if the latest demonstrations in that city attracted 15,000 people as the media reported, they still only represent 0.3 per cent of the Melbourne population.

Although such demonstrations may occur in all capitals they are not a true representation of the population. They are the ravings of a rag-tag collection of Trump followers, Q-Anon far-right political conspiracy theorists and foolish people who are looking for someone to believe what they scribble in their own social media account. The 99.7 per cent who represent the actual community care and respect each other and are following medical advice to get vaccinated so as to protect our children and the broader community.

Well done Australia; especially the ACT.

It was a breath of fresh air to hear Jacqui Lambie telling it like it is in her Senate speech on the vaccination discrimination bill. People have the choice not to get vaccinated, but a reasonable consequence of that choice is being prevented from unduly risking the health of others. Given that the government didn't support the bill, why did it support its airing in Parliament? Jacqui suggests purely as a fundraising opportunity for its sponsor, Pauline Hanson. Spot on!

Like C Rossitter (Letters, November 23) I am concerned that the LNP are far more concerned with pandering to lobbyists with the religious freedom bill, fossil fuel lobby and beating war drums than with uniting the country. Just when the nation is crying out for a strong ICAC that would help restore faith in our precious democracy it is pretty obvious they only care about staying in government by any means, fair or foul.

Dog whistling to the far right is a classic example.

The Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment reports that in 2018 the average Canberran caused greenhouse emissions equivalent to thirty-five tonnes of carbon dioxide. That compares with less than 30 tonnes in each of the six states.

The ACT's landfill emissions amount to 180 kg CO2-e per capita. Now City Services Minister Chris Steel ("Food scraps the next target in ACT's climate battle", November 23) has announced a trial of a scheme that "can help reduce the amount of emissions that are coming off our landfill by up to 30 per cent".

Our next task will be to work out how to reduce the other 99 per cent of our emissions.

We in Canberra often like to think ourselves ahead of the times but we're somewhat behind when it comes to recycling kitchen waste. In a Brisbane suburb in 1974 households had two collections per week of kitchen scraps, unwrapped, and strictly no bones of any kind.

Dead flowers, large veggie leaves and fruit peelings were allowed but definitely no paper. Well, we've caught up at last.

The friendly man who collected the kitchen garbage explained that the local council was running out of land to locate new rubbish tips so had introduced regulations for rubbish disposal about two years ago to extend the life of its current tip. He didn't say what use would be made of the kitchen garbage, although there was a vague reference to composting. He pointed out proudly that bottles and cans, and paper, were collected separately. What happened to the bottles etc and paper was not mentioned, and as for plastic items?

However, Canberrans are pretty good at recycling but no doubt we can always do better.

The Morrison-Joyce government appears to be running scared with the failure to table legislation for a promised federal ICAC.

If one episode from the current term of the Morrison government which highlights the need for an ICAC most graphically it is the Leppington land deal.

How does a Commonwealth department pay 10 times the value, $30 million, for land independently valued at $3 million to people reportedly with links to the Liberal Party? Has the AFP concluded its criminal investigation into this matter?

These and many other questions could be properly traversed in a federal ICAC.

Last week many were celebrating the emancipation of pop singer star Britney Spears from restrictive legal conservatorship.

This week we saw Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai under a different type of conservatorship, albeit one protecting the reputation of the powers that be rather than one designed to protect her best interests.

If only these were isolated examples. Currently in the world there are many countries, such as Taliban-run Afghanistan, where all women are under a kind of theocratic conservatorship which does not allow women their personal autonomy or the pursuit of their individual best interests.

The loss to the world of this is the silencing and exclusion of any number of potential female Jeff Bezoses, Warren Buffets, Freeman Dysons, Bill Gateses or Elon Musks?

If only some of the energy applied to "getting justice for Britney" could be applied to getting justice and emancipation for these women

I hadn't previously heard of our government planting trees and shrubs in front yards, John Rodriguez (Letters, November 21). I wonder if the tree in question was actually planted on the writer's nature strip?

As for Canberra being a valley of "frondosity", well it wasn't always thus. Without the government imposing itself on the good citizens of Canberra there would still be barely a tree on the limestone plains upon which the capital was constructed.