First, I would note that the results are indeed significant, and do provide a gateway for students to gain entry to courses and jobs of their choice.

It is important, however, to recognise that these opportunities are but one of many, many educational opportunities and pathways. Failure to gain the result that one hoped for is inconvenient, but it is not - repeat not - any sort of "all important" permanent educational or employment handicap.

There are a huge range of courses available, and many ways to gain entry to the courses/jobs of one's choice. Within a couple of years of sitting year 12 examinations students are eligible for mature student special entry tertiary education schemes.

Year 12 is always a demanding year for students, their parents and their teachers all of whom have a great deal invested in the year's educational outcomes.

This has, of course, been compounded and exacerbated by the impact of the omnipresent COVID-19 challenges.

As someone who has taught year 12, marked year 12 exams, sat on Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) examination setting panels for many years and had three of my own children sit VCE, I would urge students - and parents of students - to keep the actual importance of year 12 results in perspective.

It is counterproductive and just plain wrong to invest these results with long-term permanent importance that they simply do not possess.

I was amused by Dallas Stow's account of a friend's rain-saturated The Canberra Times becoming so rotten it had become a copy of The Australian (Letters, December 23).

I'd hate to see the paper become encased in even more layers of plastic that will end up in landfill, the oceans or some other part of our struggling environment though.

I recall from my childhood that a simple strip of brown paper around the rolled up newspaper did the trick. Admittedly that was in dry old Adelaide, but can't we do better than single-use plastic? Paper is at least recycled; the vast majority of our plastic is not.

To drive me home from our family Christmas get-together my daughter borrowed her son's car to avoid an imbroglio of The Castle type - "move the Holden to shift the Cortina to behind the Mazda so you can get the Toyota out".

He gave her the key and said "you'd better take this one too, that one's nearly flat". Apparently, the car stops if the battery in the key dies. Having car keys that are run on batteries is, to my (admittedly old-fashioned) mind the height (or nadir) of pretentious, posturing twittishness.

M Flint's letter of December 24 contains some startling examples of the fallacy of motivated reasoning.

Apparently the Greens' relatively poor result in 2012 meant that Labor "sold their souls" and that therefore "Greens ideology has been imposed ... at great cost to all Canberrans" ever since.

It seems the fact that the Liberals tried to make the following election in 2016 a referendum on light rail, and were soundly rejected by voters, and that the Greens had an outstanding result in 2020 has slipped his attention.

The nonsense about demonstrating the impact on global warming of any local policy or action is a tired and irresponsible furphy. With a massive worldwide problem like climate change no single action can have anything but a modest effect.

But the cumulative effect of every jurisdiction doing whatever it can will be what saves us - or the cumulative effect of dereliction of responsibility based on the petulant excuse that any action will not, in and of itself, solve the entire problem will be what destroys us.

The "claim of 100 per cent renewable energy in the ACT" is pure fact. The ACT is part of the wider national electricity market, its electricity cannot be generated separately and to attempt to do so would truly be "a pure waste of taxpayers' funds".

But guaranteeing renewable generation of the same amount of electricity as the ACT uses has exactly the same beneficial impact on total emissions as arbitrarily localised generation; and far more efficiently.

Kym MacMillan (Letters, December 27) is being rather disingenuous in using the increasing greenhouse gas emissions of China, India and Russia as an excuse for Australia to swim solo against a global tide.

China aims to reduce its carbon intensity by more than 65 per cent below the 2005 level by 2030, and to achieve full carbon neutrality by 2060, while striving to take many millions of its citizens out of poverty and into the 21st century.

India's emissions policy is to reduce the emissions intensity of its economy that is, all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including methane (80 per cent more potent than carbon dioxide, the main GHG) by 45 per cent before January 1, 2030.

President Putin in November 2020 ordered the Russian government to strive for an emissions reduction of up to 30 per cent below 1990 levels by 2030, on a trajectory to carbon neutrality by 2050.

The Morrison government's 2030 emissions reduction target is stubbornly stuck on Tony Abbott's 26-28 per cent by 2030.

Recent reports Barnaby Joyce won untold billions for rural areas highlights how he, and he alone, is holding the entire country to ransom.

Forget Scotty from Marketing, Barnaby is a far better marketer of the "vote-for-me" variety having enticed his electorate with his disastrous move of the APVMA to his home town and now with a further $200 million in road upgrades.

As the Deputy Prime Minister he should be governing for the whole country, not just his electorate and the mining companies that donate so much to The Nationals.

It's hard to see this as anything else but more (car) park barrelling.

It is time to bring in real-time open and transparent political donations laws and a federal ICAC.

Equating the 40 km/h speed limit set outside school zones with the one imposed along Northbourne Avenue seems just a tad disingenuous (Letters, December 20).

The ACT's 40 km/h speed limit outside schools is enforced between 8am and 4pm during school days, not all year round. There are few - if any - schools in Canberra located along busy arterial roads such as Northbourne Avenue. Also, the majority of school zones are a couple of hundred meters long.

It would not be surprising if irate drivers slogged with exorbitant speeding fines combine for a class action against our local government. I'm not one of those "irate drivers" mentioned above. I haven't been fined for breaking any speed limit in the ACT since getting my driver's licence in 1966.

The People's Republic of China is today living out a Greek tragedy of democracy (Demos) gone awry.

Two parties, the Nationalists (now on Taiwan) and the Chinese Communist Party, both fought for over a decade against the abominable brutality of Japanese occupation (from the mid 1930s to 1945).

The then Republic of China was never completely conquered. A million Japanese soldiers, and their associated equipment, were tied down in China. These resources were not available for further barbaric conquests in Asia and the Pacific.

India, Ceylon, Australia, New Caledonia and NZ were thus spared.

Can we not all (including the CCP) acknowledge this past success, and build constructively on it? Taiwan is not an enemy of the PRC.

The CCP should show due respect; the PRC owes its very existence to Taiwan.

Christopher Warren (Letters, December 18) claims that my proposition (Letters, December 15) that smallpox in Aboriginal Australia was probably introduced by trepang fishermen from Makassar is "redundant".

He believes that the 1789 smallpox epidemic was the result of deliberate action by the British. Many such historical issues are judgements of probability and require a full reading of all the relevant literature, including, in this case, what we have both published.

I reckon my view is odds on.

We do agree, however, that questions of agency in Aboriginal Australian history are worth asking.

I enjoyed Keith Hill's "what if" letter about the inept English cricket team. England has been comprehensively defeated so far and it seems likely Australia will win the series five to nil. England needs to win consecutive sessions and find a bowling attack which does not rely on bowlers whose best days are past them.

With no apparent sense of irony Zed Seselja has warned of the dangers of a coalition government.

President Joe Biden should be forgiven for not understanding "let's go Brandon" because he probably only speaks English. What northern Americans between Canada and Mexico have done to the English language is unspeakable.

Boxing Day sales are modern variations of the short-con pea and three thimble trick. Marketing induces mass hypnotism, tempting citizens to engage in orgies of spending on the simulacra of affluence, mortgaging their bankcards and, in the process, generating ever more detritus.

I became aware of the PM's use of "shaking and baking" over the weekend and it seems it raised questions among others and on social media too. I had never heard it used before. Prepare for more mental fatigue between now and the election.

In 2020 the PM criticised the TikTok video-sharing app, warning of its connections to the Chinese regime and requesting that our intelligence agencies investigate it. Now it is reported that ScoMo uploaded two videos on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to the social media platform. Does this man stand for anything beyond the moment? How can we believe him about anything?

Jenna Price condemns Scott Morrison for not mandating face masks, which have at best marginal benefit, and also for bringing in national border restrictions which do work. She ignores state border restriction which have done far more to disrupt family reunions. Is that because most of those have been introduced by Labor governments?

Former PM Paul Keating has apparently not been invited by the Labor Party to mark the 30th anniversary of his prime ministership. Both Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke were given gala dinners in their honour. Does this mean the "lizard of oz" has been declared persona non grata following recent outbursts against the party?

To all you selfish, idiotic anti-vaxxers, now look at what you've done. All you needed to do was what the majority of duty-bound Australians had no trouble in doing. Even if you've been very lucky so far, you've helped the spread anyway. Grow up and get with the times.