Frank McKone rightly highlights the transformation the Uluru Statement from the Heart would represent if implemented as a Voice to Parliament (Letters, June 6, p16).
Political and poetical brilliance were on display in 2017 when the First Nations National Constitutional Convention made their extraordinary plea for what their people have been denied - a voice in a constitutional and institutional setting that cannot be ignored, dismissed, disparaged or abolished.
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How sad that some people still cannot see that our First Nations people are not merely another strand in the Australian rainbow.
It is wilful blindness to ignore the unique attribute, the dual inheritance, that distinguishes them: they are descended from those who, for millennia, were the first inhabitants, custodians, managers, carers, geographers, botanists, artists, and astronomers of this land; yet who, for more than a century and half, were violently, systematically, unrelentingly and intentionally dispossessed, murdered, brutalised, pauperised and marginalised without civilised amelioration.
The effects of such enduring, monumental trauma are genetic and generational - ask the Irish, who will never forget The Famine; ask the Jews, who will never forget the Holocaust; ask our First Nations people, who also remember and say decisively, give us our place, our Voice, in our own land.
P O'Keeffe, Hughes
Honouring mental health heroes
The majority of Australians are touched by the impact of mental health in some way and there is no doubt that the past few years have been some of the most challenging in recent history.
Many live with the daily burden of anxiety or depression, or care for a loved one. Too many in our communities have been lost.
There are thousands of people working tirelessly to make a difference to the mental health of Australians and they should be recognised for their leadership. This is the goal of the Australian Mental Health Prize, established by UNSW Sydney to acknowledge those who are doing innovative work in areas such as advocacy, research or community service. Nominations are now open and we strongly encourage people across the country to help us to honour the mental health heroes in your community. More information and nomination forms can be obtained from australianmentalhealthprize.org.au. Entries close on August 1. For those who are living with the burden of mental illness every day, thank you for your support.
Lucy Brogden and Professor Allan Fels, co-chairs, Australian Mental Health Prize Advisory Group
CIT contract controversy
This sounds unbelievably dodgy. The CIT CEO's justification for the contract is laughable, to say the least. She should be asked to resign and the contract should rescinded as soon as possible. The minister should also offer to resign.
Kalyana Rodrigo, Griffith
Worst is yet to come
Matt Kean and Chris Bowen have just received a taste of reality. Seems renewables can't deliver a stable, low-cost and continuous supply of electricity after all.
Well, who'd have thought? And we're only one week into winter - the worst is yet to come.
The message now from these (previously) climate management zealots is to crank up the coal, and somehow find the gas supplies that they've previously demonised.
All of this could have been foreseen by simply observing the situation in Europe which has done an about turn back to coal and nuclear after wasting billions on trying to get renewables to perform an impossible task. Yep, the science is perfectly clear.
John Burns, Hall
Remember Aspenalia?
When Lake Burley Griffin filled and Aspen Island first appeared, a group of ANU students took possession of it and declared it the 'Republic of Aspenalia'. As you could imagine, the republic hardly lasted longer than the drying of the morning dew. But it is sad, as the new government investigates an Australia republic, that it forgot this seminal second, when it renamed Aspen Island 'Queen Elizabeth II Island'.
