Sadly, Dean's story is not the first one I have heard, read or personally experienced in relation to the woeful mental health system in the ACT.

There appears to be a very common theme regarding the lack of care in relation to people with mental health, including people with co-morbidities.

Tragically, we are continuing to lose many members of our community; young, middle-aged and elderly people due to the failure of the many ACT agencies, services and organisations. This includes Canberra Health Services (which overlooks the ACT mental health system) who are beginning to be exposed for their lack of care to consumers in the territory.

Whilst the "powers that be" do not appear particularly interested in affecting positive change, it appears to be ultimately left up to the families/carers of the loved ones to speak out in an attempt to ensure appropriate service delivery is provided to vulnerable members of our community?

Whilst the Brice family continue their campaign to effect change; I applaud them for their tireless, passionate advocacy work in hope of saving the lives of others. Tragically, they will not get Dean back.

Please stop Felix O'Neill (Letters, July 1). There is not a small group with a diabolical hatred of light rail. There are too many Canberrans who feel powerless due lack of effective opposition, lack of a house of review.

The Self Government Act of 1988 had only one thing in its favour - the provision for referendums. But none have been sponsored.

Now we're about to throw rocks around the city to suit the manic behaviour of the Greens, to cross Commonwealth Avenue.

If they had a social conscience, they would have had a referendum as elections are too broad.

Katy sold us a pup: "I'll give you a tram for $614 million" which later became $1.8 billion.

Our current system is a case of "if isn't broke, don't fix it".

I like trams but our city cannot afford this monstrous expenditure when so many other community facilities desperately need money invested.

A huge deficit that will be a burden for the young, a housing debt needing to be written off, and you still want the tram?

This particular route works but generally public transport in this town is not going to be resolved by a gold-plated tram solution.

With flooding in and around Sydney set to rise way above anything we've seen in the last 18 months, including in places never before flooded, it is time for the government and the wealthy industries that drive it, to acknowledge that there is indeed no working economy without a working environment.

These floods are the impact of climate change and it's time the government declared a climate emergency, taxed the foreign companies that dominate our fossil fuel industry to provide some finance for the constant rebuilding that climate change is going to require and stopped all all or expansions of fossil fuel mines.

Who's writing your juvenile editorials these days? ("America on the brink of new dark age over abortion and guns", canberratimes.com.au, July 1).

Uncalled for undergraduate sarcasm such as the "the land of the free and the "home of the brave" only serve to trivialise and devalue your readership. Unlike most of the world, they are free.

There would be no freedom anywhere in the world if it wasn't for the United States. Americans defeated both fascism and their close cousins, the communists, with no help from you and yours, and with great cost in American lives and money.

They could have sat it out, but they didn't and now here we are, safe and warm in a free country but with a rogue press.

Clarence Thomas wasn't controversial, he was a normal conservative which, sadly for you, is still both popular and legal in the US and here, and was appointed by George Herbert Bush, not his son, George Walker Bush.

It's okay by you for controversial cherry-picked young Jewish leftists like Ginsberg to be appointed for life but not a normal young conservative woman like Amy Coney Barrett.

I don't know how you can, with a straight face, attack Donald Trump who had America humming while avoiding any mention of the arch-drongo Biden and his loose son.

You're clutching at straws hoping the sending of abortion "rights" back to the states will save the Democrats.

It's not just about women's rights, they've got all the rights in the world compared to the non-Anglo-European world; it's about whether it's murder or not.

Mark Kenny asked "Is Putin a fantasist or a Fascist?" (July 3, p15).

Professor Kenny also wrote of President Putin's obsession and identification with Russia's 18th century autocrat, Tsar Peter the Great, a confirmation of the "fantasist" adjective.

The article goes on to describe what can only be interpreted as the behaviour of a Fascist: a determination to gather neighbouring countries into the arms of "mother Russia", and to obliterate any opposition, or any people seen as not fitting into the new order: the Jewish diaspora in World War II Europe springs to mind.

"Tsar" Vladimir Putin will not stop at Ukraine.

His fantasy is to restore the empire of the Russian Tsars.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has claimed Russia's "special military operation" was not an invasion of Ukraine. That is absolutely ridiculous as images of the invasion show massive military destruction of Ukrainian cities by ballistic and other missiles. Lavrov comes across as a Goebbels propagandist par excellence.

How would he describe a Russian missile attack on Kyiv and more recently on a civilian shopping mall, killing 18 people and causing massive destruction? How would he react if Ukraine bombed civilian targets in Moscow?

It is where that Soviet era monster and KGB thug Putin hides and makes decisions to destroy Ukraine. He threatens nuclear attacks on countries who support Ukraine as they are disgusted by Russia's barbaric invasion.

Roman statesman and lawyer Marcus Cicero's advice for understanding human motivation, was to consider first "cui bono" (who benefits).

Dr Allan Orr's apologia ("Why NATO is quite frankly, irrelevant", canberratimes.com.au, July 2) for Russia's attack on Ukraine overlooks that if Russia achieves sovereignty over eastern Ukraine it will have the largest proven oil and gas reserves in Europe since those of Norway.

Orr's assertion that Russia's attack on Ukraine is about Russia's fear of NATO expansion, is about as credible as US assertions the casus belli for its attack on Iraq was about weapons of mass destruction.

The decision by the US Supreme Court to limit the power of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is as bad as its reversal of Roe v. Wade, and that was horrendous enough.

The court's latest ruling restricts the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from coal-and-gas-fired power plants, limiting the Biden administration's ability to rein in emissions from the power sector, which make up a quarter of US emissions.

The US is the second largest emitter (4,745 million metric tons) in the world after China (9,877mmt). It is imperative that the US brings down emissions rapidly so the world can limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. President Biden went to the election in 2020 with radical policies to mitigate climate change but this ruling of the Supreme Court badly constrains his ability to implement those policies.

The two recent decisions suggest this court, loaded by Trump appointees, is ideologically driven. The smooth functioning of a democratic society in the US rests with the three estates - legislative, executive, and judiciary - but the latter is now severely tainted.

Multiple 50, 100, and 150 years floods in the space of a few months? Sorry Barnaby, that's gotta be climate change.

While we're laying into the ABC (Letters, June 28) why is background "muzak" often inserted when factual information is being provided? This relatively-recent irritation occurs in many programs. The Drum is a prime offender. Just give us the facts, without muzak.

Our hospitals are at bursting point and our waiting times are among the worst, if not the worst, in the country. Under those circumstances, spending $2 billion dollars on the tram is nothing short of an obscenity.

Obscene amounts of money are tied up in houses while public school staff are overworked, underpaid, and stressed out, with inadequate facilities. The same is true of the public health sector.

I wonder if those who have criticized Adam Bandt for not standing in front of the Australian flag criticised Scott Morrison for not standing in front of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags.

Thank you, Governor-General Hurley, for identifying a first class tradie. Good ones are becoming increasingly difficult to find these days and it saves me from having to ask people who have had signs in front gardens what they think of the work in progress or just completed when I'm looking for one.

Evidently our new Prime Minister hasn't learnt ScoMo's lesson. Do not grab the Chinese tiger by the tail or you will get bitten. Albo's sanctimonious lecture about China not condemning Putin over Ukraine shows his naivete.

The older inner suburbs have many lovely useable green spaces and trees that are accessible to all the local residents. Could these NIMBYs living there desist from protesting the rate increases and also not oppose modest redevelopment. It appears that their avowed aim is to put everything somewhere else.

Ian Warden laments the lack of ghosts in "short back and sides" Canberra ("There are no ghosts in Canberra, there is nowhere for them to live", canberratimes.com.au, July 3). Hey Ian, have you checked out the ghosts in the Canberra Brickworks, the Yarralumla Woolshed, and listen again to them in The Glassworks and even in the nooks of Old Parliament House, just to name a few.

Franz Kafka and Julian Assange were both born on July 3. That has to be some coincidence.

The first thing a federal ICAC should investigate is how much commission Labor is paying the people at Liberal Party headquarters to keep Peter Dutton on as the leader.