It's not the wattles that are stopping a national day celebration

And yet whenever there is talk of National Wattle Day as a complement or alternative to Australia Day on January 26, someone inevitably comments about sneezing, hay fever and grabbing the tissues.

Research shows that pollen allergies are more likely to be caused by the fine, wind-blown pollen of exotic trees planted in your gardens, introduced grasses (Lolium species) planted in your lawns or in vast pastures for nutritious livestock feed.

But in all fairness it is difficult to see the almost invisible pollen that these grasses and trees release in large quantities into the air.

What you do see are the blooming wattles trying to attract bees, other insects and birds to carry their heavy pollen to other wattle flowers.

This myth could negatively be affecting people's health because they are avoiding the wrong plants. It is also damaging to the environment when people, believing that they are protecting their health, cut down native acacia trees and shrubs.

Instead they could be planting wattles to create low-allergy gardens.

Following on to the excellent letter "Why is the ACT government always at war with nature" (Letters, January 24) I make the following observations.

Think of the savings that could be made from the environment budget by not shooting kangaroos in the nature reserves each year which is a very expensive exercise.

Think of the savings if we left the kangaroos to graze instead of paying a hefty sum to contractors to mow the long grass behind the houses to mitigate the fire risk.

Some of the money saved could go to protecting the local flora and fauna by controlling weeds that are left year after year to seed and spread.

Yet another large white gum branch has fallen onto Lambrigg St in Farrer. This is just one of many such incidents in and around Farrer every year.

Three huge gums crashed onto that street and a pathway in 2023. Around the suburb I see many large branches rotting at the trunk join, ready to break away.

I also see huge white gums leaning perilously, the upraised soil on one side of the base the sign they can come down any day. One in the Farrer kids' play park is only propped up by another gum, as it leans at 45 degrees.

It is a miracle that some car has not been hit, or worse a child walking home from the primary school or playing in the park.

Never was there a more crazy "politically correct" policy than that of planting brittle eucalypts or of retaining those huge gums in a suburban street.

Look at those scraggly gums reaching for the power lines along the new light rail. One day they will drop their branches or entangle the wires, requiring no doubt they all eventually be removed.

And meanwhile unsightly dead grasses adorn the main thoroughfare into Canberra, as if waiting for a replay of the 2002-2003 fire. An uglier entrance to a national capital would be hard to find.

Contrast that with the beautiful leafy streets of the older suburbs. Clearly our forefathers had a bit more sense. Gum trees belong in the bush, not in a suburban street or beside rail power lines.

Another semester one has started at CIT and as far as the public is aware, CIT's permanent CEO is still receiving full pay and associated benefits but not working for her remuneration, and an additional, acting CEO is still in place for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps high-level ACT public servants who are required to step aside for investigatory reasons should be required to undertake fulltime tasks of practical and direct community value, for example at the coalface of a stretched people-oriented service organisation.

This would deliver some ratepayer and community benefit during what clearly can be well over 18 months of paid downtime.

Keeping facilities spic and span daily in busy places like a women's refuge, for example, would be valued by many. Systems that allow such officials to hide away conveniently for long periods or be given cosy sinecures like Kathryn Campbell's vague yet highly-paid role as an adviser on Defence's AUKUS project, are perceived as problematical, especially in increasingly budget constrained times in the ACT.

Skills and training minister Chris Steel still chooses not to provide any advice about when the ACT may find itself funding only one CIT CEO.

In the meantime, the opportunity cost of paying double the remuneration for a high-level leadership position only draws more attention to the basic accountability and public interest questions about the CIT "contracts affair", and the resourcing of our key investigatory systems, that have been identified by many others since the permanent CEO was stood down in mid-2022.

I am not surprised that the Liberal Party is criticising the Prime Minister and his Labor colleagues for adjusting the stage three tax cuts.

It seems to me that the Liberals don't have any concern for our less fortunate fellow Australians as they take every opportunity they can to indulge in endless politicking.

Times have changed since these tax cuts were first agreed on. But maybe the Liberals are so involved in politicking that they haven't realised that.

Australia needs to have a serious discussion about tax reform but it's an impossible task with the game of politics always being played.

In the 2019 election campaign Labor proposed common sense tax reforms. They were grossly misrepresented in a campaign led by Tim Wilson suggesting Labor would introduce death duties.

For weeks News Ltd ran stories claiming the stage three tax cuts were unsustainable. Now that Labor has modified them they're howling about broken promises and claiming no one will trust Albanese ever again.

We are (comparatively) not a highly taxed country, Overall, Australia's level of taxation, measured as a proportion of GDP, is relatively low: 27.7 per cent compared to the OECD average of 33.4 per cent. We are the tenth-lowest OECD tax-paying country and have a very low GST.

Many of our billionaires have doubled their wealth since COVID. Many of our biggest companies pay little or no tax.

The list of happiest countries is full of Scandinavian countries which are high taxing but where all education and health care is free.

When will politicians think beyond populism and the next election? The tax cuts should be modified but we need to think about the Australia we want.

Gordon Fyfe (Letters, January 24) suggests that "consecutive" has been usurped by "back-to-back". That is, of course, except when a commentator refers to a side winning a "second consecutive premiership". Of course we all know it doesn't mean the said team has now won consecutive premierships twice for a total of four premierships but that doesn't make it right.

Back in the day when I used to write hockey and cricket columns for The Canberra Times, and other less illustrious (Sydney) journals like the Sun-Herald, the sub-editors would never have allowed it. Times have (or should that be "has") changed and we're moving on.

Bravo Mark Kenny re your article: ''Few to mourn the loss of a truly pointless Prime Minister" (January 24).

It was beautifully put, Australia needed a good dose of worm medicine. Perhaps that is the start.

It took a long time for our sloth-like PM to finally see the light and take steps to remove the inequities of the stage three tax cuts.

Widespread disapproval had no doubt something to do with it. Breaking his promise not to change anything was warranted in this instance.

However, as approving the tax in the first instance was done for purely political purposes by making the ALP as small a target as possible by agreeing with everything the LNP government proposed, he will now have to wear the flak from the opposition.

This will be incessant.

But still, this remains a classic case of "better late than never".

Re recent articles about context and accuracy. Just heard a reporter on the ABC (January 29) say 750,000 Palestinians fled the country when Israel was recognised by the UN. Wrong, most left after five of Israel's Arab neighbours invaded the new state on May 14, 1948, confidently expecting to return when the Jews were driven into the sea.

Money to support food supplies to Gaza must recommence. Even if some people working for the relief program have doubtful connections it is no reason to starve innocent people. Their lives are miserable as it is.

So somebody damaged the Captain Cook statue in Sydney and defaced the plinth. It made the news but nobody was really jumping up and down about it. Imagine if someone defaced Uluru. The fallout would be horrendous, especially from the left-wing pollies.

So Scott Morrison is going global. But is the angry man who stood up in the Parliament and maligned Christine Holgate and demanded her sacking from Australia Post really just going postal all over again?

Scott Morrison's memoirs will be just another "cook" book.

Mr Albanese? Would the real Pinocchio please stand up.

Becoming a US bible salesman now would be a perfect fit for Scott Morrison. An appropriately nuanced film for it already having been made: Paper Moon.

About 220 Israeli soldiers and 25,000 Palestinians killed so far in the ongoing Gaza war. That works out at almost 114 Palestinians for each IDF member (apart from the unreported deaths of people buried under rubble). How can this be fair or just?

Thanks Frank Marris (Letters, January 24). I also think Peter Dowding's suggestion of March 3 for Australia Day is the best yet. As he says it marks the day Australia became fully independent of the UK. It is also well separated from "invasion day" (January 26) and Reconciliation Day (celebrated in the ACT this year on May 27).

Garry Linnell ("TV's feast is no place for snobs", January 20) takes a mournful TV trip down a narrow US memory lane. A visit to Yes Minster, Yes Prime Minister, anything with Rowan Atkinson, Fawlty Towers, 'allo, 'allo, As time goes by and Are you being served will cure any melancholy.

Now the long weekend is over can we give the Australia Day whinge fest a break?