Australia cannot turn a blind eye to the atrocities in Gaza

The Australian government could have voted at the United Nations General Assembly in November for a ceasefire, it abstained, because the details of the ceasefire did not name Hamas, nor the terror it inflicted. Well look at the terror that has been unleashed upon innocent human beings in Gaza over the last four months.

Why are we beholden to follow the US. Do we have such short memories - "weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq".

Now we are to believe the lies the Israeli government is telling the world and its biggest weapon supplier, the US.

The Israeli government's mission seems to be genocide. Not the Israelis themselves, their mislead government. The Israeli government is about to launch a ground assault on Rafah, the last place of refuge for fleeing Palestinians. One would think that every man, woman and child is a Hamas. Shame on the President of Israel.

Our government stands by and speaks useless words instead of action. Our government could do better and should.

Kathryn Kelly's criticisms of Israel's conduct in its defensive war against Hamas and defence of UNRWA (Letters, February 14) are just what you'd expect. After all, she makes it clear she doesn't believe the Jewish people should have had their own country at all, and misconstrues an equivocal International Court of Justice ruling to wrongly claim Israel is committing genocide.

If Israel has bombed UNRWA buildings and vehicles and killed UNRWA workers, as claimed, remember more than 1000 UNRWA workers are closely associated with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas uses many UNRWA buildings to hide in and under. Just recently, a major Hamas data and control centre was discovered under the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City and its electricity supply came from the UNRWA building.

Surely there are other UN bodies not intertwined with terrorists that can supply aid, as they do in other wars or natural disasters.

It is clear that much of the mainstream Australian media are trying to set some sort of "balance" on what is happening in Gaza and elsewhere in Israel-Palestine. This "balance" seems to entail equal air or newsprint time to both sides. But this does not seen fair when the number of Palestinians being killed or displaced since at least 1947 and in the current Gazan crisis far outnumbers that of Israelis. So any claims of balance by the media are largely bogus.

Origin Energy has announced a massive half yearly increase in profit that has basically been made by price gouging its customers. When will we see some government action into these corporate giants ripping people off?

I have never seen the prices go down when times are good; it's pure unadulterated greed and if we want inflation to reduce they need to be pulled into line. What happened to the fair go in Australia?

After having little or no controls on mobile devices in ACT schools, it shouldn't be a surprise to see the knee-jerk, authoritarian approach now in effect. Rather than teaching kids responsible use of their devices, teachers confiscate them on-sight from the kids, all while tapping away busily on their own.

All this does is teach kids to resent authority, as well as frustrate parents who have taught reasonable use to their kids. My son, for example, had his watch, which happens to be a smart watch, confiscated for checking the time. This is massive overreach, especially when vaping continues in the toilets unabated.

The kids still have their devices at school. So, let's allow a fair use policy such as letting the kids use them for the first five minutes of recess and the first 10 minutes of lunch. After this time, kids need to have them away in their bags, lockers, etc. If they are seen out, they receive a warning before finally confiscating them.

At least then the kids have an allowance for their use that is fair. It won't compare to the "use as much as you like" policy that applies to teachers and staff, but at least gives them a small amount of access. This would be a respectful and reasonable response that kids themselves are more likely to subscribe to.

Re the ACT's future public transport - many letter writers want buses not trams. Cheaper perhaps in the short term, but longer term?

All sides of ACT politics (including the Greens) know only permanent population growth, never acknowledging its inevitable end, never defining a long-term sustainable non-growing future ACT population, and when growth must end.

Most likely that end will be forced upon us, not planned. Will Canberra then have congested roads like other Australian capital cities? Will its buses have to compete with private motor vehicles, or will there be trams with reserved space like Sydney's trains? Imagine an ever-expanding geographic Sydney without its trains.

Short-term reliance on road transport is a doubtful way of dealing with our longer-term growth.

With the Voice revelations that the Aboriginal industry is a $40 billion deal depending on having many gaps to close, no one should be surprised that so many gaps remain open. And we can expect this will be so forever unless action, like that proposed by Jacinta Price to do a thorough audit of where the $40 billion goes each year, what it has achieved and what must change, is in place.

The answer is obviously not more autonomy for hundreds of Aboriginal fiefdoms, bureaucrats and "big men" in charge, but much less and far more control of where taxpayer money goes each year by independent outsiders trying to fix problems. Current arrangements ensuring future funding of people who, despite being allocated vast sums fail badly every year to close the gaps, must change.

The governor of the Reserve Bank said, last week, that economics is not a science, it is an art. We appear to have an enormous number of art critics who regularly are surprised when they get it wrong. Good thing art is so subjective (or is that economics?).

I refer to the media reports about the "Canberra independents" town hall meeting which descended into a slanging match. One person speaking from the podium apparently had not yet decided to be a candidate.

Territorians deserve better from organisations purporting to seek to represent us. There needs to be a coherent government emerge after October as the territory has a seat on all the ministerial councils. We cannot afford to have incoherent amateur hours eight months out from an election.

It was with utter dismay for the future of the world that I heard of Donald Trump's latest mad pronouncement that he was willing to let Russia "do whatever the hell they want" against NATO allies that do not contribute sufficiently to collective defence.

The implications of this abhorrent policy for NATO, Europe and indeed the world are too appalling to consider. I wonder how much this policy might appeal to the many millions of Americans who have emigrated (or whose forebears emigrated) to the US from Europe?

Those power-hungry leaders of the world's authoritarian regimes will be rubbing their hands with glee - and what future for Australia if Trump ultimately espouses the same policy for the Asia-Pacific?

To paraphrase Henry II's ancient lament regarding Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170 AD, "Will no one rid us of this turbulent President?"

So the "redevelopment" cost of the tiny North Sydney Pool site has blown out to twice the original estimate in just the few years since it was commissioned: $100-110 million.

The sort of build that would have taken perhaps as long as a fortnight in Shanghai, anytime in the last 30 years. Still, it's not as bad as Malcolm Turnbull's greenwashing Snowy Hydro 2.0, now blown out sixfold to over $12 billion.

Can you just imagine our $386 billion "nuclear subs" project? Do I hear a trillion? Or two? Or whatever they can take us for? No wonder the latest lamb industry advertising campaign cleverly - and courageously - mentions it as the corporate-geopolitical-welfare extravagance that Australia's youth would forever pay for.