Decades ago illicit drug use was seen as evil.

Stringent drug law enforcement seemed the solution. Drug seizures became more frequent and involved increasingly large quantities of heroin and cocaine.

A growing number of sceptics began emerging, demanding evidence customs, police, court and prisons sustainably reduced the supply or availability of drugs.

But the international price of drugs like heroin and cocaine fell over decades by as much as a third. Australians who use drugs reported the availability of most illicit drugs was "easy" or "very easy".

Drug markets around the world in recent decades saw a steady growth in size, an increase in the number of different types of drugs and more dangerous drugs replacing less dangerous drugs.

Australia prohibited heroin in 1955. In 1964, there were only six heroin overdose deaths in Australia. Now annual drug overdose deaths in Australia are close to 2000.

In 1989 the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Crime Authority concluded: "All the evidence shows, however, not only that our law enforcement agencies have not succeeded in preventing the supply of illegal drugs to Australian markets but that it is unrealistic to expect them to do so".

On April 29, 2014, then Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, finally admitted that "[the war on drugs] is ... not a war we will ever finally win. The war on drugs is a war you can lose".

Things that cannot go on forever don't.

The "plan" for Australia's greenhouse emissions reduction that PM Morrison will take to COP26 in Glasgow is a sub-optimal result of last minute horse-trading with the Nationals. It will do nothing to enhance our poor international reputation for actions addressing climate change.

This was an opportunity to frame a major long-term nation-building program. Well-credentialed big thinkers, such as professors Ross Garnaut and Alan Finkel, have set out the framework for this in demonstrating the potential to optimize economic, social and environmental benefits while mitigating and adapting to climate change.

What is urgently needed is a non-partisan commitment to flesh out this potential. This would provide the focus for governments support for a host of major integrated, broad-ranging initiatives, involving industries, researchers, educators, developers, innovators, entrepreneurs and philanthropists.

Where is the strong leadership and political will we desperately need to build our nation?

One matter Crispin Hull only touched on in his otherwise very good critique ("For COVID recovery, don't forget the economic cost of high immigration", canberratimes.com.au, October 23) of the current push for a big Australian migration program is the environmental costs of ever expanding population and economic growth.

To criticise either, especially population growth, is generally seen as a no-no these days. But the utter foolishness of the growth paradigm is so apparent it is perhaps the reason it is usually ignored.

We are facing catastrophic global warming and biodiversity loss. The Murray Darling Basin water supply and agricultural output are at their limits. The science tells us that a number of Australia's unique ecosystems are near collapse.

The largest living organism in the world, the Great Barrier Reef, is suffering ongoing bleaching events and much of Australia's forests were badly burnt two years ago and will burn again under global warming forecast extreme events once the fuel load builds up again.

By all means let's have immigration but for the environment, social and economic welfare of the nation let's make it a sustainable enterprise.

Yes Paul Wayper (Letters, October 26), and the LNP wait mere days before Glasgow to reach their "secret" agreement, free from scrutiny by parliament and the Australian public.

No real plan on a transition to cleaner energy; just fire up the gas barbecue and put some more pork on your fork.

The consequences of continuing with an LNP government will be tragic for Australia.

I am getting a little weary with all this talk of "net zero". What this means is that I can generate as much carbon dioxide as I like provided I plant a few million trees.

Allowing for offsets means I do not even need to plant any trees. I only have to promise not to clear the existing trees somewhere.

We need a target of lower emissions, not some "net zero calculation". ScoMo can promise all he likes but who is monitoring the trees to make sure they are doing their bit? Australia is not a large polluter on the world stage, but the greenies make it sound worse by insisting on quoting "per-capita" levels, not total levels

This whole scenario is very artificial, just like the old carbon tax which only added to the prices for the consumer without requiring the power plants to do anything. Burning fossil fuel like coal is only putting back into the atmosphere what the primordial trees took out of the atmosphere 200 million or so years ago.

For interest, I have solar panels and batteries but what good are they when during a recent power outage, my house went black; the batteries could not power my house.

The rather silly euphoria over relaxation of rules and lockdowns is not being helped by constant reference to 70 and 80 per cent vaccination rates whilst quietly burying the "eligible" bit in a welter of statistics.

The memory of a disastrously organised and led vaccination program might soon be overwhelmed by statistics of huge numbers of new infections. No-one seems to know.

Whilst there is still that threat hanging over the population and before it becomes a major issue, Scott Morrison will be eyeing off calling an election for early December, immediately on return from Scotland.

That visit probably will not go well for him but with his usual bluster, lies and an announcement of a "plan" buried in the campaign he will be hoping it is all controllable by the usual one liners and spin.

In the meantime, despite all the deceit and secrecy surrounding this government, 50 per cent of the population will have come to realise that all the promises to them have come to nothing.

The recent ignorant refusal to 'embrace' Grace Tame in the National Strategy for a response to the Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse says a lot about Morrison's view of women in our society.

She apparently was not even consulted. What an insult.

In the last few months I have concluded our federal government considers me to be a gullible ill-informed individual who will always accept any statement they make irrespective of whether it is supported by any form of evidence or is absolutely contradictory to all their previous utterances.

Apparently simply saying the same unsupported or contradictory statement repeatedly overcomes any inherent failings in the credibility of the statement.

I hope that our federal government understands that I think it is populated with individuals whose behaviour is becoming increasingly infantile and evasive and, in my personal opinion, does not demonstrate any attributes that I would have expected from a government.

A short list of their most recent failings would be accountability of ministers (even if they run away to avoid scrutiny), the climate change policy you have when you don't have a policy and a Prime Minister who appears to believe in the Queen's dictum from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that one can believe impossible things, even as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

We are at the point of irreconcilable differences. At the next election I will submit an application to terminate the relationship.

Vision of Australia's record fifth win in a row in the rugby Test against Japan was denied to the great percentage of rugby fans. Rugby Australia's decision to only screen home matches on free TV is just incomprehensible. If they are wondering why the other football codes are going from strength to strength, they only need to look at this decision to understand why rugby is lagging well behind. Apart from on Stan there was no vision available in Australia. No free coverage, no normal pay-TV coverage, only streaming scores on the internet.

What a shambles.

Our appalling lack of leadership at the federal level has been demonstrated yet again with the PM's latest announcement on climate change. When will he and his government realise that the rest of the world will not tolerate our emissions or even want our coal.

The government's carbon reduction plan has already borne fruit with "the Australian way", "technology not taxes" and "choices not mandates" featuring at its release. I foresee a whole bunch of new three-word slogans dropping from the tree in the days and months to come.

If Google Maps was as imprecise as the federal government's technology investment "roadmap" we'd all be lost and Google would be out of business.

I've just remembered that when world leaders meet there's usually a photo op of them all wearing the national costume of the host country. The mind boggles at the thought of Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson standing up in kilts with dangling sporrans. Enough for the Scots to re-start the Battle of Culloden I think.

Crispin Hull's proposals in Forum (October 23, p22) deserve public support. Random allegations for the "need" to increase skilled migration are unwarranted and unwanted. Migrants from Afghanistan who want to work after being saved from danger provide a better option for the country's future than other uncosted proposals.

As a child I loved reading We of the Never Never by Mrs Aeneas (Jeannie) Gunn. As an adult, watching the Australian government fiddle while Rome and the rest of the world burns in an era of disastrous climate change, and as that same government adopts a new policy of national defence through the purchase of American nuclear-powered submarines with a far-off delivery date I see the book's title as a brilliant piece of prophecy.

In "Our worst enemy", (Letters, October 27) Sandor Siro refers to Barnaby Joyce as being "power drunk". Is it possible power might not be the only influence?

Dr Emma Lee, an Indigenous academic, asks "How do we decolonise news reporting?" (Forum, October 23). I suggest we could more effectively do so by not constantly referring to our ethnicity. There is a lot to be said for just letting the strength of an argument speak for itself.

Reports that chronic understaffing are causing security and burnout risks for the Australian Border Force seem bizarre given there have been almost no passenger arrivals in Australia by air or sea for a very long time. I would have thought Border Force staff would be bored silly by now.