Joyce's 'second Canberra' in the north could be hell on Earth

This is a place where the average maximum temperature is over 36 degrees for five months of the year and over 35 degrees for seven months. Add another two degrees to that from climate change and you start to get to a level of heat where outside work is impossible.

In the humid wet season the wet bulb temperature may even kill you. If temperatures rise more than two degrees, which is where we are trending, then large parts of the country, including Port Hedland, will become uninhabitable.

Indeed, the Western Australia's Dept of Primary Industries and Regional Development says on its website, under Agriculture and Food: "Climate projections for Western Australia (WA) are that average annual temperature will increase by 1.1-2.7 degrees in a medium-emission scenario, and 2.6-5.1 degrees in a high-emission scenario by the end of the century."

Federal policy decision can no longer be based on past conditions. They must take into account the ramifications of climate change, not just higher temperature and changed rainfall conditions, but the need to decarbonise every sector of our economy. That includes transport.

Port Hedland is far too isolated to be viable in a carbon-constrained world.

While us "Ken Behrens" have many heroes to praise and thank in our response to the ACT COVID-19 outbreak (including ourselves) I want to join Margaret Bromley's thanks and praise (Letters, September 3) of our Andrew, Rachel, Kerryn and the team for their outstanding leadership during the outbreak.

They are a great team providing professional, clear, steadfast, direct and honest information day after day.

I particularly admire Andrew's strong leadership saying it as it is with no rambling on endlessly and no hiding the truth. It is lovely to find such capable and committed leaders in our time of great need.

Thank you all for your huge efforts.

So Chris Steele has announced with pride that he would be deploying the ACT government's 73 lawn mowers and, as a priority, they will be used to mow the grass at road side intersections.

If Canberra is to be kept a beautiful city with no long grasses and rubbish how on earth will only 73 lawn mowers do the job?

Get a backbone Mr Steele and take whatever money is needed from the white elephant, Stage 2 of the light rail and buy more mowers and employ more people to carry out the work needed to keep our national capital a place to be proud of.

How can we persuade our talking head COVID-19 television politicians - both state and territory - to scrap those ugly, gaudy, meaningless, distracting bedsheets behind them which are littered with unnecessary logos and initials? The ACT's is worst. It is funereal black.

They should look at the White House spokespersons. And, while we're at it, can we stop the rugby mob from playing the Bledisloe Cup on grass painted with countless advertisements for dog food, fund managers or whatever?

They should check out the English Premier League football with its mercifully plain, unadorned green pitches.

Here's hoping, in the interest of pleasanter viewing.

Would it be possible for a journalist at the daily COVID-19 media conference to ask the following question?

Why can't the families of disability care support workers, caring for COVID-19-positive clients in residential care homes get priority vaccinations in the same way that the families of nurses working on the COVID-19 ward can get priority vaccinations?

A recent letter writer complained about background noise accompanying documentaries. I too find it terrible that a documentary can so easily be ruined by piano keys being mindlessly tinkled up and down as the program progresses. It must be a lot cheaper to do this. Sometimes this background becomes foreground, making the discussion really difficult to hear, especially for those with hearing difficulties.

It is curious that Mr Morrison wants us to learn to live with COVID-19 while animal diseases such as canine influenza (remember Boo and Pistol), foot and mouth, equine flu, avian influenza are all suppressed or eliminated with all the vigour Biosecurity Australia can muster.

It's a notable contrast to Australia's "it's not a race" COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Could it be that the health and welfare of livestock count more than humans? Surely not.

It is interesting to reflect on the (informed?) choice of the New York twin towers as targets for ideological terrorism 20 years ago.

Apart from their prominence and symbolism, each building was steel-framed (reinforced concrete being too heavy, given the buildings' height).

The developers demanded column-free space between the lift/services core and the perimeter walls.

Those clear spans were up to an unusually long 18.3 metres and open-web steel floor joists were used.

Floor deflections under load and impact would have likely been detectable. I recall questions being asked about that as early as 1971. The buildings were completed in 1973.

The steel frame was fire-protected with applied coatings.

The perimeter walls were prefabricated and load-bearing, without window-free sections that could have provided stiffness.

It was apparently inevitable that, upon impact by a fuelled-up jet liner, and the ensuing apparently unforeseen fire fierceness (water in the [worryingly retrofitted] sprinkler system, reportedly boiled), progressive and total collapse of the towers, with shockingly tragic results, would quickly occur.

Structural and fire-safety design, especially in high-rise buildings, always needs to be conservative.

I shook my head in despair when I heard that the Morrison government is now chasing over 10,000 members of the public for money they were overpaid in the JobKeeper scheme.

This has to be unfair. Why when big businesses are allowed to keep the millions they were overpaid during the same period, is the government chasing the members of the general public for their overpayments?

To me this smacks of the Robodebt scheme.

The Morrison government has demonstrated, yet again, their total lack of humanity.

The land of a fair go now only exists in the distant past.

The lockdown paralysis that now grips the country is due entirely to the federal government's failure to procure enough COVID-19 vaccine when it first became available.

Had we received that early supply the population would now be at 70-80 per cent vaccinated. Whereas the prime minister was one of the first into the Pfizer lifeboat there are still people working in aged-care and the disability sector who are not yet vaccinated.

Then there was the hotel quarantine program. The federal government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to finally set up Howard Springs and other dedicated quarantine (still-to-be-built) sites.

The current situation sees state against state, protests on the streets and an ever-increasing number of infections, while the prime minister is all but invisible.

Opponents of the Taliban have effectively signed their own death warrant.

By rushing to Kabul International Airport in a desperate attempt to escape the clutches of the Islamic terrorist group they have effectively imprisoned themselves with Taliban forces now in control of the perimeter of the airport.

The Taliban will view these people as suspect, to say the least.

They have made the Taliban's task of identifying and apprehending their critics that much easier.

May heaven help them, in their hour of need.

Let's hope the combined efforts of team organisers, aircraft schedulers and chief medical officers see to it that the Paralympians only have one quarantine stop on their way back to their homes and families after the Tokyo Games.

Re: "Joyce on net-zero deals, changing as a leader and planning the next Canberra", canberratimes.com.au, September 3). Is he joking or serious (about a second capital in the north)? Once bitten, twice shy.

Pull the other one, Barnaby ("Deputy PM wants to tell voters he's a changed man", canberratimes.com.au, September 3).

One would have thought that Barnaby Joyce may have learnt something from his "pork barrelling" decision to shift the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicine Authority to his own electorate. Would Port Hedland serve as a "hot Siberia" for recalcitrant public servants?

Given the nature of the various military command headquarters in Hawaii, I suspect General Angus Campbell had good and cogent reasons for flying there. Some things are more securely done face-to-face. I'm also a little surprised that C Williams (Letters, August 31) would question this, given his background.

Could it be said that JobKeeper for big business is Morrison's pink batts?

Those old enough to have seen that fine movie The Caine Mutiny may be struck by the similarities between the erratic behaviour of Captain Queeg and that of the NSW premier. Or perhaps they may prefer the analogy of the band on the Titanic.

After waging war in Afghanistan for 20 years, Australia thinks it now has no further responsibility toward the people of Afghanistan and offers little help to Afghans in Australia. And yet the Morrison government dares to be outraged at the moral failures and cruelty of others.

Every conflict we've followed the US into since World War II has ended in either stalemate (Korea, Kuwait 1991, Iraq 2003) or failure (Vietnam, Afghanistan). Shouldn't we have learned something from that uninspiring record?

Is it just me, or is anyone else getting sick of waking up every morning to Sonny and Cher's I've Got You Babe?

Gladys often refers to overseas travel in her press conferences. Is this "R and R" for stressed and/or exhausted nurses and doctors and others working on the front line in NSW hospitals?