If infections are going to go 'through the roof', why open up?

Ms Berejiklian is essentially saying that vaccinated people will contract COVID-19 "through the roof" once they are all out and about, and spread it. But according to the Premier, it won't matter much. Really? So they won't get sick or be hospitalised?

A stupid, stupid statement by the Premier that was probably meant to instil confidence. Alas, it has the opposite effect.

But alarmingly the first part of her statement about cases going "through the roof" will probably be true, vaccinated or not. The UK, US and Israel are cases in point.

Plea to Mr Morrison: Please stop wearing (and hiding behind) the Australian flag on your mask.

You and your cohort have embarrassed Australia in so many ways (climate denial, corruption, diplomatic ineptitude, misogyny and so on) and this cringing dog-whistle to the worst elements of our nature makes one even more ashamed to be Australian.

I wonder how many Australians are really struggling, like me, to maintain respect for our own country.

Our elected leadership speaks and acts so often with a lack of integrity, fails to prioritise global wellbeing through urgent carbon emissions reduction, lacks elementary courtesy in communication with international leaders on a matter as serious as the submarine purchase, and takes pride in its hard-heartedness in dealing with the poor and desperate.

This is not an Australia to accept. We all know that some of the policies of those who succeed in being elected will not fit with our own preferences, but I always hope there will be enough common values for us to pull together when the fundamental good character of our nation is being trashed.

Each little bit of encouragement to people who are trying to re-establish our good reputation matters.

So the new rule is that parliamentary backbenchers don't need to identify who gave them large sums of money, or how much? Are brown paper bags OK?

Unbelievable. This hapless Coalition continues to demonstrate that its members don't understand the basics of parliamentary or ministerial standards, or governmental propriety, or morality, or the law.

All they do seem to understand is obfuscation, semantics and sophistry. They are completely unsuited to the task of effectively running our country. Vote them out.

I'm trying to work out who it is that Peter Moran (Letters, September 20) is referring to when he writes of our submarine contract with a country with "a long commitment to a stable Pacific and observing the sovereignty of other countries"?

He obviously doesn't mean France (that nation which used to blow up Pacific atolls with atmospheric atomic bomb tests, and sent its special forces to NZ to blow up a ship and kill people). So who could he mean?

I suspect at least part of the French fury is that the US and UK are prepared to share their most secret nuclear submarine technology with us but not with the French, meaning their subs will always be inferior.

I agree with the recent letters re closure of the AIS Aqua classes. Due to a chronic illness (with mobility issues) the aqua classes maintain my mobility and help lessen my pain.

This enables me to live a more constructive and happier life. Reversing this decision would benefit many people with similar problems.

Help. Is there anywhere I can get a haircut? My eyebrows are now touching my head hair.

Perhaps when our unshaven Chief Minister allows us out we could hold a Boris Johnson lookalike competition.

The funds could go to all those hurting from lockdowns, those whose relatives have died interstate, families of those who have taken their own lives, and the families of those who have died alone from other ailments.

I know it's easy to make fun of the French, but is Roy Darling aware that The Simpsons' slur "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" gained traction with American chest-beaters peeved the French dared to doubt the wisdom of invading Iraq?

Does he also recall that the members of so-called AUKUS were the main pushers of that disastrous war?

On Monday, Barnaby Joyce said the Prime Minister had completed various domestic tasks before travelling to America and that he had been left to "feed the chooks".

This seems to be a clear reference to the remark that Joh Bjelke-Petersen used to make when going to speak to the press.

Joh's government ended in disgrace with two ministers in jail and himself judged too frail to endure a retrial, after the first failed on a technicality.

If Joyce admires that man, Australia is in desperate trouble.

Early in the piece, that ebullient tough guy Prime Minister Morrison declared he made no apologies for cancelling the submarine contract with France.

Could someone in DFAT have a quiet word with the PM and explain that there are more civil and diplomatic ways of expressing intent?

Something similar was needed last year when senior politicians told the Chinese they were duty-bound to allow a horde of foreigners into China to investigate the cause of the COVID virus.

Finesse, of course, is a French word and would be lost on the PM.

One doesn't have to be ultra-perceptive to detect a trend in Coalition government's pre-election modus operandi when it comes to committing the nation to expensive contracts, however controversial.

The Andrew Peacock-mediated $9 billion Boeing Super Hornets, which no other nation before or since would touch as fighter jets, were a last-minute pre-election stitch-up by John Howard and defence minister Brendan Nelson in 2007.

The same has now been done on a scale many times greater, and of greater significance, with the nuclear subs and a new alliance by Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton six months before the next election (lest the opportunity be grievously missed upon losing it).

Pre-election stitching up of taxpayers long-term to enormously expensive commitments, or just to political faits accomplis, is of course a Coalition hobby that extends well beyond buying US materiel.

Who can forget Christian Porter's furious election-eve stacking of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in 2019, with political mates, no less?

Then, at the state level, there was the Berejiklian government's locking in of NSW, immediately pre-election, to the highly controversial demolition and reconstruction of stadiums.

These eleventh-hour stitch-ups are the urgent deals that really matter to the likes of Scott Morrison and his ilk. They are far less concerned about vaccine rollouts and the procurement of proper quarantine centres.

So NSW is going to triple its shark "management" budget. ("Drones for NSW as govt boosts shark budget", canberratimes.com.au, September 20).

Meanwhile sharks, which have outlived the dinosaurs, are for many species highly endangered. As the marine biologist says in the article, shark nets kill countless harmless marine species.

Recently the NSW government announced a new policy of letting farmers now clear without approval up to 25 metres of bush from boundary lines for bushfire reasons.

This will mean the loss of more habitat for many threatened species. The NSW koala population is the most threatened in Australia. Then there is the NSW policy on brumbies.

NSW is clearly the environmental criminal of Australia.

The hunt for "Rouge October" is finally over.

The French subs were a dial-up internet connection. The nuclear-powered ones are 5G; even faster than broadband. We have to upgrade. Stuff those who are unhappy.

Once again the Prime Minister has disappeared overseas at a time of national importance and left Barnaby Joyce in charge. Decide for yourself which action is the more concerning.

As if things couldn't get any worse, we've now got Barnaby Joyce as acting Prime Minister.

We have seen the unedifying spectacle of our "acting-up" Deputy PM justifying Christian Porter's acceptance of an anonymous donation as a "bad day at the wicket". Is he serious? Does he not get real or perceived conflict of interest arising from anonymous donations? Or, does he just not care?

Barnyard Barnaby waits five minutes after Scomo leaves the country to hold a presser. Among other things, he claims that completely discredited Porter should get another chance. Why? Because he has? Laughable levels of accountability.

Phil Creaser (Letters, September 21) has no sympathy for the French who conducted nuclear tests at Mururoa and bombed the Rainbow Warrior. How much sympathy does he have for the British who conducted nuclear tests on Indigenous land in Australia?

Phil Creaser (Letters, September 21) laments French nuclear testing in the Pacific from 1966 to 1996. How does he feel about British nuclear testing in South Australia and on the Monte Bello Islands from 1952 to 1963? Or is that different?

To Peter Moran's statement that Australia entered into an agreement with a country "with a long commitment to ... observing the sovereignty of other countries," (Letters, September 20), I'd just like to say "Rainbow Warrior".

Wasn't it France that tested nuclear bombs in the Pacific, circulating radioactive fallout across Australia?

In fairness to Nicolas Baudin's precedence over Matthew Flinders, French maps may now revert back to showing Terra Australis as Terre Napoleon and Nouvelle Hollande. Pleasing for a Francophile Dutchman.

See ... it does pay to advertise machines of war at Canberra Airport.

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