PM's U-turn on electric cars is typical witless hypocrisy

Now he wants us to start buying electric cars and driving them everywhere. But this hater of taxes won't make electric cars cheaper by removing any of the excise and other government levies which help to make these cars so expensive. Nor will he do anything to help more charging points be built.

Scotty from Marketing justifies this witless and hypocritical nonsense by saying that he's not against electric cars, he's just against the government telling people what to do. Really? Gee, thanks, Scotty. I personally will tell your Finance Minister and your Treasurer that I don't have to pay my taxes now, because your government won't be telling me to do it.

The PM returns from mixing with some intelligent and climate-savvy world leaders in Rome and Glasgow, yet talks to us as if he is reading from a children's picture book: "Australians love their family sedan, farmers rely on their trusted ute and .... trucks and trains ... deliver goods from coast to coast." ("Scott Morrison unveils Australia's electric vehicle plan to support zero-emissions cars", November 9).

He also offers a vague yet free-market hope that individuals will simply make "good choices" as we move ever so slowly towards the day when most can afford an EV. While such messaging seems more relevant to promoting healthy food for school lunch boxes, it still suggests that the "Australian Way" plan will leave us hopping over hot coals as we work out how to survive the worsening impacts of Australia's contribution to climate change.

At the Glasgow climate summit, the elephant in the room - more like a mammoth for its size - received no official recognition, though in the streets outside its existence was well known. In fact, on the platform the huge impact of military spending on the climate was not acknowledged - the subject was more like a sacred cow than a mammoth. It seems that it was accepted that the security of states must be assured by the military, and it was too dangerous to even discuss any other way. Ever since the demise of the League of Nations, assassinated chiefly by Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, and the sidelining of the United Nations by the disagreements that led to the Cold War, nations have decided that only weapons can keep us safe.

However, the huge carbon footprint of the modern military looks set to defeat efforts to keep temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. The sacred cow is turning into a dragon that threatens to devour us.

I keep seeing the complaints about the light rail and keep wondering ... whatever happened to the complaints about the new Cotter Dam? Just like the light rail there was a constant stream of complaints about expense and how unnecessary it was.

No one seems concerned anymore?

The juxtaposition of the reports "Whiplash as Morrison U-turns on EVs" and "Australia ranks last for climate policy" (November 10, p11) is an apt illustration of our government's attitude to action on climate change - the greatest challenge ever faced by modern humans.

Mr Morrison's change of heart on electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles is welcome, albeit belated. However, the effect of EVs in Australia on the climate would be minuscule - even if most vehicles were not "fossil-fuelled" - compared to Australia's total carbon dioxide emissions.

Australia must raise its ambitions on emissions reduction as a matter of urgency.

If your correspondent Alan May (Letters, November 9) really wants an answer, it is that the last interglacial was about 2 degrees warmer than the one we are now in. An important, vital in fact, difference is that those 2 degrees were reached over a period of about 2000 years, not over 200 years as we are now experiencing. Two thousand years allows plenty of time for corals to adapt, or to move cities away from rising sea level. All such detail is in a book I am happy to lend Alan should he wish to contact me.

Freedom. Choice. No government mandates. PM Morrison's new mantra when it comes to electric vehicles. This freedom and choice mantra, does it also apply to all those who are already on the appalling Indue card, and the millions of age pensioners who are about to discover that when it comes to spending their own money, they have no choice or freedom at all?

Keith Hill is right. We need to "salvage our national reputation" and vote the government out (Australia's Way", Letters, November 9). Buying an EV or putting solar panels on the roof is minuscule to voting out the Coalition government so tied to the fossil fuel industry. Installing people in our parliament who understand and accept climate science and feel the urgency is the best way to reduce emissions and restore Australia's international reputation. Instead of the Morrison government's "Australian Way", let's say, "Get out of the way" at the next election.

I see our ever-confident Prime Minister is now touting a business-first answer to climate change. I wonder if these will be the same businesses that the Coalition gave millions of dollars in JobKeeper handouts to - the ones that didn't need the handouts and in some cases didn't even qualify for them.

And I wonder when Scotty from Services will announce his "robodebt 3" scheme to send thousands of ordinary Australians penalty notices requiring them to pay big fines or prove that they're not emitting carbon dioxide.

In the interest of balanced journalism and to give peace a chance, may I suggest your paper also propound views on the state of relations between Australia and China alternative to the belligerent, hawkish, war-mongering, drums-of-war stance peddled and promoted by Mr Bradley Perrett in his pieces?

In a world already suffering from anxiety and stress due to climate change, religious conflicts, pandemics, poverty, overpopulation, famine and dwindling resources (just to name few of the life-threatening issues afflicting this poor planet of ours), we could do well without the irresponsible courting of a conflict with the potential for global self-destruction.

I'd like to submit my tender for Quibble of the Week. Kirsten Lawson's review of Ondine (food&wine, Tuesday November 9) caught my eye as my wife and I share her enthusiasm for this establishment. Her opening paragraphs call out the "weird circularity" and "déjà vu" of turning up there one year and two weeks to the day [my emphasis] after her last visit. Sorry Kirsten, but adding the two weeks removes all significance from "to the day". Try saying "one year and 14 days, to the day" and you'll see what I mean.

Nevertheless, it was a good review, and we are looking forward to our lunch booking on Friday the 26th of this month.

Alex Mattea, (Letters, 8 November) presumes that "alienation and resentment to government authority ... to COVID-19 management" is missing "in sleepy, malleable, apathetic, conformist Canberra".

For the information of that Sydneyite, Canberra is now more than 95 per cent fully vaccinated, because most Canberrans followed medical advice on social distancing, wearing masks, using check-in apps etc.

Was it easy to reach that milestone? No way! However, most ACT residents are acutely aware of the consequences should that advice be ignored. Not only personal wellbeing was being considered, but also that of our families, friends and neighbours.

Judging by the consequences, maybe IQ levels in Canberra are superior to those of the thousands of morons that marched in Sydney and Melbourne, because their "human rights" were being "violated" by having to wear face masks etc.

After the pandemic reached the ACT in 2020, three people died. For well over 12 months no infections were recorded here, until one individual decided to visit a Sydney hotspot and brought the virus back in August.

I lived in Canberra since 1964, after leaving Albury to study at the ANU and fell in love with the city.

I resent individuals who repeatedly put down Canberra.

I say to the Prime Minister I will not be lectured about EVs by this man. I will not. Not now, not ever.

Re the accusation that Scotty and his mates have made a U-turn on their previous denigration of electric vehicles: I reckon that they are guilty as charged.

Coming to a marginal electorate near you is the LNP's election ScoMomobile. Features include pork-barrel carburettors, corporate brakes, brown envelope secret storage compartments, choice of either coal, oil or gas power units, and U-turn steering. Electric models still on the drawing board. Anticipated some time after 2050.

In the days of old

When the men were bold

And Canberra trams were not invented

They'd catch buses

And trust us

It was a problem solved!

All tram passengers are kindly asked to carry a Mig Welder.

Anne O'Hara repeats the often-asserted but never-documented truthoid that the government subsidises the fossil fuel industry. Given the Productivity Commission, the Treasury and the Department of Finance have shown independently any such subsidies are negligible, perhaps she, and others, would like to specify and quantify these alleged " subsidies".

The Australian Way is not to stab our mates in the back.

Our bichon frise was un chien excité at the prospect of his daily promenading locale being marketed as the Paris Quarter of Canberra in Letters, November 9.

Two days in a row the Minister for the Public Service, aka "Mini Me Morrison", has featured prominently in the pages of The Canberra Times, blaming Labor for politicising the public service and the electoral process simply for raising obvious issues.

Re Rosemary Walters ("Male victims matter too", Letters, November 9), from a mature male, frustrated by what appears to be today's constant "male bashing" and associated hypocrisy - thank you.

Why is Mr Barr about to bleat to the federal government for more money for our hospitals when he cannot spend what he has budgeted for over some years? On Monday we learned that a dearth of earth, 60,000 cubic metres of it, might be difficult to procure for the destruction of City Hill. Meanwhile, back at the tram depot, there may be some cracks in the rolling stock.