Stop whingeing about the grass; workers do the best they can

According to your correspondents this seems to be an obvious waste of public funds, Labor corruption, or some kind of crazed Green conspiracy. I'm not sure I can keep up with all the speculation.

Gosh, it's so easy for people to be upset these days. They never seem to write in thanking the hard-working mowing teams when the grass near them gets mowed. They only complain.

I, for one, am grateful for all the hard work going on - especially having seen a team of mowers trying to navigate down the side of the Tuggeranong Parkway with cars blasting past at full speed.

Keep up the great work, and ignore the curmudgeons in the letters pages.

Once again there is perplexing and inexplicable official double-speak over COVID-19, this time in regards to the Omicron variant.

Over the past week, we've repeatedly been told in the same breath by our ministers and experts that this latest strain is a big worry, and yet majorly unworked-out yet.

In fact, it's supposedly not clearly showing any signs of greater virulence or vaccine resistance, which is great news. Why then do we have this early fuss over Omicron, and not the couple of other major variants widely identified globally in recent months but not even mentioned - let alone actioned - here?

What about the Lambda strain, which in the past six months thoroughly did to Latin America (replacing all other strains) what Omicron is said to now be doing in southern Africa?

Lambda was flagged early on as a concern by the World Health Organisation, and has been shown to be both more infective and vaccine-evading than the variants it displaced, making the sepulchral silence over it, here, seem strange now.

Much of the reporting on Kate Jenkins's Set the Standard report misses a few salient facts. That is not unexpected.

The majority of those polled (75 per cent) could not be bothered to respond. Of the 25 per cent who did, 40 per cent of women claimed harassment at some stage. So did 26 per cent of men.

On the basis of this, the report recommends gender quotas. The logic of this escapes me.

I have worked as a senior adviser to an MHR. It is one of the worst jobs in the world - 12-hour days being a minimum.

Gender quotas are not going to change that.

David Perkins (Letters, December 1) wants peace, but Dutton wants Australia to go to war with China.

War kills and negatively affects lots of innocent people. It should be constantly denounced as a dreadful and undesirable political alternative. But for those seeking power through fear, and those making the bombs and bullets and lots of money, that suffering counts for nothing.

Might Australians be tiring of our costly chasing of America's international military adventurism?

If Labor were to offer an alternative in 2022, would they vote for that?

Fat chance. The ALP's deputy leader, Richard Marles, took zero time to denounce Paul Keating's criticisms of AUKUS, telling us there'll be no departure by his Labor from current pro-US sycophancy.

And let's not forget Gillard's servile speech to the US Congress in 2011.

Australia has had two independent political leaders daring to challenge external authority, Jack Lang and Gough Whitlam. By a funny coincidence, both were sacked.

Is the US now so physically a part of Australia, with the Pine Gap military intelligence facility and US troops stationed here, that politically we've surrendered our independence?

What a delight to have so much good news in Wednesday's The Canberra Times.

First there was your initiative on diabetes. My faulty memory tells me I heard somewhere that in the first year of COVID-19 there were about 8000 deaths less than the year before from all causes.

There were other interesting numbers which I simply cannot remember. This is why your initiative is so important to all of us.

More good news. As an ancient retiree, I actually feel guilty owning the nice house and fabulous garden with its many bird varieties while hearing of the struggle people are now having trying to get a roof over their head. To hear your story of the healthcare worker, Tasneem Khan, is a ray of sunshine which I hope will burst into a fully sun-filled day for all.

And finally, all the letters on Fawlty Towers versus Hogan's Heroes and Laugh-In (which I am not familiar with). But Basil and Schultz will always be two of my favourite characters.

Keep up the good work.

Climate change science clearly shows global warming has a range of impacts, including temperature rise and a lessening of rainfall. But, on the other hand, as ANU climate scientist Joelle Gergis points out: "As our planet warms, the water-holding capacity of the lower atmosphere increases by around 7 per cent for every one degree of warming. This can cause heavier rainfall, which in turn increases flood risk."

As I understand it, the science of attributing extreme events such as the long El Nina rainfall event in Australia to climate change is more difficult, and not as well-developed as it is in the Northern Hemisphere.

Nevertheless, on the straight climate science aspect, is it not reasonable to suggest that the current long-term wet weather event, with its associated negative impacts on infrastructure and agriculture and grazing, for example, has been accentuated by global warming?

As always with the impacts of climate change, it is important that the relationship is recognised. If we are not aware of the scale of the problem, policy to deal with it will not be developed.

I am waiting to see if the link between the unusual wet-weather spell and climate change gets any coverage in Australian media.

With a federal election in the wind, I am wishing for some changes in the political scene. If fulfilled, my wish will require some "blood letting" among the politicians.

Imagine for a moment that Julie Bishop will stand again for election in a safe Liberal seat and become Prime Minister if there is another "miracle" result.

Imagine that Penny Wong will stand in a safe House of Representatives Labor seat and become Prime Minister if Labor gets the "miracle" result.

Imagine that Craig Kelly, George Christensen and Eric Abetz are not re-elected, and that Clive Palmer's electoral bid crashes even more badly than last time. We can only hope.

On the bus the other day I overheard two people talking despairingly about the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. The first said, "Let no such man be trusted."

"Nothing can come of nothing," replied the other. "Ambition should be made of sterner stuff."

His travelling companion sighed, and said "I dote on his very absence."

They both laughed and fell silent. The lights changed. The bus moved forward. It was almost like a scene from a play.

Scott Morrison says that Labor is stopping him introducing his toothless anti-corruption commission bill because Labor won't automatically guarantee support.

Funnily he had no such issues with the religious discrimination bill. He will introduce the bill even though he doesn't know if Labor will support it. I guess blaming Labor is much easier than accepting responsibility.

There is widespread concern that the religious discrimination bill is a mess. It's not hard to see why. On the one hand, there is a desire to protect the right to hold, express and act on religious beliefs. On the other hand, there is a need to protect us from the consequences of people exercising their religious beliefs in ways that infringe on our human rights.

Good luck with finding a way between those two objectives. The bill (clause five) includes the definition of "religious belief" as "holding a religious belief" or "not holding a religious belief". Pure genius. A further 60-plus pages of legislation can't do the trick.

A big fanfare about the parliamentary culture report on Tuesday. It's typical of this government that just before an election they get the PM on television to talk about something that, in the PM's own words, "has been going on for a long time, a very long time". So why did he not do something about it earlier?

Kate Jenkins reports that one in three people working in Parliament House have been sexually harassed or worse. By my count that would be every woman in the place. That sounds about right.

On Tuesday, the PM, flanked by some of his cabinet, smirked quietly through his presentation of the Jenkins report on sexual harassment in Parliament House. Within the hour he was belligerently shouting and sneering his way through question time. What does that tell us?

Steve "Sandpaper" Smith as vice-captain? It's just not cricket.

Keith Hill (Letters, November 27). Let me assure you that the "unrequested and unwanted" tree was planted on my front lawn, not "on the writer's nature strip". Let me also assure you that the government never sought our consent.

Seselja should stop being insultingly patronising and just get out of the way.

All viruses mutate. The influenza virus has more than 200 strains. Is our government going to continue restrictions and lockdowns despite heavy mandates and high vaccination rates? The vaccines don't stop infection, transmission and mutations. They prevent ICU admission and serious complications.

Freedom with a dose of sarcasm. Why should I have to put my dog on a lead when I take her for a walk? It's my dog - my choice.

We have made wonderful advances in neurology, oncology and, oh, pharmaceuticals. All are available at The Canberra Hospital with about four days' notice. Thank you God and Gough.

Re: Terminology for the new variation of the COVID virus. Omicron is a Greek letter, as is Delta. It is pronounced "ohmicron", not "ommicron". A similar word is "ohm", a unit related to electricity. I do hope the spoken media get this straight without delay.

Should the religious discrimination bill become law, would the Australian monarch then be free to practise a religion other than the one mandated by the 1701 Act of Settlement?