Take your own advice and play a straight bat on Gallagher

If we accept that as a plausible thing to have occurred (or even that it did - watch the footage) in the heat of a Senate exchange, then your next statement is incorrect, that over the weekend Katy "contradicted herself". She explained the events as outlined above and also said she had had a little information for a few days only. She didn't contradict anything.

Even if one denies the plausibility of Katy's explanation, your editorial, in its anxiety to take a particular stand, and to give advice to the government, did deny your readers correct information on which to make up our own minds.

I remember being told by the Jack Waterford fan club that he only criticised the Liberal party because they were the government of the day. Yet when I read his article on Saturday, June 10, about the Brittany Higgins case, I couldn't find any criticism of the government of the day - Labor. No criticism of our former chief minister Katy Gallagher, nor of DPP Shane Drumgold, who after the case was thrown out still found it in himself to suggest the innocent man at the centre of the case was guilty.

As if this was not enough, in the editorial of the day the writer suggests Liberal leader Peter Dutton and Michaelia Cash et al will perpetuate the same grubby behaviour that they say Labor is guilty of. This is a huge assumption and a very biased one. The only behaviour I have witnessed that has been grubby from the Higgins case is that of Gallagher, Wong and Albanese.

Wasn't it Albanese who said he was going to lead a clear, respectful and transparent government. How about coming clean on what happened during the whole affair?

As for The Canberra Times, I don't expect this letter to get published as I am not one of the regular lefty writers that seem to get their views published any second day.

In 1972, asked his opinion on the French Revolution of 1789, Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai, replied, "Too early to say". The same applies to opinion on the Frontier Wars ("Australian uniforms key to frontier issue", June 12).

For more than 150 years, counter-Aboriginal policies have continued the Frontier Wars by other means - dispossession, dispersal, servitude, child abduction, poverty, profiling, police violence, incarceration, discrimination, and general, second-class citizenship for the oldest of peoples in their own oldest of lands.

The latest manifestation of the policy is conservative politicians' opposition to the Voice using dog whistles, fear, and confected arguments about constitutional law that real lawyers and judges - people whose actual livelihoods depend on knowing something about the law - have castigated as ridiculous.

In the Frontier Wars, only one group of Aboriginals wore uniforms - perhaps because it offered them a means of survival - the brutal Native Mounted Police. Is the AWM intending to commemorate them, to the exclusion of their ragged, naked kinsmen? The Frontier Wars continue. We don't know how they end. But they could end with the armistice of the Voice.

As we witness an egregious, ongoing invasion of privacy play out across the nation's front pages, our media organisations (including ACM) are actively campaigning against creating a civil cause of action for serious invasion of privacy.

It has been a decade since this proposal was first raised by the Australian Law Reform Commission.

Although there may be some scope for a "public interest" defence, it is difficult to imagine a more pertinent example of the urgent need for such a cause of action to be introduced than the current experience of Ms Brittany Higgins.

I don't understand The Canberra Times' editorial of June 12 calling for a negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia. Clearly the latter is the aggressor. Clearly Ukraine is a true democracy and Russia has sunk back to autocracy, severely restricting the rights its citizens enjoyed only a few years ago. Clearly Russia has acted aggressively towards Ukraine in the past, such as occupying its Crimean territory, and to other countries such as Georgia. The International Criminal Court has issued a war crimes arrest warrant for Putin and many expert commentators have described the most likely Russian destruction of the Nova Kokhova dam as an act of ecocide.

Any settlement with Russia would give comfort to dictators around the world. In an age when democracy and freedom is in decline globally, why would we undertake any parley with Putin?

The recent revelation that 3000 dog attacks in Canberra resulted only ten dangerous dog orders (ABC, June 8), raises real concern. First, it appears that victims are not receiving updates on action taken against the offender, bad practice and it's often a way of avoiding doing an effective investigation.

Another concern in the report is that rangers could not identify the dog's owners for a significant number of attacks. Priority for a dog attack is to identify the attacking dog, not the owner - that comes later. If you don't immediately attend, then witnesses and the attacking dog are often long gone. Bottom line, delay the investigation and it will be almost impossible to identify the dog's owner for a significant number of attacks.

If we had thousands of attacks by wild animals on our streets and yards, those animals would be shot on sight. For heaven's sake, we shoot thousands of kangaroos because they eat too much grass.

Ebony Bennett ("A memory the AWM must erase", June 10) argues that the Roberts-Smith display should be removed from the Australian War Memorial because of his now-tarnished reputation, citing Charles Bean's criteria for displays. The Australian War Memorial Act 1980 has a somewhat different view of the role of the AWM. In Section 5, it states that it should be a memorial to Australians who have died in war, but it should also: maintain an associated national historical collection, exhibit this and other historical material in its possession, arrange for and support research into Australian military history, disseminate this information and make the best use of it in the national interest.

The AWM must tell the truth and the whole truth. This includes stories of courage, empathy, loyalty, yes, but also of fear, suffering and sometimes the basest manifestations of human character.

It is an important test for the AWM. If it prefers white-washing history to truth-telling then perhaps it should change its name to the "Museum of War Mythology'" And it should definitely not be trusted to tell the difficult truths of our very own Frontier Wars.

A great joy in my life is to walk on Red Hill and see the unique and beautiful kangaroos. Many diplomats and overseas visitors over the years have said the same to me.

In 2023, the plan is to shoot a further 520 plus joeys after killing 717 kangaroos last year. Since urban development and roads surround the reserve, I fear that the kangaroo population will get so low that they may never recover.

I am asking the ACT government to halt and re-think this slaughter of innocent Australian wildlife on Red Hill Nature Reserve now.

Sixty-two years ago Charles de Gaulle, then France's president, disbanded the French Foreign Legion's 1st Parachute Regiment (1er REP) for disgracing their uniform.

The man who was the Defence Minister in our last government and is now the alternative prime minister seems set on defending rogue elements of Australia's Special Air Service Regiment to the bitter end. In view of this, I think it is fair to say that Peter Dutton is no Charles de Gaulle.

It would have been nice to see Dr Samantha Crompvoets' name among the great and the good awarded the various grades of the Order of Australia.

If anybody deserves one, she does for speaking truth to power when, at great personal cost, she wrote the original report which led to the commissioning of the Brereton Inquiry into war crimes in Afghanistan.

I agree with Ros Gordon that safety belts must be mandatory in all buses. Unfortunately, people must also be relied upon to use them.

Bill Deane's point (Letters, June 15) that voting "yes" for the Voice will make one group of people more equal than others is exactly why I am voting "yes". Our Indigenous people deserve that boost to make up for 235 years of repression, massacre, kidnapping and exile - and that was when the wider society was paying attention to them.

Given today's housing affordability, urban settlement, energy, environmental, and traffic (including airport) congestion problems, high-speed rail between Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne, with Sydney-Canberra as stage one, is definitely needed now. The comprehensive plan for that, prepared back when Anthony Albanese was Transport Minister, and no other, should be implemented without delay, incorporating the latest proven advances in all systems.

Congratulations Albanese government for nixing the proposed Russian Embassy at Yarralumla. Next step - take control of the disgraceful Services Club and Capitol Theatre sites and effect a rebeautification of Manuka.

Sue Wareham (Letters, June 15), at last a letter from you that I agree with. I am close to dumping all my computer junk and buying some other brand. "They" expect me to be a computer expert so I can do all "their" work for them. Twenty or more years ago my computer did well enough for me. Now it only makes me angry as it "upgrades" things I never use anyway. As Sue says, "leave well enough alone".

For the sake of the justice system. could the parliamentary children rowing incessantly about the Higgins matter just shut up and let the legal process run its course? Plus, the rest of us would enjoy the silence.

The editorial (June 15) about the housing bill ends with the well-worn phrase "perfection can't become the enemy of the good". I wonder why the "better" becomes the enemy of the "good"?. The Greens are attempting to improve the legislation for community benefit, and the government should make a greater effort to negotiate a "better" outcome.

I perceive discontent with Australian honours awards seemingly handed out to recipients for not giving up their day job.

Trump faces a total of 37 counts, including 31 counts of willful retention of national defence information. I honestly think he kept all these documents as a kind of investment, either to sell or auction them in a few years or publish them in a book.