RSL should condemn the desecration of Gaza war graves

Memorials to our war dead are not the place for graffiti, despite the most recent painted message on the Vietnam War Memorial stating correctly that "Israeli bombs desecrate Aussie [war] graves".

But where was the RSL's condemnation of the attacks to which the message refers - the damage in March by Israeli forces to the Commonwealth War Cemetery in Gaza, where 263 Australian soldiers are buried?

The organisation appeared to be silent. And please spare us the mantra that Israel was "acting in self-defence"; war graves are not particularly threatening.

Perhaps far more to the point would be for the RSL to condemn Australia's ongoing political, economic and military relationship with a nation that has been accused of genocide.

That does not reflect the values that we're told Australians fight for.

Peter Dutton seems unable to grasp the fact that people are struggling with power prices right now, today.

His nuclear pipe dream offers nothing to people struggling with power prices in the coming years.

In fact it offers nothing for at least a dozen years by his extremely optimistic timeline.

It is time that Dutton grasped reality and tried offering solutions that will work in the immediate future, not many years, if not decades, from now when our children are middle aged.

The right to breathe clean air has to be a fundamental human right.

Contrast this with Canberra legislation allowing wood-burning heaters to belch smoke until 2045.

We are condemned to trudge through 21 cold seasons with the uncertainty of never knowing if today we will be spared the dreadful smoke onslaught.

Can we plan for a children's garden party or games? Can we risk hanging the washing and getting it stinking smoke? No. So we use the tumble dryer, the bills increase and the environment suffers.

Can we do some gardening? Can we, for goodness sake, have the temerity of breathing, particularly the youngsters, the elderly and the frail?

We are at the beck and call of neighbours deciding on a whim to burn or not to burn on any given day.

Consider this: "Your rights end where my nose begins" (American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr).

This is a serious health issue. Dithering until 2045 is not good enough.

S W Davey asks if Tel Aviv is no longer Israel's capital (Letters, July 24). It never was. It's bad enough for others to deny that at least west Jerusalem is Israel's capital out of fear of upsetting the Arab world (despite there being no controversy about Israel's presence there).

Jerusalem is where its parliament and almost all of Israel's organs of government are. For other nations to tell Israel where its capital is located is totally unacceptable.

It is yet another example of the appalling double standards applied to Israel.

An Australian Super member reported Australian Super to ASIC for "greenwashing". As a member as well, I expect them to invest in areas that produce the best return for me.

If this involves investing in coal, oil, gas, nuclear stocks and road infrastructure then so be it. My retirement depends on Australian Super making money for me.

If green strategies don't make enough then I would be referring them to ASIC for not investing for my benefit. The CPI is not a true measure of the increase in cost of living. That is more like 7 to 8 per cent a year. If Australian Super can't deliver 8 per cent I'm going backwards.

During plastic-free July I made two interesting discoveries. The first was that over a hundred million people worldwide participate in plastic-free July. The second was that this results in a reduction of plastic use by a massive two million tonnes. You don't have to go completely plastic free, just start somewhere. Our biggest purchase of single-use plastics comes from bread wrappers. It's time for a trip to the farmers' market.

One of the minor victims of last week's world-wide IT failure has been the English language; yet again. I wince every time I hear or read how events "impact". This is a relatively recent usage, circa 2000 perhaps, surely coined by those unsure of the difference between "effected" and "affected". The Canberra Times succumbed long ago.

"Affected" should suffice. What does "impacted" add besides persistent irritation?

Re "Joeys orphaned by cars are more common in the winter", (July 22). More collisions are a function of poor road infrastructure than kangaroos. Vehicle crashes killing wildlife and orphaning their offspring can be averted by building vegetated overpasses together with virtual fencing. This approach has worked in other areas of Australia (and the world). Why not in the bush capital?

Numerous requests by people concerned about our wildlife to do just this have been completely ignored by the current government. With the ACT election just around the corner, it's time for Canberrans to choose compassion over cruelty and vote this uncaring Labor/Greens government out.

The shorter days of winter force more motorists to drive at night. That is the reason more kangaroo collisions occur in winter.

However, these winter deaths are further increased because this is also when the government undertakes its annual kangaroo slaughter. Kangaroos flee in terror across high speed roads after watching their families shot and killed.

The government claims it kills kangaroos during these freezing months, when orphaned joeys are certain to die of hypothermia, because there are fewer nursing joeys in winter.

This is obviously untrue because every joey born takes 18 months to wean. So, there is no time, in any 12-month period, when there are fewer nursing joeys.

That kangaroos, nowadays, are anything but abundant is obvious to anyone who visits Canberra's reserves. Kangaroo numbers have crashed since the government shooting program began.

Australians might be justifiably fearful that the current renewable energy initiatives supported by Labor will fall short.

Peter Dutton's proposal for nuclear power generation plays to this fear.

Certainly, solar power doesn't happen after sunset and wind power needs the wind to blow.

The intermittency of renewable power generation can be overcome using large-scale energy storage such as batteries, green hydrogen or pumped hydro perhaps.

In order to cut Dutton's fear mongering off at the pass the Labor government needs to show the public that it has a complete and viable renewable energy strategy that includes both generation and storage.

At the moment, I see renewable energy generation initiatives, but no significant plans for the storage systems that will be just as necessary.

The last sentence of your July 22 editorial ("Energy advice we can trust is more crucial than ever") undermines everything you said previously.

Where is your evidence that scientists are ideological? It is only opposition politicians trying to undermine scientific research for their own political benefit.

The scientific method is to objectively establish facts through testing, experimentation and peer review.

There is no space for ideology.

The research on climate is out there.

Perhaps you could have a regular scientific reporter to report on positive clean energy progress? For example that farmers are compensated generously for solar arrays and wind farms and that China is building more PV arrays in a month that we build in a year.

With their God-given policy proposals for the next election, the quasi-theocrats who infest the membership of the ACT Young Liberals seem determined for the ACT Opposition to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Liberal leader Elizabeth Lee's only hope is to throw a secular blanket over these self-righteous zealots before they do too much harm to her campaign.