It is not appropriate to use young children to endorse war

An honouring by children of honourable deeds done by their forebears is of course right and proper, but when very young voices are used publicly to reduce the complexity of wars to simple messages about peace and freedom, this is a completely different matter.

Even as we see daily images of the horrors of wars, multiple developments in Australia right now are encouraging young people to view war and its preparation favourably.

The weapons industry is promoting itself very hard to STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) students.

Wars raise many ethical issues, such as their impacts being primarily on civilians.

A majority of the civilian victims of war's direct and indirect impacts are in fact children.

Teaching children about these and other costs of war must be honest and age-appropriate. Searching questions about why their forbears were sent to war, any preventive measures that were omitted, and who suffered, should be encouraged.

Young people could be asked to consider - and agree or disagree with - the words of governor-general Lord Gowrie in 1941, when he opened the War Memorial: that it would be "a reminder to future generations of the barbarity, of the utter futility of modern war".

Early the other morning as I left my horses in the government horse paddock the ACT government staff were mowing the grass in the National Trail to make it easier for all of us to use this great asset safely. The sun was shining on a perfect autumn morning.

I thought of the madness going on in the Middle East where men, women and children were being killed by the tens of thousands and their homes, businesses, hospitals and educational facilities are being destroyed. Almost all of them will have done nothing to deserve this.

We must ensure that Australia does not contribute anything at all to this megalomaniacal, insane, brutal Middle Eastern religious sectarian mass murder of innocent people. Our only contribution should be to assist the starving, sick and injured, directly.

At this time of Anzac memory of a similar disastrous war a little over 100 years ago, we should also make a greater contribution to Turkey to assist that nation for which we developed such great respect from our meeting of their soldiers, and of their subsequent care for our lost soldiers, in their maintenance of about 4.5 million refugees from the recent Middle Eastern wars.

Christianity and other major religions have nurtured and incited much carnage and other divisive and harmful behaviours over many centuries, as well as into current times ("Faith and the unnamed terrorist", April 21).

The reasons and excuses proffered for such actions are totally unacceptable in the 21st century in a secular society.

A belief in a God puts no one above international conventions, domestic laws and expectations about behaviour being guided by critical thinking and showing decency and respect towards others.

Federal "churchy politicians", with "their reflexive nodding to ancient patriarchal dogmas", need to step back from kowtowing to the preaching and demands of conservative religious sectors.

Our representatives should be working much harder to ensure that there "is less religious obsequiousness in our society, not more".

Congratulations to US Congress speaker Mike Johnson for staring down Trump and the other isolationist Republicans and forcing through the passing of the much-needed military aid bill to ensure Ukraine gets the military assistance it needs to fight the Russian invaders.

Those military supplies need to get to Ukraine as soon as possible to halt a likely Russian spring offensive.

The US should now just rush the necessary weapons to Ukraine and make up the shortfall from the considerable sums of money in the bill for just that purpose.

There is no time to lose.

Mike Johnson has acted in the finest traditions of the Republican party and the United States by not bending to the isolationists in his own party who are a positive danger to western democracy.

Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan would be proud of him for what he has achieved.

Yet again a developer has purchased a crown lease with a maximum number of dwellings permitted, then tries to vary the lease to permit a much greater number of dwellings, in this case an increase from 150 to 406 dwellings.

If the block was on the market with a permit for 150 dwellings then that is what should be built.

If the developer wants to build more than 150 dwellings on the block then they should hand the lease back to the ACT government (the lease cost also refunded) then the land and planning authorities offer the lease on the open market with a larger number of dwellings permitted.

At the moment the developers are gaming the system.

They have no intention to actually build according to the number of dwellings permitted on the lease; they lock themselves onto the lease, locking-out competitors, then start haggling with the authorities.

The lease sale and planning authorities appear to accept the gaming of the system.

It's time to get tough on developers and builders who try to change what has been approved.

The same should apply when a developer or builder puts up an unapproved structure then applies for approval with the statement: "It's already built, you can't expect us to demolish it."

We are frequently told by governments (and by the economists who dictate government policy) that we must have economic and GDP growth. We are less frequently told of that growth's dependence on population growth, a fact revealed by any search of economics theory.

Never are we told where this population growth is taking us, to what planned end; the implication being that it can go on forever. But that's absurd, growth is a transition from one state to another, and is not and cannot be an end in itself. Its promoters should be planning for an ultimate non-growing stable population, sustainable within social and environmental limits.

Absence of any such plan seems to be normal in Australia and growth will continue until nature intervenes, the most likely limiting element being water. Its supply is static while our demand for it grows with our annual immigration-driven human numbers growth of around 400,000 a year.

By that time our water demand will most likely exceed drought supply, such that when drought conditions inevitably return, some towns will run dry. In 2019, despite Tamworth having to truck water in from Manilla when the Peel River ran dry, its mayor was calling for its population to increase from 72,000 to 100,000. That's the environmental insanity of economics.

The approval of the Federal Golf Club development, in spite of the many people against it, is the last straw for the endangered gang-gang cockatoos at Red Hill. They will have an important part of their habitat destroyed. No mention of that in the approval.

And yes, that pesky Red Hill kangaroo population that sought refuge from the mass shooting over the past two years is to be "managed" - a euphemism to justify more to be killed this winter.

Why does the Barr government not come clean and admit that the wholesale killing of Red Hill kangaroos was to prevent them "invading", (yes I say "invading" as they are now labelled by Barr as "invasive species") an area it wants for yet another rate-paying development?

So much for protecting the bush environment and our native species that Ms Vassarotti is always on about.

Wake up, Canberrans. Silence is deadly for our kangaroos and our rare gang-gang cockatoos. Are you really happy about the wholesale slaughter of kangaroos in the territory with their pouch joeys bludgeoned to death every year in your name?

If not, speak up. It is all about to start again this winter. And let us remove Barr and his government and consign it to the dustbin of history.

Give someone else a go for a change.

Senator Jacqui Lambie was right to say X executive chairman Elon Musk "should put his big boy pants on and do the right thing" by removing posts containing videos of the Sydney church stabbing.

A bigger issue than the name of the Sirius building is that it has been styled to reflect the look of that First Fleet ship. The workers (convicts?) should vacate it immediately, and insist on working from home until it is demolished (before next Australia Day?), and replaced with something more appropriate to Australia's history and culture as revised by them.

I beg to differ, Herman van de Brug (Letters, April 18). Justice Lee found Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of engaging in pre-meditated, non-consensual sexual intercourse. He should not have so willingly ceded control to his Jungian shadow. I hope he reflects on his actions and is able to suppress any similar urges in the future.

There is good and bad in social media and encryption technology. Politicians, security agencies and legacy media focus on the bad and ignore the good. This includes shining light on bad behaviour by governments, businesses and civil organisations. Issues such as alleged Israeli atrocities in Gaza are often raised on social media well before being reported by legacy media.

With all the concern over concussion in sport how can The Canberra Times continue to promote boxing. The sole aim of the sport is to give the opponent a concussion.

Our present PM's willy-nilly granting of visas suggests bipartisanship on the issue of deciding who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.

How is it "procedurally fair" that a process started by the ACT Integrity Commission - the CIT inquiry - is still ongoing nearly six months after a proposed report was distributed for comment before being finalised?

I refer to Ian Jannaway's letter (April 26). I support his views. Unfortunately, governments around the world dance to the tune of the arms manufacturers.

When women are being killed at a rate of one every four days it says a lot about the Coalition and Peter Dutton that the only issue they can work up a lather about is a few refugees being released from custody. Their limited response to women being killed is disappointing.

A review of the latest polls indicates Labor is in trouble heading towards the next election. What do we learn from this? Sadly, that Mr Dutton's negativism wins over policy time after time. This was illustrated by Morrison's win in 2019.