A group of distinguished Canberrans is pleading for commitment from the Australian government to do everything it can to halt what is with each passing day, more unmistakably a genocide in Gaza.

Gaza has been reduced to rubble, people killed, tortured, maimed and starved by Israel. These actions are war crimes of the most serious magnitude. 

Gaza is the deadliest place on earth for children, with the number of children killed or injured having now passed 50,000.

Most children have family members killed or injured, have had to flee multiple times and have experienced relentless bombardments.

Many children live without housing, education, access to health care, food and water. Lifesaving aid is blocked. Many children will suffer the ongoing health conditions and disability from the impact of these deprivations.

Children who do survive will experience a lifetime of trauma impact.

Doing all we can to ensure safe passage of aid from independent agencies is very urgent. 

We must also act to suspend ties with Israel, impose sanctions, support justice mechanisms through the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice and immediately recognise the State of Palestine.

We plead for commitment from the Australian government to do everything Australia can to halt what is with each passing day, more unmistakably a genocide.

We owe this to the children of Gaza.

Dr Sue Packer AO, Senior Australian of the Year 2019;

Mohammad Ali, ACT Citizen of the Year 2022;

Dr Christine Phillips AM:

Kathy Ragless AM;

Sister Jane Keogh AM;

Marion Le AM and

Mainul Haque OAM

To confirm: alcohol’s a cancer-causing carcinogen 

It is surprising that columnist Richard Calver – a wine expert – seemed to be unaware of the evidence that alcohol consumption has been causally linked to cancer (“Shocking news for moderate drinkers”, CN June 5). 

Indeed, in his article which conveys his apparent shock at the news that even “light drinkers” are at risk, he makes no mention of the 2012 report of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which concludes that alcohol is a Group 1 carcinogen, a title reserved for substances (including tobacco, benzene, asbestos and processed meat) that have been found to cause cancer in humans.

In the case of alcohol, there is evidence of causal relationships with various cancers, including mouth, throat, voice box, oesophagus, bowel, rectum, liver, and breast cancer in females. A positive association has also been found between alcohol and pancreatic cancer. 

The evidence suggests that there is no safe level of alcohol use in relation to these cancers, as even moderate drinking can increase the likelihood of developing these cancers.

There is also a synergistic effect of alcohol and tobacco, where these combine to increase the incidence of certain cancers beyond the effects of tobacco smoking or alcohol consumption alone.

Back in 1988, the IARC originally concluded that alcohol was a Group 1 carcinogen. Since then, we have seen growing evidence that alcohol causes more cancers than first thought.

In 2007, the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research recommended that people should limit their alcohol consumption, based on the evidence that even small amounts of alcohol increase cancer risk. 

More recently, given the weight of evidence, there have been calls for health warning labels to be displayed on alcohol products, warning of these cancer risks. 

Karina Morris, Weetangera

The Lord’s gift to the community

I have sent an email to the Law Council of Australia thanking Canberra barrister Thomas Wallace-Pannell SC from Canberra law firm MEJ.

I came across an article published last year in the CityNews sharing such qualities shown to the people by Thomas. 

He has recently assessed a claim for me pursuant to child institutional abuse in a Canberra Catholic school. The claim never made it to court as it did not satisfy legal requirements re proof etcetera.

Thomas and MEJ outlaid expense in assessing this unsuccessful claim at no cost to myself (no win-no fee terms).

Thomas is to be thanked before the community with particular recommendation to survivor groups, the mentally ill, disabled, the elderly and many others. I have let the Council on the Ageing know as to the kindness of Thomas. The Lord’s gift to the Canberra community.

Phillip Leahey, Stirling 

Eminence not deserved 

The creative formal wordsmithing about Scott Morrison’s worthiness as an AC recipient failed to mention his significant services to the pork barrel industry. 

Sue Dyer, Downer

Of little boxes on the hillside

My wife and I took a drive out to the far northern suburbs (Wright, Denman Prospect, Whitlam etcetera). As we drove, I was reminded of a song from the 1960s – Little Boxes. 

I believe it started: “Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made out of ticky tacky, yes they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look much the same”.

Apologies to Pete Seeger, but at least his were in colour not black, white, or grey.

How foreseeing the songwriter Malvina Reynolds was to look at Canberra more than 60 years later!

Dave Jeffrey, Farrer

Found wallet brings blessings

A big shout out to the person, who in the early afternoon of June 7, in the vicinity of Aldi in the Canberra Centre, found a wallet and passed it over to centre staff.

Many you be blessed many times over and that happiness follows you all the days of your life.

Jim Castro, via email

No concession for the gentle kangaroos

I view with dismay the plan this winter to slaughter some 3000 kangaroos on our reserves, plus hundreds of pouch joeys that will be pulled from shot females and bludgeoned to death.

We are told the cull is done during the winter months when fewer joeys are in pouch, yet the government’s own figures every year say at least 66 per cent of females killed had joeys in the pouch. Many of these are large but still dependent and to restrain such while trying to kill them leaves nothing to the imagination.Those that escape have no hope of surviving the now freezing weather. 

I asked the Conservator to give an undertaking that shooters would at least not target females that were obviously carrying large joeys in the pouch, but none was forthcoming. Why?

It is not hard to identify them if the shooters are as competent as claimed. Such an undertaking would at least remove one aspect of the cruelty in the cull. 

Shame on this government that it could not even make that small concession to these gentle creatures.

And why is Farrer Ridge Reserve again being targeted when the government has in place a fertility program in that reserve that we were told would remove the “necessity” of culling there.

It seems the darting exercise up there was just a waste of our money.

Jennifer MacDougall, Farrer

Letter really takes the (yellow)cake

Letter writer Anthony Hordern seems to know something the experts don’t (“Unsuitable, ideological, intermittent electricity”, CN June 6), namely that the pro-nuclear writers he cites are more knowledgeable than the “groupies” at AMEO and CSIRO who “jump on the gravy train”. Where is the evidence to support this pejorative view? If the “ideologues” in government are also wrong, haven’t the election results and the subsequent inter-party wrangling shown the Coalition is even more nuclear fraught?

Anthony insults the professionalism of CSIRO’s scientists and blithely dismisses the high level advice provided by the range of government and industry groups involved in AMEO’s management of the energy market. In doing so he merely exposes his own evidence-free political prejudices.

He also claims we could save money by not propping up the Chinese solar industry. Had climate deniers not spent decades refusing to accept the evidence, we might now have a fully developed local solar-panel industry – and one with great export value. And for that delay, governments at all levels must also bear responsibility.

Finally, Anthony’s seeming belief that we could virtually stick a couple of wires into a pile of uranium ore and throw a switch really takes the (yellow)cake.

Who is going to design and build the reactors to meet Australia’s unique continent-wide needs? 

To claim that nuclear can utilise “all the existing grid structure at no extra cost” just doesn’t stack up. Importantly, where will the skills needed for these mammoth tasks come from, at what cost and how long will it take even if there are no cost-blowouts and time overruns (a forlorn hope, I suggest)? 

Power engineering expert Dr Asma Aziz, of Curtin University, estimates that the task of upgrading the transmission system alone is so formidable it’s one of the biggest roadblocks Australia faces in reaching its goal of net zero emissions by 2050. And, she says, it would be complicated even further were we to go down the nuclear path.

Eric Hunter, Cook

Housing policy by thought bubbles

How many of the 40,000 blocks in the RZ1 zones proposed as suitable for additional development already have multiple dwellings on them? This policy seems to be based on thought bubbles rather than research and facts.

Relying on the market to produce housing that is suitable or affordable for your average Canberra household or those with a lower income is a fantasy evidenced by the fact that this product can’t be found in the Canberra market.

Ian Hubbard, via citynews.com.au

More people die from cold than the heat

Letter writer Murray May (CN May 5) complains about wood-fired heaters. Did he think that during this cost-of-living crisis and the big increase in electricity bills (thanks, Albo) that people might have no option but to use wood to warm themselves as it is free and available? 

As for comparing wood heater smoke to bushfire smoke is ludicrous. Houses and all kinds of things burn in a bushfire, so they would be a lot more toxic than burning a clean log. Even the smell of a wood-fire heater is different to a bushfire. 

Facts show that more people die from the cold than the heat, so in a freezing cold Canberra winter why wouldn’t it be okay for some folk to keep alive with a natural resource such as wood? 

With cloudy, cold, windless days solar and wind turbines aren’t providing us with enough electricity to power our heaters, the electricity will come from coal and gas. Is this the clean air produced by carbon dioxide emissions that Murray is referring to?

Ian Pilsner, Weston

The consequence of wood heater use

Vi Evans (letters, CN June 12) says she would like to know how a Medical Journal of Australia article in 2023 can claim the annual number of deaths in the ACT attributable to wood heaters is similar to the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires. In the next breath, she says this is complete nonsense!

Were she to read the article, she would find it is written by five leading researchers in the fields of environmental and public health. The lead author is Prof Sotiris Vardoulakis, of the University of Canberra. Another is Prof Fay Johnston, a leading public health physician who heads up the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence, the Centre for Safe Air based at the University of Tasmania.

As with any such academic paper, the methods used and limitations that apply are carefully described. 

Another co-author, Prof Geoff Morgan, of the University of Sydney, has more than 30 years’ experience in epidemiological research.

Wood heaters have long been recognised as major sources of PM2.5 pollution in the ACT, particularly in areas such as the Tuggeranong Valley, where air stagnates in winter and wood heaters are particularly numerous.

The paper finds that the consequence of current wood heater use in the ACT is 11 to 63 avoidable deaths, equivalent to $57 million to $333 million in the annual cost of deaths, comparable with the 31 deaths in the ACT attributable to the bushfire smoke during the Black Summer of 2019–20.The variations in estimated deaths come from different underlying assumptions, including the severity of the winter in any particular year.

Murray May, Cook

Time government moved on smoke pollution

Vi Evans (letters, CN June 12) must surely have a wood-burning heater/fireplace because she protests vehemently and also claims the number of respiratory related deaths couldn’t possibly be attributed to wood burning heaters. 

According to Ms Evans death is the only indicator of the environmental pollution hazard problem we have in the ACT pertaining to wood heaters? 

It’s a shame that people die from lung-related diseases, but let’s blame it on the bushfires of 2003, 2019-20 and smoking ceremonies etcetera, not wood-burning, air-polluting fires lit every day in our suburbs during the winter months. 

Vi, you and yours should be so lucky to not be affected in some way or another by micro-carbon particles that pollute our air all winter long. 

So let me understand your reasoning – if you can’t see the smoke it doesn’t/can’t affect those who live near or nestled amongst many wood-burning heater homes? 

I don’t know where you live, but where I live is a valley. Winter air is very cold and most often still at night, so the smoke (that you can’t see) hovers low in the atmosphere and dumps micro carbon particles into the air we breathe.

How does this affect people, you may ask – allergic reactions, flare ups of asthma conditions, inflamed eyes, inflamed throat, congested lungs and oh, yes, occasionally DEATH from long-term exposure to carbon-particle polluted air.

Living well should not have to include having to take medication for allergies, asthma and other anti-inflammatory drugs that are needed to avoid the problems caused by wood-burning heaters.

So the ACT government needs to pay more attention to this problem and get on to passing stronger legislation that stops people putting wood-burning heaters into their homes.Don’t just discourage it, make them illegal in suburban areas. 

Smoke pollution of any kind is bad for humans and for the environment. We live close together and what we do affects our neighbours. 

Don’t dismiss the research because you think it’s wrong, there are some very sad statistics coming out of India and Africa regarding death rates from lung diseases caused by smoke inhalation. 

Spare a thought for those who suffer every winter but are forced to accept that this is how it is! 

They have been complaining loud and long and still not enough has been done. 

Don’t wait any longer, the time for the ACT government to act and make changes is now, this year, this winter! 

Carole Ford, Conder

How do I get a windfall gain, please?

Columnist Mike Quirk (“Can zoning reform fix it for ‘missing middle’?”, CN June 12) says that upzoning “delivers windfall gains to existing property owners”.

It is my understanding that, when property values increase through re-zoning, “windfall” gains in property values are supposed to be recovered through lease variation charges and higher rates.

In at least one case the developer got a windfall by having the lease variation charges waived. In another case the government based the lease variation charge on the developer’s unrealistically low property valuation, and the developer got a second windfall gain by being given a new 99-year lease rather than having the existing lease extended.

Can Mr Quirk explain in what other ways property developers (or homeowners like me) can make windfall gains through upzoning?

Leon Arundell, Downer

Correction

A sub-editorial slip in Ric Hingee’s letter (CN June 12) wrongly attributed, in the second paragraph, a comment to Greens leader Larissa Waters and not Mehreen Farugi.