We want China to embrace freedom of the press yet we let Julian Assange rot in prison for his crime of exposing US war crimes.

We make it hard to get a travel permit for compassionate reasons but allow Tony Abbott and Tom Hanks to travel freely. I wonder what has become of our sense of fair play?

SECURITY Minister Peter Dutton is running an agenda to confront the Chinese government in the most public and heavy-handed possible manner. We know he tends to see enemies everywhere: among journalists, the Labor Party, students and protesters. His answer is always men in black operating in the middle of the night.

It could be argued that China is playing him into over-reacting.

This is a growing disaster for Australia and the Tasmanian agricultural economy.

The rusted-on rural supporters of the Liberal Party should be scared indeed.

I HAVE to share Bruce Cassidy's frustration at the state of the Tamar and North Esk estuaries (The Examiner, September 10).

Although I have moved to Port Fairy, Victoria, I still carry the teeth-grinding frustration at the lack of coherent let alone effective action regarding the state of the Tamar River.

It has taken the creation of TasWater to even get a real start on action to deal with the sewage issue but the broader loss of amenity still stares the city in the face, the Yacht Basin perhaps being its icon.

That said, there is a practical, viable solution, readily implementable and at much less cost than the sewage system refits.

A return canal bringing the Tailrace discharge back to the Yacht Basin, thereby keeping it filled with the sort of water that used to fill it via the Gorge pre-Trevallyn Pump Station.

It will provide a clean Yacht Basin waterbody as well as the canal itself and overflow to the Seaport as well.

Once complete there will be great potential to develop the Trevallyn foreshore into a new parkland with value capture opportunities for the adjacent suburban area.

It will also provide some additional tidal prism to help flush the main channel plus the canal flow itself.

Restoration of some or much of the North Esk wetlands would also greatly improve that aspect of restoring the natural tidal regime that created and maintained the estuary in healthy equilibrium for millennia.

The return canal will work with nature and not against her.

The latter is about the dumbest way to go about things as a rule and it is high time a smart solution was started on.

WHY is it these birds are protected, yet you can get a permit, a piece of paper with a signature to kill them?

Farmers have the means to disperse the birds taking their sown crop.

Why not look at that before you kill the so-called protected gulls?

It would be devastating for some people to see this happening, especially the children.

FARMS around Tasmania need more crop pickers from the local community.

Transportation could be one reason why people ain't going to these remote farms.

International backpackers seem to have a bus service to ferry them to work and back again. Why can't the residents have a bus service to ferry them to work and back?

I AM disgusted that the Alcohol and Drug Federation is airing a television ad where children are modelling excessive drinking/partying behaviour. What are they thinking? Someone doesn't deserve their salary.

SORRY Ivan Dean, 18 year-olds are required to vote and if they don't are fined.

They are legally allowed to drink in a hotel, buy alcohol from a liquor store and get behind the wheel of a car.

Yes, smoking is harmful but you have your priorities all wrong. Just saying.

WITH this proposed law, I'm very sad our government is planning to no longer look after our beautiful island's ordinarily shared natural treasures, whether world-renowned forests and creatures, spectacular geographies, or of deep human histories.

These treasures, belonging to us all, and respectfully enjoyed and shared for their unspoiled condition and integrity, may be leased, charged for entry, surveillance-filmed and so on by whoever has the largest purse or manages to persuade just one person, a minister of any government. Shame about democracy.

I WOULD like to ask Ken How (The Examiner, September 7) and like-minded opponents of euthanasia, if there is a God with love and mercy, why does he or she allow people with an incurable disease to suffer severe pain while allegedly waiting to be taken by this mythical non-being?