Recently they defeated a bill proposing a moratorium on Coal Seam Gas exploration and mining in our region until the NSW Government has fully implemented 16 recommendations to manage the risks to human health and the environment.

The Country Women's Association wrote to every MP involved expressing support for the bill, yet they didn't listen. Don't they know mothers know best?

Helen Cameron, Tamworth

Government is ramping up its rhetoric to prevent protests against institutional racism, citing lack of respect for those who have 'sacrificed' much during the coronavirus pandemic, double standards and 'self-indulgence' of protesters, as valid reasons.

In other words, expressions of grief for loss of black lives due to police brutality over 250 years, pale in significance to temporary restrictions placed on farewelling a white life during a global pandemic; making it OK to direct inflammatory language and blame at Black Lives Matter protesters.

Blaming individuals for their behaviours is often a process used to distract from what really matters. Blaming protesters for potential to spread the Covid-19 virus, conveniently ignores bigger threats to health

The PM is adamant that his priority is "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" and that "self-indulgent, anti-racism protests are the only legitimate block" to easing Covid-19 restrictions and increasing job prospects. His gas led recovery policy, a policy that puts profits above people, has serious health risks attached. Social equity and social justice are very much on the back burner. The duplicity, double standards and the racism in Scott Morrisons castigations of anti-racism protesters seems to have escaped his attention.

Health authorities are adamant that their main focus is the health of "all "Australians, although apparently even though "we are all in this together", indigenous people can be pretty much ignored. Also ignored are the facts that:

(1) there is a lot more to health than just coronavirus and

(2) research and real life events show racism can be as deadly as coronavirus.

There are serious and complex health risks related to ignoring indigenous demands for equality, and an end to racial discrimination and police violence; few of which are acknowledged and even fewer that are adequately addressed.

To address them presents greater risks for government and big export corporations, i.e. there would be fewer loopholes to be able to 'legally' drive aboriginal people from their land, compromise their water resources, destroy their traditional food sources and obliterate significant sites of their cultural heritage. Risks that have the potential to curtail the insatiable quest for profit and power.

Health risks are not peculiar to protest marches. They similarly exist in crowds in football stadiums, church congregations, on public transport, in restaurants and shopping centres and in opening up state borders. In any such situation, including protest marches, the risk can be minimised with appropriate precautions. There is indisputable evidence that appropriate precautions have been adopted at Black Lives Matter protest rallies yet they are singled out for "blame".

The risks people are prepared to accept depend on their values. What poses a risk for some, can be an opportunity to exploit, for others. Currently the PM is seizing the Covid-19 opportunity to pit one group against another for political advantage; pitting one type of health risk against another by taking a confrontational approach towards people who are protesting that Black Lives Matter; telling them to "find another way, a better way" and threatening charges if they defy government directives.

Well, Prime Minister, there is "another way", a "better way", an inclusive way:

Indigenous Australians have been subjected to high sounding pious and sanctimonious words throughout white Australian history. Words are cheap. Without action they achieve very little. What indigenous people are desperate for is action and who is more appropriate and the better endowed with authority to lead that action than the Prime Minister of Australia.

Jan Kleeman, Donald Creek

Black lives are trending right now and so they should. But let's not look past the fact that all lives matter all lives, particularly the lives in our own countrymen cut short in the most casual and unheralded manner by entrenched structural inequity in our own communities. Particularly as we can and should do something about it.

A solution is sitting in front of us, clearly hiding in plain view. We've all heard about it, but less of us have bothered to understand what it means. It's a hard-won generous offer from our First Nations Peoples to go on a journey of truth and reconciliation, nothing less nothing more despite mischievous politicians and shock jocks, called Statement from the Heart. Google it, read it if you haven't already.

These deaths in custody statistics illustrate in a brutal and inescapable way why we absolutely need to address the offer in Statement from the Heart.

It's not difficult, despite our pollies and extremists trying to complicate the issue:

1. Constitutional recognition - easy

2. A Voice - even economic issues have a voice called the Productivity Commission, which no one angsts about

3. Makarrata - which Australian wouldn't enjoy an existential history lesson that goes back 65000 years and tells us why we are a unique nation.

Let's use this shocking opportunity to get rolling across every city and town and village and farmhouse in our nation and run over the politicians trying to make it difficult! Let's put it firmly in the agenda as we thought we did back when 400000 of us (representing silent millions) walked across the Bridge, and 100s of 1000s more walked around Australia.

Here they are in bone jarring reality as reported in The Conversation this morning Deaths in custody documented by the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

432

The number of Indigenous Australians who have died in custody since (according to Guardian Australia's Deaths Inside project).

2,481

The number of First Nations adults in prison for every 100,000 people.

164

The number of non-indigenous adults in prison for every 100,000 people.

2%

The percentage of Australia's adult population who are First Nations Australians.

28%

The percentage of Australia's prison population who are First Nations Australians

2015

The year David Dungay Jr was killed when prison officers restrained him, including with handcuffs, and pushed him face down on his bed and on the floor. One officer pushed a knee into his back. All along, Dungay was screaming that he could not breathe and could be heard gasping for air.

Zero

The number of successful homicide prosecutions of a death in custody in Australia's criminal courts.

With COVID, we realised the power of community to save the lives of our neighbours. Let's use that power to right a historical and existential wrong (even if we didn't cause it) and further the cause of a nation which fundamentally believes in a fair go, by embracing the journey offered in Statement from the Heart and saving the lives of our original inhabitants.

What could possibly be a downside to that?

George Macdonald, Wallabadah

Do you remember Linda McKenzie? Linda was born in England in the late 1920s and emigrated to New South Wales in the 1940s. She lived in Port Kembla for a while and worked at Stockton Mental Hospital.

Linda was a keen motorcyclist and a member of motorcycling clubs in Wollongong and Lake Illawarra. She hoped to join a club in Newcastle and may have settled there in the 1950s.

I would be delighted to hear from anyone with information or memories about Linda. Any help at all would be gratefully received.

With many thanks.

Deborah Cherry, Preston Lancashire