Every day, we publish a selection of your emails in our newsletter. We’d love to hear from you, you can email us at yoursay@theconversation.edu.au.
Monday January 19
First Nations knowledge
“I’m wondering how much the government departments are listening to and working with our First Nations peoples on what we are facing with fire and flood events. Their ancient knowledge of land management and climate changes over 60,000 years or more must be heard and acted upon. We ignore them at the peril of us all.”
Kim Sami, Bradbury, NSW
Swim between the flags, OK?
“Whether beach flags remain coloured red and yellow or are changed to green will make no difference to the two options available to beachgoers – to either swim between them or beyond them. The red and yellow flags have operated in Australia since 1935 and are an iconic and well understood symbol of beachgoing to the Australian population.”
Dr Phil Plummer, Adelaide SA
Driving profits
“Governments love to make up rules for us all to abide by, especially when driving. It brings in a lot of revenue for them. Just touching your device when driving is an expensive lesson to be learnt if you’re caught. However, it’s quite alright to look at an advertising board strung up over a freeway while travelling at 110km/h, eyes completely off the road to see what they’re flogging this week.”
Peter Miley
Tuesday January 20
Capitulation or politics as usual?
“Why is presenting a piece of legislation to the house and debating its pros and cons and making changes seen as ‘capitulation’ and weakness from the Labour party – few if any pieces of legislation sail through without change.”
Linsey J Bamping
Hate speech and free speech
“It beggars belief that legislators of all persuasions cannot find a way to make deliberate hate speech illegal. For once, can our elected national officials rise above special interests and do what is needed. Banning deliberate hate speech is not a denial of free speech. It is actually a precursor for it.”
Dr John Halsey, Upper Sturt SA
Fictional debates
“I am puzzled and amused that some academics and Shakespeare enthusiasts are discussing and writing about the improbability of a link between the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, and his writing of the tragedy, Hamlet. Maggie O'Farrell’s novel, Hamnet, is in the genre of historical fiction. Fiction. Debating probability seems like an incredible waste of ink! The cow jumped over the moon!”
Dr Denise Burns, Aspley, Qld
Wednesday January 21
Trump and Power
“Using the term power in the headline GIVES POWER to Trump. Trump is not defined by power, but by bullying and the use of the USA war machine internally and globally, he is using FEAR. Is the classroom/playground bully powerful?”
Dr Deborah Zinn 
Jaw clenching
“I clenched my jaw for most of my life and often woke up with severe tightness and pain. I tried multiple treatments, but nothing fixed the underlying problem. By chance, I came across someone talking about tongue placement: your tongue should rest lightly where your top teeth meet the roof of your mouth. Once I started paying attention to it, my resting position changed very quickly. It’s now been two years, and I no longer clench.”
Sarah Eley, SA
Capitulation or careful consideration?
“I heartily agree with the letter from Linsey Bamping about the use of ‘capitulate’.It’s ridiculous to write as if any change of mind is a weakness or a flaw! Frankly, I’d prefer my politicians to be prepared to rethink a difficult decision when presented with sufficient information. I think it was a laudable change! Please avoid judgemental language.”
Linda Black
Thursday January 22
Shark alarm
“Why do we still get alarmed about shark attacks in Australia? If we choose to swim in their habitat, they will view us as prey. There’s nothing surprising or unusual about this yet we still treat it as shocking news and worthy of deep analysis and research.”
Richard Goodwin, Doubleview, WA
Good job Canada
“Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos must go down as one of the great speeches in modern history. It was delivered with dignity, integrity and exceptional statesmanship. He addressed the audience without any obvious reliance on notes or a teleprompter. Maybe Americans would consider becoming Canada’s eleventh province or fourth territory?”
Steve Bentley
The myth of the ‘strongman’
“I thoroughly agree with Dr Deborah Zinn’s comment (yesterday, above) about Trump and power and would add to this the use of the term ‘strongmen’ in some articles. Use of this term implies strength where no true strength exists, and encourages admiration of abominable behaviour.”
Ingrid Palmer
Friday January 23
Child abuse
“The article about why women commit child sexual abuse is the first and only article I’ve ever seen about the motivations and psychology behind child sexual abuse; first and only! Considering that males commit these crimes far more commonly than females, I was shocked to see that finally the taboo about discussing it was broken by discussing females and not males where the majority problem is. We won’t be able to stop it unless we understand why people are doing it and how they developed that motivation.”
Geoff Holmes
The cost of prevention
“I read with interest Angela Jackson’s article arguing for more money for prevention. As someone who worked in the preventive health area of state government, I agree – one’s budget gets skimmed to deal with high-profile health care issues, whereas good prevention goes almost unnoticed. Ministers do not get letters thanking them for the measles a child did not get. However, I have never seen a study that shows the preventive strategies allowing one to live a healthy life into old age reduce lifetime health cost. Some areas, such as injury prevention, have an almost immediate direct return by avoided care costs, but the extra decade or so we gain from a healthy lifestyle is not necessarily without the same or additional costs to the system.”
Brian Wall
Flushed out to sea
“Your article on shark attacks was interesting. One of the issues around Sydney is of course its three deep water sewage outfalls into the ocean. This may not in fact have anything to do with the shark attacks, which may have increased for reasons related to global warming. However, it certainly speaks to the primitive nature of this form of sewage disposal. A modern approach to sewage disposal seems a tad overdue.”
Julia Bovard, North Sydney