• AUGUST 17

Olympic finger-pointing and the lack of e-cigarette research.

• AUGUST 16

New Zealand Labour's David Shearer is right. Our treatment of refugees is disgraceful.

• AUGUST 15

For whatever reasons Scott Morrison may have had for rejecting the Chinese bids for control of Ausgrid, ("Treasurer raises China fears in Ausgrid rebuff", August 13-14) his decision was the right one.

• AUGUST 14

Guy and Jules Sebastian's charitable donation to women's refuges is inspirational ("Refuge refit plan keeps families together", August 7).

If Peter Dutton believes that some of the incident reports from immigration detention centres are trivial and/or false ("Refugees accused of false abuse complaints", August 12) may I be so bold as to offer a simple solution: transparency of information - allow press scrutiny of the centres (currently denied) and remove the threat of jail for centre staff who speak out.

• AUGUST 13

I'm with Scott Morrison on blocking the sale of Ausgrid to Chinese interests.

Sense and Census-ability seemed to be lacking this week as the botched attempt to gather statistical information during the first week of the Olympics did not win the government any medals. Letter writers were outraged at not just the Australian Bureau of Statistics but also IBM, the company hired to provide IT expertise for the census. As Naomi Wulff of North Wahroonga put it: "If our new innovative (jobs and growth) Prime Minister was aware that IBM Australia had retrenched many of its most loyal and experienced employees to send their jobs offshore, leaving many of them no option but to live on unemployment benefits, maybe he would have thought twice about whom he should contract to provide the IT expertise for the census. Why would our government want to pay Australian taxpayers' money to a company included in the list of the world's top 10 corporate tax dodgers, which shows contempt for its employees and causes unemployment and financial hardship for many? Also on the receiving end of the wrath from letter writers by week's end was the NSW government for paying $220 million worth of taxpayers money to buy back BHP Billiton's Caroona exploration licence. While the decision to stop coal mining on the Liverpool Plains was welcomed, the payout to BHP was not. Letters echoed the sentiments of Gavin Gatenby of Turrella about Deputy Premier Troy Grant's arithmetic at the value of the licence in today's dollars. "According to the Reserve Bank's inflation calculator, the $100 million BHP payed in 2006 would be worth $125.3 million today. Is the deputy premier innumerate, or is the public paying BHP, on some dubious grounds, $95 million compensation?"

• AUGUST 12

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, in which case the three pictures on the front page of the Herald are alone worth the entire day's edition.

• AUGUST 11

So, despite assurances that it couldn't possibly happen, the ABS census website crashed badly when called upon to 'do its part for Australia'.  ("Malicious hackers behind website collapse", smh.com.au, August 10). I suggest that 'generation snowflake' management didn't think to call on their statisticians to calculate the probability of a crash. How hard can that be? I mean, if 'x' is the population of interest and 'y' is the capacity of server 'A' and … Stephen Fox Kenmore (Qld)  

• August 10

Mack Horton's swipe at his Chinese rival wasn't so much a principled stand for sportsmanship as a deliberately disruptive ploy.

• August 10

Steven Münchenberg's list of promises by the banks would not be happening without the threat of a royal commission.

• August 10

It's about now you start hearing Kiwis using the term "per capita" quite frequently.

• August 10

I'm less concerned about the information requested by the census than I am about governments appearing to ignore it once they have it.

• AUGUST 9

Mack Horton seems to be from the same mould as Shane Warne.

• AUGUST 8

There has been much speculation about the fitness of Brazil to hold the Olympics but by promoting reafforestation in these games Brazil has inspired us.

• August 7

It appears quite likely that this Olympic Games will be a fizzer judging by the amount of negative stories about it.

• AUGUST 6

So "370,000 Australians think about ending their life every year", and " one in three of the deaths of people aged 15 to 19 is due to suicide"?

• POSTSCRIPT

Mean-spirited revenge, craven pandering to right-wing MPs or a fair call based on an assessment of Kevin Rudd from Queensland's personal failings, the Rudd Snub divided opinion this week.

• AUGUST 5

Those of us who worked on earlier censuses had to make three calls back to collect from every house, account for every visitor and help every homeless person fill in a form.

• AUGUST 4

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham says he wants "evidence-based" measures to drive improvements in NAPLAN results.

• AUGUST 3

if you actively talk to your child about religious beliefs then you will be creating a bias in favour of religion.

• AUGUST 2

Surely it is only common sense to have an Indigenous person as head of the Royal Commission into the NT Juvenile Detention Centre.

• LETTERS EXTRA

Some of the biggest names in Sydney's arts community have written to the Chancellor of Sydney University, Belinda Hutchinson, and Vice Chancellor Michael Spence in support of the Sydney College of the Arts.

• 1 August

In his article ('Malcolm Turnbull in fear of his party is a bad omen", July 30-31) Peter Hartcher says: "Australia should nominate an Australian for a global competition and wish him (sic) luck."

• COMMENT

Perhaps parents should consider installing an inwards facing Dash Cam in their teen's car as a condition of letting them drive so their every action - and that of their passengers - is recorded.

• JULY 30

While considering royal commissions into juvenile gaols in the NT, accountability established and recognition given that the "cures" have not been working, the following generations must also be considered.

• JULY 29

Without complaints by the alleged victims and witnesses, no story exists, yet Cardinal Pell refuses (at least publicly) to attack the credibility or veracity of those making sexual allegations against him. Am I missing something?

• JULY 28

No doubt, as with deaths in custody and other commission reports, recommendations will be made and the government will say it has already started to implement the recommendations.

• JULY 27

The Chief Minister of the Northern Territory and the responsible minister must resign. They are ultimately responsible for each second of the footage that we watched. At the very least, they are responsible for having done nothing before being shamed by the media.