Further the provision of energy should be be a public service and asset and not one owned by a private corporation that has conflicting responsibilities between profits, shareholders and community services. I recommend the following link http://apheda.org.au/five-things-public-ownership-electricity/ for people to read.

Tanya Plibersek's Insight column “Patchwork abortion laws are a lottery for women (30/1)” exemplifies the old adage “All social engineering is preceded by verbal engineering”.

Every abortion kills a baby. Nowhere in her column is the word "baby", for whom it is also a "lottery", used. It's all "reproductive health services", "medical procedure" and "terminations". The only thing medical about abortion is that "medical" doctors do them and all pregnancies " terminate".

Ms Plibersek's predecessors in the abortion lobby argued sex education and contraception would eradicate the need for abortion. Fifty years later she claims abortion is the most common procedure Australian women undergo. What does this say about the well funded family planning lobby? Other than spectacular failure?

Ms Plibersek is outraged Tasmania's only surgical abortion provider closed this month and that the private practitioner providing abortions in Northern Queensland has retired. Given the attraction to embrace the medical profession is to cure not kill, she shouldn't be surprised at the scarcity of abortionists in the profession.

"More needs to be done." she says. Presumably not pregnancy support. If she is unwilling and lacks the imagination to genuinely help women unexpectedly pregnant, she should look elsewhere for abortion providers and leave doctors to do what they do best.

It is heartening to see that the Turnbull government’s plans to expand Australia’s defence exports have been met with scepticism and derision from across the community. Of all the valuable contributions we could make to improving the state of the world, enabling people in foreign lands to kill each other more effectively is not one of them.

But how much more opposition might there be to this “job creation scheme” if we knew just who those people were. Only weeks ago Christopher Pyne was talking about selling “defence” equipment to the Saudis, following the example of our allies the US, UK and France. Their collaboration with the Saudis’ and UAE’s brutal and criminal attack on Yemen, ostensibly against the “Iranian-backed Houthis”, goes way beyond simply supplying fighter jets and missiles, and helping enforce a blockade that has produced the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis” in recent history. If our weapons exports will really be for “defence”, then perhaps we should consider supplying some of the victims of this Western weaponry instead of contributing to it. Yemen’s “Government of National Salvation” based in the capital Sana’a and supported by its population, would be a worthy customer.