YOU report the alarming threat that an al-Qa'ida state might be established in sections of Iraq and Syria but the rejection by the US of any return of US troops and the Taliban might resume ruling in parts of Afghanistan. Meantime, in Australia we learn, not for the first time, that Islamic centres here are hearing extremists advocate jihadism.

What is the Abbott government's reaction to these developments? While Foreign Minister Julie Bishop recently scolded China for introducing airspace restrictions in the East China Sea, it seems far more important to make it clear that Australia is opposed to acts or threats of jihadism wherever these may occur. The recent warning by Attorney-General Brandis that Australians involved in such activity in Syria face potentially severe penalties is pertinent. But there is an urgent need to make a wider statement against jihadism.

THE bolshevik ABC and its fellow-travellers, the Greens, are positively salivating over news that an Australian naval vessel may have turned back a boat heading for Australia from Indonesia with a number of Sudanese and Somali nationals on board, who may have wished to land in an Australian territory and then claim that they were "refugees" within the meaning of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees 1951.

The amount of taxpayer money devoted to minimising and dealing with illegal arrivals whether by air or sea and processing claims to refugee status under the convention is absurdly high. Surely that money could be better spent on showing compassion to people who are in refugee camps around the world and who are known to be genuine refugees. Perhaps it is time to heed Robert Hulme QC's suggestion that Australia should withdraw from the convention as a contracting state, a process that would take 12 months to become effective. We could then allocate resources to inviting genuine refugees to come to Australia without burdening taxpayers for no long-term good.

Mike Keane ("Don't blame the booze" 8/1) is spot on when he states that personal responsibility is required if street violence is to be curbed. We live in a society which is great on freedom and rights of the individual but sadly lacking when it comes to taking responsibility for one's actions. The blame game is played over and over again as perpetrators of violence are often let off the hook. As a teacher of some forty years, I blame an education system which does not call its participants to account so that when they leave school it is a case of all rights and little responsibility.

The same approach seems to be common in many family environments where parents want to blame everything else for the shortcomings of their children. A tough love approach is required in order to take violence off our streets and this must start in the home and be complemented in the education system backed up by a very solid law and order agenda. We ignore this at our peril.

D. FRASER (Letters, 8/1) likens Queensland to a police state and makes Campbell Newman's government out to be worse than Joh. Joh was a mixed blessing, keeping poker machines out of Queensland, raising Brisbane's international profile, and presiding over strong development but also a culture of corruption and cronyism in which top police were complicit. It's a bit much to suggest that Newman is like him simply because he doesn't wait for the stars on both sides of the ideological divide to line up before attacking the tasks of government, including putting a stop to public displays of impunity by bikie gangs. Newman just likes to get things done.

PROFESSOR Iain Martin rose to the defence of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (Letters 8/1) and delivered a gentle slap on the wrist for the critical reports about the expedition's entrapment in ice.

When a scientific expedition is accompanied by journalists there can be no doubt that their presence is political. The whole question of climate change is political. That the former government imposed a tax on carbon is political. The fact is that the linkage between CO2 and climate warming is yet to be proved and appears not to be connected. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a political organisation and its assertions are political. Scientists, over the centuries, have been mocked and sometimes have been found to be right.