Please, no tantrums over Australia Day As Australia Day comes around, it's time to brace for the permanently outraged to throw their annual tantrums on all things that are wrong with both the date and nature of the celebration. It has started a little earlier this year with unusual hysteria from the usual suspects directed at the annual lamb promotion that for many has become part of the Australia Day scene. 
This year the irrepressibly ocker Sam Kekovich has teamed up with a purring Lee Lin Chin to produce a masterpiece of tongue-in-cheek fun with a theme redolent of Mission Impossible.
For a number of particularly sensitive souls, this is beyond the pale.
Apparently the spoof is either too militaristic, insulting to Indigenous people, disrespectful to vegans or all of the above.
In addition to the normal Australia Day awards, I propose an annual medallion for the most vacuous, pathetic and hysterical whinge leading up to Australia Day.
The man who tweeted that he was seriously offended by the depiction of a vegan's food being torched by a flamethrower (yep, the ad is that silly) gets my vote for now! One can only imagine how these fragile people function in everyday life.
H. Ronald, Jerrabomberra, NSW Refugee offer from NZ For the past two years, the federal government has said that the refugees on Nauru are awaiting a host country to accept them because Australia will not.
According to the Guardian Weekly this week, a two-year- old offer by the New Zealand government to accept 150 refugees a year from Australia's offshore detention centres has not been accepted by Australia, but remains open.
If this is true, the awful conclusion to draw is that the government intends to hold these unfortunate people, including children, indefinitely on Nauru as a deliberate policy of deterrence by torture.
Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe, Hackett