Australia's honour depends on being fair to Indigenous people Prime Minister Tony Abbott's visit to Mer Island an inspiration.
Your fine portrayal of the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, along with Eddie Mabo's daughter Gail, laying wreaths at the grave of Eddie Koiki Mabo on Mer Island in the remote Torres Strait ("Prime Minister makes history at Mabo's final resting place",   August 25, p4) was heart- warming and inspiring.
Akin to Paul Keating's Redfern speech apologising for the gross harm inflicted on Indigenous people by the newcomers and Kevin Rudd's Parliament House, Sorry Day apology to the Stolen Children , Tony Abbott truthfully acknowledged that justice was denied to Indigenous Australians as the falsehood of Terra Nullius reigned supreme. 
Denied native title rights, Indigenous people were dispossessed of their lands and dispersed into settlements. Now as we move slowly to reconciliation and constitutional changes, every effort must be undertaken by the Abbott government to honour such land rights and pay tribute to the role as the nation's First Peoples.
We will never be an honourable nation until we uphold the truth in our history.
Keith McEwan, Bonython Turn down US request It would be a serious mistake for Australia to respond positively to the US request to join in airstrikes on Islamic State in Syria. Such action would probably be against international law, and in any case be ineffective, while increasing IS recruitment and failing to resolve the undoubted problem.
Like US policies towards Syria, it also lacks clear strategic objectives. IS, while certainly brutal, is the armed opposition to the also brutal and corrupt Assad government, the overthrow of which ostensibly remains the prime target of US effort.
More importantly for Australia, the civil war raging in Syria has increasingly developed into an intense Sunni versus Shiite sectarian civil war.
Whose side are we backing?
Despite political concerns about Australia's domestic security, nothing could be worse for our multicultural society and its security than an action likely to stir a sectarian conflict among our Muslim citizens.
Stuart Harris, Forrest Online shopping Treasurer Joe Hockey like most of his colleagues in the Coalition is a polylogist ("Online shoppers to pay GST on their purchases",   August 22, p1). Polylogism is the intellectual inability to apply the same reasoning across an invisible line called a national border.
If a buyer and seller are on the same side of a national border conservatives say nothing.
But when the buyer and seller are on opposite sides of a nation's border conservatives adopt the rhetoric of the union movement.
Australian consumers do not buy Australian goods in order to create Australian jobs.
They buy an Australian product because the product will meet their needs at the price offered. Australian consumers just want a good deal for their money.
Mr Hockey says ending the GST threshold on all overseas online purchases will deliver competitive neutrality for Australian business because it will ensure a fair and equal treatment of all goods and services.
What is fair about allowing the government to confiscate 10 per cent of the value of every online purchase? Treasurer Hockey may call this fair, but I call it highway robbery.
Victor Diskordia, McKellar Protectionism Julia Richards (Letters,   August 25) perfectly demonstrates the populist lunacy of protectionism. Of all the defunct Australian manufacturing industries unable to compete in the world, she got nostalgic about one of our most ridiculous: Australia's old clothing and textile industry.
The astronomical needs- based tariffs and quotas that enabled that industry to prosper here, had exactly the same impact on families as a big rise in taxation. Being forced to buy seriously overpriced products is no different from a cut in take-home pay.
That industry's protection eventually rose to levels where the rest of us would have been better off if all its workers had stayed home, with us maintaining them on full pay, rather than them going in to work.
Taxes can be spent employing people to grow hot-house bananas in Tasmania, but it's not sensible. We must do what we do well.
Manson MacGregor, Amaroo Too many laws The description of the current government having passed fewer bills than previous governments ("Abbott's team hits political paralysis",   August 24, p4) as " political paralysis", is questionable. Those who favour "small government" would regard it as a good thing.
The problem is that, these days, much of the conduct of human beings that should be left to be judged by the community generally, or by those particularly affected, or by common sense, is governed instead by legislation - even though the conduct doesn't lend itself to the precision of definition that good law requires.
The result is nothing more than a bonanza for the legal profession, which thrives on debate about words. Examples are "human rights" legislation and "discrimination" legislation (sex, race, age). Do we really need such law?
R.S. Gilbert, Braddon Dyson Heydon The independent editorial audit commissioned by the ABC found that Sarah Ferguson in her aggressive questioning of Joe Hockey following last year's Budget did not show him enough respect and could inflame perceptions of bias.
If this standard is applied to Dyson Heydon in his royal commission then, by any standard of reason, he is obliged to stand down. He displayed complete disrespect for Bill Shorten and in agreeing to speak at a Liberal Party fundraiser also displayed scant regard for the judicial standard of independence and impartiality we expect from a royal commission.
However, in defence of Mr Heydon, this right royal farce labelled a royal commission was obviously established by a government not to seek truth but to provide an opportunity for political point-scoring and union bashing. In this context Mr Heydon has done a sterling job.
Arguably the charges laid by the AFP could have been laid external to the royal commission by following due legal and investigative processes. And that is what has now happened.
James Grenfell, Spence