Wendy Cuneo as spokesperson for the parents, staff and clients has been doing a wonderful job of speaking out for those who are not able to be advocates themselves.

It seems that the powers that be are either not listening or have no concept of what the closure of the three centres - Stockton, Kanangra and Tomaree - mean to the people who live there.

When they are gone and the prime land they stand on is sold to the highest bidder for housing, some time in the future places like these will be needed.

There will always be some who cannot live in group homes, but can thrive in already-established communities like Stockton.

What will happen to the criminally insane from Kanangra? What can we do to make those at the top listen?

CARL Stevenson seems to have missed the point when he asks why the Greens never took the option of oxygen farms (Letters, 15/6).

Firstly, there are currently businesses being paid to plant trees to offset the carbon footprint of big industries. Unfortunately these companies are often over-planting too many trees in small areas without regulation or consultation with the experts who know the biodiversity of the area. The result of this practice is as the more trees are planted, the more profit for the company. Unfortunately the downside is that the greatly increased density of the canopy means that many native species of plants and animals are unable to exist.

Secondly, the solar hot water systems, rooftop solar panels and solar farms that Carl seems to see as a threat to coal have been the start of a new sustainable industry that more enlightened countries worldwide are developing to pave the way to profit in this rapidly-changing world.

THE arrogance and complete disdain for Australians' intelligence shown by the Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton is, in my mind, both appalling and frightening.

When faced with the fact that two of the people accepted into Australia in the refugee swap deal with America were reportedly murderers he assured us with a straight face that Australia would not accept anyone who poses a threat to Australian people.

If murderers don't pose a threat to us, then who does?

Prime Minister Morrison, is this the standard of communications we can expect from your ministers during your reign as Prime Minister, or will you attempt to impose some sort of standards of honesty on ministers Dutton, Cormann and the like who seem to take great delight in arrogantly looking down their noses at the Australian people?

I SHOULD like to add to Andrew Collins' opinion from a couple of weeks ago (Letters, 29/5). Stephen Schneider was indeed the author of the global warming fallacy, having predicted global cooling earlier in his career in the mid-1970s.

He said the following in 1989 when challenged about the glaring deficiencies of the theory:

"On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but, which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially-disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

"I readily confess a lingering frustration: uncertainties so infuse the issue of climate change that it is still impossible to rule out either mild or catastrophic outcomes, let alone provide confident probabilities for all the claims and counterclaims made about environmental problems.

"Even the most credible international assessment body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has refused to attempt subjective probabilistic estimates of future temperatures. This has forced politicians to make their own guesses about the likelihood of various degrees of global warming."

I have no doubt the protesting children we see have not been advised of this by their teachers and parents, and our politicians of both sides now cannot back out of the global warming fallacy as they sold us out, not to preserve the earth for our children's sake, but rather for a few green votes to keep their lamentable selves in power.

THE federal government is trying to pretend the economy is not in recession, they claim only the retail sector is in recession, that's akin to your wife telling you she's only half pregnant.

The truth is the government's attacks on wages and penalty rates is driving incomes lower, while the cost of living keeps going up and up, which means we are about to experience the biggest recession since the 1900s.

Remember Keating's recession we had to have? Well this will be ScoMo's recession we didn't have to have.

BEFORE anyone comments on climate change, I suggest they read the book below to discover what they do not know about climate change.

The author is Professor Ian Plimer, who is Australia's best-known geologist, has published 120 scientific papers on geology, is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and is an Honorary Fellow of the Geological Society of London.

The title of the book is Heaven + Earth - Global Warming: - The Missing Science.

This book is a must read for everyone.

I suggest that a summary of this book would make a very interesting article in the Newcastle Herald.