According to a spokesperson, "Compensation for the land acquired is a matter between the ACT government and the lessee." What?

It seems in this day and age, we need to more frequently remind politicians that they are elected by the community and that the government is accountable for the use of taxpayers' hard-earned monies. Hence, we have a right to know, and the government has an obligation to tell us, how much the land cost. It is as simple as that; any excuses are obfuscation to avoid any objections. And staffers are less accountable for their actions.

What happened to a more honest government in Canberra? They will pay a price.

Geoff Clark, Narrabundah

Firstly we learn that the price paid for the interchange at Dickson could not be revealed because it was commercial in confidence.

Then we learn that Telopea Park School had not been told of the proposed land swap because it was commercial in confidence ("Bureaucrats told to keep land deal secret", November 2, p1).

At a meeting I attended where Capital Metro Minister Simon Corbell was speaking, in answer to a question he said the true cost of light rail would not be disclosed until next year's budget.

To my mind commercial in confidence is being used as a screening device to fob off the ratepayers' right to know what they are to pay for in the future. The ACT government's claim that light rail would be a completely transparent process was made with crossed fingers behind its collective back.

Howard Carew, Isaacs

Tom McIlroy's article "Light rail traffic impact revealed" (October 29, p1) was great, but only half there. All traffic at intersections on the tram routes will be permanently impacted unless the tram lines are elevated or subway constructions. Congestion is the point and it is by design.

Our elected representatives, public service departments and academics all concede that Canberra is an excellent environment for car use, with very little congestion.

Unfortunately, when these three groups come together

with a brief of making public transport work, they all embrace the "stick and carrot" method to "push" us out of cars so they can surreptitiously "pull" us towards public transport.

The biggest "stick" is their deliberate engineering of congestion into our city with their plans that are littered with terms like "compact development, intensification, higher population densities, concentration and densification".

They openly embrace ridiculously lower than necessary speed limits, reduction of car spaces in town centres, and the implementation of punitive parking fees to make car use less attractive.

There is nothing trams can achieve in Canberra that a strip of T2 bus-lane bitumen cannot – except one: the tram lines are steel and permanently set in concrete through intersections reconfigured deliberately in their favour at massive expense to ourselves.

That way, by the time we work out we have been manipulated into buying a lemon, as the unwitting participants in an amateurish social engineering experiment, it will be too late.

We'll have no choice except to catch their stupid 19th century transport option.

I don't recall "deceit and manipulation" being on any party platform last election.

Jamie Geysen, Aranda

Bill Scott and Scott Matheson (Letters, November 2) probably know I never mentioned Edinburgh's Trams as a failure but, having mentioned it, they could follow the proceedings of the current Scottish government inquiry into its "failures".

In summary, "This inquiry aims to establish why the Edinburgh Trams project incurred delays, cost considerably more than originally budgeted and through reductions in scope delivered significantly less than projected."

edinburghtraminquiry.org/

Chris Emery, Reid

Christopher Booker's opinion article, "Climate change treaty will be the flop of the year" (canberratimes.com.au, November 2), says this year's Paris climate conference may very well fail, but ends by asking, as if in passing, "how much longer can it be before the most expensive and foolish scare story in history starts to fall apart".

Nothing in the rest of this piece even remotely substantiates this absurd, indeed irresponsible, claim.

Earlier, Booker sneaks in the lie that the "climate began naturally warming again two centuries ago". Apparently the industrial revolution was just a coincidence.

An opinion piece should explain and argue for a particular point of view. If Mr Booker wants to defend his, he should write an op-ed piece that does so and see if The Canberra Times will publish it. But he should not be allowed to peddle this preposterous nonsense, by slipping it in without argument when he thinks everyone is looking the other way. That is not opinion or comment. It is an insidious use of power and the CT should not have published it.

Professor Desmond Manderson, O'Connor

Will those who think it's amusing to dress like the walking dead at Halloween, eyeballs dangling, wounds gaping, please read surgeon David Nott's harrowing account of his recent experiences in Syrian emergency wards ("Suffering remains unabated", Times2, November 2, p4), where he struggled (without morphine supplies) to treat children "with arms and legs blown off, suffering and dying in agony."

How amusing is the sight of these "zombies", so lurid and convincing, so lovingly created, to the increasing numbers of traumatised emergency workers in hospitals and ambulances, not to mention soldiers returned from war zones, who are daily assailed by horrible images of the real dead and dying.

But then I guess zombies don't read newspapers.

If Australians must copy the commercialised United States fad for Halloween, please will they stick to cobwebs and pumpkins.

Glenda Naughten, Farrer

Malcolm Turnbull has announced he is running a business-like government. This should send shivers up the spine of the most vulnerable people in Australia such as the sick, the poor and the disabled. In short, this is a massive problem for all the less-productive units.

Question: How does business treat the sick, the disabled, the poor, the productive units that are less than optimally productive or become surplus to requirements? Answer: They are jettisoned.

Despite what Malcolm Turnbull clearly thinks, running a government bears little resemblance to running a business. When running a business, the only thing that matters is the financial bottom line, whereas when running a government, a major concern is social policy.

Clearly vulnerable Australians have much to worry about with a Malcolm Turnbull-led business-like government.

A significant increase in the GST, which is a grossly regressive tax, is just one of them.

Peter Nielsen, Calwell

Almost daily now we are being cajoled and primed for a rise in the GST.

Politicians should remember, the majority of voters voted against the GST at the 1998 election in droves. Mr Howard lost the popular vote by 400,000 votes.

They were fooled once, but will not be fooled twice. Any compensation for the GST quickly erodes. We learnt that last time.

Increasing the GST would be electoral suicide, because it discriminates against the marginal and most vulnerable in our society at a time when wage rises are the smallest in 20 years.

A Nielsen poll some time back demonstrated 70per cent of people are against a rise in the GST.

Ray Armstrong, Tweed Heads South, NSW

It has been estimated that China's recently abandoned one-child policy put a stop to 400million pregnancies by forced abortions, infanticides and sterilisations.

Rod Campbell (Letters, November 2) bitterly regrets the reversal of China's commendable attempt to control feral species (humans) and urges Australia to adopt a similar policy of pregnancy control.

A splendid idea. Mind you, we would have a long way to go to match the Chinese statistics, but for a small population, we're not doing too badly already, with 100,000 abortions and infanticides a year, and with some progressive measures, we could greatly increase that number.

After all, if you are a fetus, it makes no difference whether you are destroyed by government edict or by "choice".

Dr Alan N. Cowan, Yarralumla A

Rod Campbell and Adrian Gibbs (Letters, November 2), are absolutely correct: the (ahem) root cause of virtually all the world's ecological and political problems is runaway population growth.

It's unfortunate, though, that Mr Campbell chose to throw a cat among the pigeons by advocating for Australia, along with nil immigration, a strict one-child policy of the kind that was enforced with characteristic heavy-handedness by the Chinese government. Such a drastic step is undesirable and unnecessary.

Instead, if immigration was gradually reduced, over the next five years or so, to about 50,000 a year (including 20,000 refugees), our population would plateau, within a decade, at about 26million.

Although that's probably a few million too many, we could, at least, then pause and take stock, taking a hard look at the state of the environment and allowing housing stocks, hospitals, schools, roads and all of our other lagging infrastructure to catch up.

Tony Healy, Florey

It is quite illogical for Murray Upton (Letters, October 31) to reject belief in God because of the imperfections of creation.

Nobody could think reasonably that my garden has no maker because there are weeds in it.

In this connection it would be interesting to know, through The Canberra Times online poll say, the general view whether, considering good and evil, it would have been better if the universe and our world had never existed.

Eric French, Higgins

I support Max Jensen's view (Letters, October 31) that scientists and engineers should nominate as independents for Parliament.

Julian Cribb would be excellent as a starter. Many older people from professions never retire from life and, after giving up full-time employment, continue to be engaged in key issues affecting us all. They change their working life to part-time, or short-term projects, and have longer holidays in between. There are great opportunities to advocate and argue more strongly when not tied to a political bloc. Many years ago, when I worked for ACT Health, I was asked to nominate for the then ACT Legislative Assembly, as I was well known in the community – I declined, saying I could never join a political party and independents do not get elected.

However, 30 years on, having worked in many fragile states, such as Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen, I now strongly believe the era of party politics is coming to an end, and the time of independents is emerging.

Many older professionals and business people, with their experience of the real world, would be great in government , and would strengthen policy and its implementation relating to employment, environment, infrastructure, community services, terrorism and refugees. Hence, grey power should take a stronger role for the benefit of the whole community.

Caroline Fitzwarryne, Yarralumla

Hooray to Malcolm Turnbull for discontinuing knighthoods – one of the stupidest things Tony Abbott ever did as prime minister. There is no place for them in Australia; we have our own honours system.

While not cancelling the ones already bestowed by Abbott, I would urge the recipients to hand them back. I really don't understand why they ever accepted them – all went down in my estimation as a result.

Eric Hodge, Pearce

On a recent visit to Canberra Airport I had the chance to ponder the "offensive" defence advertising and place this into context against all of the brouhaha published by many concerned readers. I noted that many correspondents were concerned about the message that the advertising may send about our fair Capital to arriving refugees. Considering that many refugees may be of the Islamic faith, I saw a much more concerning display there: the gigantic statue of a naked woman. Here is a new cause de celebre for the whining masses – Project Cover-up. May I suggest a giant black niqab. We wouldn't want to offend anyone.

T.J.Farquahar, Ainslie

The article "Muslims allege government has an agenda of forced assimilation" (November 2, p4) describes some our Muslim neighbours' reluctance to join the Australian community. This article talks about Muslims living in Australia – Australia is their home. Australia's national anthem is sung to show respect for our country. It is sung in celebration when we win gold medals at the Olympics and sung to show respect for Australia at many other events. We usually stand to sing it which also shows respect.

Yes, I agree, all children should sing the national anthem so they learn the song and to show that they have respect for Australia. It is important that Muslim children learn to respect their country, Australia.

It is shocking that Muslim children are taught by their families and communities to show blatant disrespect to Australia by deliberately not singing the national anthem! Where is the Muslim community's respect for Australia?

Margaret Kalms, Page

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