Cutting and restricting access to social services, keeping Newstart recipients well below the poverty line, maintaining high rates of permanent and temporary immigration (as distinct from refugee intake, a tiny proportion of our overall migration rates) without putting public infrastructure in place. Tolerating gaming by private employment agencies, to the detriment of the unemployed.

Eroding Medicare and bulk-billing. Emasculating our technical and further education system and opening up the market to unscrupulous companies which prey on the weak. Turning a blind eye to the exploitation of foreign workers, trying to reduce wages and conditions, incessantly attacking the union movement and fostering the demise of manufacturing.

Reducing funding for legal aid and domestic violence services. Undermining the equity component of Gonski and continuing high levels of funding for wealthy private schools.

Pushing university fee deregulation to prevent the children of the poor from getting worthwhile degrees.

Supporting negative gearing and unaffordable housing for the middle and low paid, while doing little to provide public housing or rent relief. Signing trade agreements which admit unlimited entry of foreign workers without labour-market testing, and allow foreign corporations to sue Australia for public interest measures, such as legislating to prevent financial services from systemically cheating their customers. And then of course, defunding research and monitoring bodies which scrutinise such measures!

What emerges is a blueprint for entrenching privilege and creating a permanent and growing underclass of the unemployed and underemployed low paid, living homeless or in slum accommodation, with limited access to health, education and legal services, desperate for any crumbs of work they can get.

Pauline Westwood, Dickson

No to urban renewal

The rationale given by ACT Planning Minister Mick Gentleman for a next-generation Tuggeranong suburb is that it will provide urban renewal that is vital for growing the economy and strengthening our community and that it will provide opportunities to revitalise the commercial area and increase the residential accommodation supply in Tuggeranong.

This is all well and good, but wasn't this already addressed in 2012 through the Tuggeranong Town Centre Master Plan?

That master plan provides a number of recommendations on how to boost business activity and development of the town centre. Along with the Greenway Master Plan, it allows for 14,000 new residents within the current footprint. As it clearly points out, limiting the centre to its current footprint makes more efficient use of existing infrastructure.

Like many Tuggeranong residents, I was involved in community consultation for the master plan, but just four years later it appears that one of the key findings could be completely disregarded. With community consultation for the new suburb clearly showing an overwhelming majority against it, will they listen to us this time?

Narrelle Kelly, Greenway

Trams don't add up

The ACT Budget shows that the entire cost of the ACTION bus network (including city-wide commuter, school and special needs services) is expected to be $144 million in 2015-16, while the proposed Capital Metro service, which will mainly move existing bus passengers onto trams on a single route, will cost $375 million up front plus an average of $64 million per annum ("Canberrans to pay $375m upfront as light rail contract signed", May18, p1).

This means that (taking into account the upfront cost) the single tram route will cost about half of the cost of the entire ACTION network. So for the cost of the Capital Metro service, we could probably increase the coverage and/or service levels of the bus service by about 50 per cent. If the objective is to shift people from cars to public transport, the tram seems to be very poor value.

Michael Plummer, Watson

Gas turbines preferred

I assume H.Ronald (Letters, May16) was referring to me. However this is strange because I thought I made it clear that my preference would be to use gas turbines for backup since they can be easily turned on and off, do not have to run unless their electricity is needed and have a relatively low capital cost. When gas is used for backup the turbines can be turned off when renewable energy is available, resulting in zero emissions.

Other options may become available such as pumped hydro and battery storage. We should also be reducing the use of backup by spreading renewable assets geographically and by demand management. For instance current domestic pricing mechanisms are designed to move daytime demand to night. We would want to reverse that if photovoltaic generation becomes dominant.

I agree that coal is not suitable for backup purposes. The good news is that we have been able to close down some coal-fired power stations and reduce the operation of others to peak seasons. We need to continue and to accelerate this process.

Paul Pentony, Hackett

Danger under foot

I can only agree wholeheartedly with Trevor Willis's summary of the appalling condition of much of the urban Canberra landscape due to graffiti and poor mowing standards (Letters, May18). However, I would go a stage further and point out the difficulty and danger created by the poor condition of many of the pavements in older suburbs.

Take O'Connor, for example. I occasionally accompany a disabled friend in a wheelchair from her home in Moorhouse Street to the shops. It takes me a considerable amount of physical effort and careful route-planning to assist my friend to manoeuvre the many cracked and broken concrete slabs, the poorly designed curbs and gutters and the badly trimmed hedges overhanging the pathway. My completion of the ACT government's web-based maintenance register a year ago seems to have had no effect. With so much attention being paid to the Canberra of the future it seems that the present government is forgetting the plight of old Canberra and its residents.

Timothy Walsh, Garran

Byran Furnass (Letters, May 19)is right to slam the present government for its appalling lack of interest in science.

He is also right in suggesting all other governments have been similarly disinterested. But in doing so he is wrong to suggest that Barry Jones was our only scientist/minister. Barry was not a scientist despite being highly passionate about it. But even he found it impossible to convince the Hawke government to get serious about this elemental topic.

Actually, Jones was not even a member of the cabinet, being confined to the less influential outer ministry.

He told me once that when he asked Hawke why he was on the "outer", he said, rather wistfully, that Hawke replied: "Sorry Bazza, there isn't enough room for two intellectuals in cabinet".

I got the feeling that that Jones thought that Hawke wasn't joking.

Eric Hunter, Cook

Police misused

The Australian Federal Police raids on a Labor MP's office and a staffer's private home ("AFP conducted raids after NBN complaints over media leaks", canberratimes.com.au, May 20) were an extraordinary use of police resources to find out who is guilty of the crime of holding government accountable for the administration of an important and expensive infrastructure project. Scarce government resources would be better spent investigating why such important information on the NBN rollout was not already available to the public.

Tony Judge, Woolgoolga, NSW

Talent quest

Having just caught up with the scintillating performance on Q&A last Monday week of that luminary, Kelly O'Dwyer, can Malcolm Turnbull please confirm he has someone else with a modicum of talent in his "kit bag".

L. Christie, Canberra City

As I have a taxable income of less than $80,000 a year I can only congratulate those on higher incomes who benefited from the federal budget announcement by the Coalition, which has apparently listened earnestly to people's concerns about income "bracket creep". I have been remiss in falling behind and do not deserve such consideration, along with 10 million of my compatriots, due to my lack of ambition to make the grade into "bracket creep" income levels.

Even more heartening is the tax relief that the super wealthy will get from this "initiative", given that they will now have to re-consider their squirreling away of their annual incomes (equal to what I owe on my mortgage) to low tax superannuation schemes.

I am so happy that the swings and roundabouts of government tax policy means that at least members of the Coalition won't be worse off. They should still be able to afford that box of Cuban cigars in 2020 despite the tobacco tax increase (whew, I was worried there for a bit) to enjoy after getting through their banking industry funded ACCC investigations.

No doubt that all this will be "budgeted" for with further "efficiencies" in the arts, education and health systems throughout Australia. Not to mention applying a good dose of efficiency dividends to the ranks of those "permanent" public servants who blight this country with red tape and compliance that so often stymies those who try to better themselves through honest tax avoidance and profit shifting. And our prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, looks so nice and speaks so nicely, of course I'll be voting for him. Not.

Justin Flynn, Conder

Rudd needed Liberals

John Warhurst, in his article "Minority rule, greater good" (Times2, 19 May, p 4) states that the Rudd government, with Green support, had effective control of the Senate 2008-2010, and that the Gillard government had the same from 2010. This is wrong.

From mid-2008 until July 1, 2011, Labor and the Greens could only pass legislation which was opposed by the Coalition, through the Senate, with the necessary 39 votes, with the support of the two independents Steve Fielding and Nick Xenophon.

That is why the Rudd government negotiated in 2008-09 with the Liberals on an emissions trading scheme, and not the Greens. With climate denialist Fielding's views, a scheme could only have got through with Liberal support. Winning Green support was useless in getting it through. This all changed on July 1, 2011, from which point Labor and the Greens had the numbers to pass legislation.

Paul Pollard, O'Connor

Not just about money

Contrary to Michael Lee's claims ("Yes, Mr Turnbull, it is all about the money!", Times2, May 18, p5) the Turnbull government's plan for student achievement will deliver record funding to schools that is needs-based and tied to proven initiatives that will lift outcomes for Australia's children.

We will build on the existing record base for federal funding, which will grow from $16 billion in 2016 to $20.1 billion in 2020. Our growth means there's no reason schools won't be able to continue to support teachers and new or existing initiatives, such as specialist teachers or targeted intervention programs. While funding matters, what you do with it matters even more.

The Coalition is the only party with a fully-funded and affordable plan that ensures money is directed where it's most needed and focuses on evidence-based measures that will improve outcomes in literacy, numeracy, STEM subjects and prepare students for the jobs of the future.

Simon Birmingham, federal Minister for Education and Training

No concession

Paul Feldman (Letters, May 18) continues to assert that taxing only 50 per cent of capital gains is a "concession"; and John Simmons (Letters, May 18) asks why "current arrangements for negative gearing and capital gains tax on residential property should remain as is".

Mr Feldman should re-read my letters of May 10 and 12, where I explained the so-called 50 per cent "concession" is not a concession at all, but simply a quid-pro-quo for no longer allowing for inflation in calculating the capital gain – with some paying less tax, and some paying more. The latter certainly don't call it a "concession"!

As for Mr Simmons, one reason (there are others) why negative gearing shouldn't be abolished or penalised in some other way is that it would be unfair, in calculating the tax payable on a person's income, to not allow the taxpayer to deduct from that income the whole of the costs incurred in earning it.

As for the so-called 50 per cent capital gains tax "concession", see my answer to Feldman above.

Personally, I think the previous arrangement of taxing 100 per cent but allowing for inflation should be restored.

R.S. Gilbert, Braddon

Duo weren't Zionists

Steve Pinker was not a Zionist in 2009 (http://jewishquarterly.org/2009/12/steven-pinker-bencie-woll/, 21/12/2009), and I infer from his signature on a letter to the New York Times following Deir Yassin, that Albert Einstein was not a Zionist in 1948 (http://users.physics.harvard.edu/~wilson/NYTimes1948.html , 22 May 2002).

By the way, it's Mr Griffiths to you, Mark Kessel (Letters, May 18).

Kenneth Griffiths, Tegal, Indonesia

Unions not the thugs

Kirk Coningham, executive director of the Master Builders Association of the ACT, writes that "Canberra's construction teams have voted to have nothing further to do with the thugs and bullies who have plagued our industry for the past decade or more"' (Letters, Thursday 19 May).

Given that successive Labor and Liberal governments have criminalised legitimate union activity such false accusations are easy to make.

With the succession of failed political prosecutions of building unions officials (John Lomax is but one glaring example) perhaps it is time to call out this thuggery claim for what is is – a self serving lie by the bosses and their government to attempt to destroy those few unions like the CFMEU which do stand up for their members, their jobs,their wages and their lives.

Every time I read of yet another death or serious injury on a building site I know who the real thugs and criminals are – those bosses and their organisations who put profit before people.

John Passant, Kambah

TV TIP-OFF

Who leaked to the press that there was to be a raid by the AFP on a Labor senator's office and a staffer's home, so that the TV cameras were there on cue and breakfast TV could carry the story?

Adrian Gibbs, Yarralumla

FOR OR AGAINST

It has now become abundantly clear, as an early and important outcome of the federal election, that we will be voting for or against a Turnbull-Abbott government.

Tim Hardy, Florey

NOISY PROTEST

Are they serious! Kangaroo cull protesters let off frighteningly loud explosions in Hackett on Thursday night terrifying residents (and their pets). Heart still racing.

I'd rather have the licensed shooters – not happy Jan!

Lyn Parkinson, Hackett

GIFT OR BRIBE?

Why does the media persist in referring to large monetary gifts, usually given to both major political parties by the big banks, mining companies, and other large corporations, as "donations"?

It's obvious, even to Blind Freddy, that the ulterior motive behind this largesse is to create an obligation, to buy influence. In plain English, "a bribe".

Michael Adler, Gungahlin

JOBS DRIVE OFF

The 3500 jobs advertised on the sides of ACTION buses by UnionsACT seems to have dwindled to 500, as predicted by CanTheTram.

Chris Emery, Reid

BRIGHT IDEA

There is a perfect alternative to incandescent and CFL lighting: LED bulbs. These have made huge improvements in even the last few years. They deliver bright light, instant on, warm white colour, ultra-low energy usage, 10 times longer lifespan and no toxic components. They are available in 240V bulbs as well as 12V down lights. Our entire house is now on LED lighting. It's the bright thing to do.

Robert Lang, Bruce

LOVE LETTERS

Bravo, Peter Downie (Letters, May18) for expressing sentiments that made me smile from head-to-toe. Love for your niece, her partner, their kid(s) is truly "God-like" ... in my understanding of God.

I'm not Christian; still, your letter, your love and your actions based on your love epitomise what I've been told is the spirit of Jesus, of God.

I hope more uncles can support their nieces and their children the way you do.

Judy Bamberger, O'Connor

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