Questions need to be asked of the higher powers, who have consistently denied the school the resourcing and staffing promised and, more seriously, allowed the toxic culture of bullying and professional misconduct to continue unfettered, resulting in a haemorrhaging of both staff and students, and now the head.

Professor Tregear was what the School of Music needed, vigorously providing it with renewal and encouraging the staff and students who remained to believe in themselves and their ability to create music of great power. It is because of the continued mismanagement of the school and its staff by the ANU that it again finds itself disillusioned and without leadership.

Through deliberate actions and inactions the Canberra music community has been unfairly robbed of its most dynamic and passionate advocate.

Melinda Sawers, PhD student, ANU School of Music

The Australia Institute report into "ridesharing" in Canberra ("Catching a ride to city's future", August 17, p1) was paid for by Uber.

Uber expends enormous resources framing itself as being in the "ridesharing" business, although the reality is completely different. It is no more "ridesharing" than a restaurant is "food sharing" or a barber is "scissor sharing".

Uber knows that the ACT government is desperately looking for any remotely feasible scenario whereby even a heavily subsidised light rail could attract 20,000 journeys a day, so it is willing to oblige, hoping for a favourable decision on its entry to the ACT.

However, Uber has stated its intention to have replaced expensive human drivers with fleets of autonomous cars by 2020. I doubt its "sharing" ethos extends to sharing its potential fares with light-rail, just as I doubt its passengers will prefer to exit their Uber-car to wait for a tram, stand during the 33-minute wobble into town, then wait for another Uber-car to their destination.

Kent Fitch, Nicholls

Reading of the report by the Australia Institute ("Catching a ride to city's future", August 17, p1), I was inclined to think that Uber had written it. Then I found that Uber, arch-political strategist and corporate bully had commissioned the report.

Based on its form, I would have thought the Australia Institute might have had concerns about dealing with a foreign company, set up to transfuse money to the United States on what could be a virtual tax-free gravy train, while pushing hardworking Australians out of work.

To cast doubt on the taxi industry's claims of an oversupply without consulting the taxi industry is unfortunate. Fifty-one licences "on the shelf" at Dickson is a fair sign that people have been doing it tough, and drop-in business will see more licences surrendered, to the detriment of service in outlying areas and to taxi families. Nothing involving people will ever be perfect, but the average pick-up time for taxis in Canberra is not much over five minutes.

Comparing the number of taxis per capita in Canberra to that in other cities is not valid.

Taxis are part of public transport and exist to complement the various forms of mass public transport, to be used for "the extra kilometre" or when the cheaper option is not available or not convenient. If bus (or tram) patronage were higher, the demand for and supply of taxis would be higher, and fares would be cheaper.

There is no credible research showing that ride-hailing has reduced car ownership or road congestion anywhere in the world (indeed there is suspicion in New York that Uber vehicles have made congestion worse).

John McKeough, chairman, Canberra Taxi Industry Association

Philip Robinson (Letters, August 18) is mistaken in saying secular law is based on divine law; our laws are the fruit of ethical considerations and, thankfully, in a constant state of refinement. If we were living in the Vatican, Saudi Arabia or Islamic State, his claim would be superficially stronger, but still weak.

He says abortion is in contravention of natural law. He is mistaken; natural law encompasses every possible act (volcanic eruption, laughing, bee stings) and is therefore an unsuitable basis for morality.

He says women seeking an abortion should use the side door to avoid prayer vigils. Harassing women has no place in our society; ritualised harassment less so. I would advise Philip to reread my opening paragraph on ethics and secular law.

Peter Robinson, Ainslie

Water divining is not always a scam, as Baden Williams attests (Letters, August 17). While there are those who falsely profess proficiency, there are many who make an honest living from it.

The late Fraser Rose was a well-known Longreach well borer who, in his long lifetime, drilled hundreds of artesian and sub-artesian bores to depths between 180 and 1500 metres. Going to those depths, one penetrates mostly rock and passes through many different aquifers. Fresh water was the exception rather than the rule, most bores yielded mineralised water, some highly so, not for bottling by any stretch of the imagination but life-blood to livestock and kangaroos.

Fraser divined all of his bores using slender, green Y-shaped tree twigs, less than five millimetres in diameter, and showed my parents and I how to do it. We could duplicate his divinations and I vividly recall, even as a small child, seeing the twist in the twig as it bent down to the flow hundreds of metres below.

I don't think he ever used wire.

I asked him how many "dry" holes he had drilled. He replied, only one and that was where the land holder wanted the bore located against Fraser's recommendations. He drilled three sub-artesian (windmill pumped) bores of about 180 metres for us in the decade or so following the war and got water in each case.

Stand aside sceptics, Baden Williams' case is sound.

David Mackenzie, Chapman

The orders of the Federal Court setting aside Environment Minister Greg Hunt's Adani coal mine decision specifically states that the order is made "by consent". Why would the Commonwealth have consented to the order setting aside its own decision?

Obviously because the Commonwealth realised it had made an error of law. That is, it had acted illegally.

Now Attorney-General Senator George Brandis has announced legislation intended to prevent ordinary members of the community from challenging illegal decisions of the executive government.

There was a time when a key function of the Attorney-General, as first law officer responsible for law and justice, was to uphold the rule of law.

Ernst Willheim, Forrest

In his highly informative article, Clive Williams rightly states that committing more military resources to counter Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria is rather pointless; not least because the chaos now dominating the region is entirely due to the hostility between Sunni and Shia ("Seeking sustainable solution" Times2, August 18, p1).

Indeed, when the United States-led invasion of Iraq, in 2003, destroyed the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein and handed the country over to the Shia, the US had not given a thought to the consequences of its military action.

The tragic loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives following that invasion may well be repeated, several times over, if the West, led again by the US, continues to chase IS without a plausible strategy.

Surely, if there were a single lesson to be learnt from the Middle East's recent past, no sensible person would now seek a military solution.

Sam Nona, Burradoo, NSW

Ross Fitzgerald's article "University games: protect ANU from CQU's rebranding overreach" (Times2, August 7, p5) offers a grossly inaccurate and unfair assessment on the character of CQ University.

The article appears disparaging towards the university having an interest in exporting higher education beyond its geographic name-sake boundaries, even suggesting that we need COAG to step in and save us from their business model.

Cairns is one of the many regional centres that has benefited from CQ University's business model of delivering quality higher education to non-metropolitan communities. Its impact on my community has been extraordinary, its conduct as a corporate citizen exemplary, its integrity as a university second to none. For the first time in Cairns' history our school-leavers can enjoy what their big-city cousins have taken for granted for generations; choice and competition in tertiary space.

I suspect Professor Fitzgerald has not had nearly as many dealings with CQ University as I have over the past four years, but I would welcome him to Cairns – or any of the 21 communities serviced by CQ University – to see how unfounded his judgments are.

Cr Bob Manning, mayor, Cairns

Despite what Christopher Jobson (Letters, August 19) asserts, VP Day is perfectly correct in Australia and nothing whatever to do with "political correctness". Nor is it to do with any supposed historical revisionism.

The Australian War Memorial, bless 'em, explain it all, in print ("VP or VJ Day?", Wartime No 21 2003) and online: "August 15, is usually referred to as VP Day. In August 1945, Australian governments gazetted a public holiday as VP Day and most newspapers reported it as such. However, the governments of Britain, the United States and New Zealand preferred VJ Day. It is not true, as some have claimed, that the day was originally called VJ and that the name was surreptitiously changed later."

Don Clark, Latham

I read with dismay Hugh White's article "Australia's shipbuilding plan a massive mistake" (Times2, August 18, p5) which essentially said we should buy frigates offshore because we can get them cheaper and – as an aside – that they should be smaller because large ships "would have no serious chance of surviving." I find it disconcerting that people look for all manner of reasons why something is too difficult to do in this country when it is clearly well within our abilities. As the successful locally produced Anzac frigate program demonstrated, with planning, long-term commitment, a good management team and a series production there is no reason why Australia cannot produce cost-effective warships.

Austal in WA is a world class builder of aluminium ships. Importantly, local construction creates an enhanced ability to sustain and modernise warships as well as reducing through-life costs.

In regard to the size of the new frigates, Hugh White was disingenuous in saying the US Navy was concerned about the size of its ships.

The US Navy continues to build surface combatants larger than those planned for Australia. In this regard, White's assessment of the place of surface ships in future conflict may stem from a misunderstanding of the actual working of the communications networks, computers, remote sensors – such as satellites – and data links that support modern warfare. It is high time that the strategic debate in Australia moved up a level from the fixation on platforms that marks so much commentary.

Frigates as well as other ships, aircraft and submarines operate as part of a joint force with the benefit of the systems already described. It is how they all work together and what each unit brings to the force as a whole that counts.

As a maritime nation, Australia needs frigates that can operate far from home and in adverse sea states. They need to be able to operate helicopters and unmanned units of the future, and carry sensors and precision weapons. The size of the ship Australia is seeking is typical of those entering service in the navies of global trading nations. Let us approach the program confident in our ability to deliver a world-class capability just as we did with the Anzac frigate.

Vice-Admiral Peter Jones (retired) president, Australian Naval Institute, Hawker

The correspondence about the recent Canberra criminal trial of the owner of a dog that attacked and injured a small child seems to reflect more on the psychological peculiarities of dog owners and obsessives than the facts of that case.

A number of serious issues connected with dog attacks are well illustrated in this case. Firstly, there is an issue with dangerous breeds, and the potential they have to do greater harm due to their physiology and psychology. They are also more likely to exhibit biting behaviour, with fewer of the cues that other breeds typically show (growling and posturing). These factors combine with the fact that some of the owners drawn to these breeds are not knowledgeable about dogs and/or have less inclination to socialise and train them. That aside, the central issue is what should be done with a dog that has attacked a child with serious intent and without giving any warning to its owner or anyone else present.

This dog has demonstrated that it is far more likely than the average dog to create harm in the community, and should be put down.

Those writers looking to blame all and sundry, including the parents of the child, and who use terms like "accident" while putting great store in the fact that the dog had, supposedly, up until that point not shown any dangerous behaviours, are missing an obvious point and are also dangerously ignorant of dog behaviour.

The lack of warning and seriousness of the attack on a child are all key factors in assessing what should be done. The nature of the legal process and other details are secondary to these points, although they clearly do not properly account for them.

Fining an owner runs a poor second to ordering the destruction of a dangerous dog which, through no fault of its own, represents a hazard to the community.

B.Jones, Aranda

MAKE PLEBISCITE COUNT

Yes to a plebiscite on same-sex marriage, and as soon as possible – well before the next election. But it has to be compulsory so that finally the voice of of the silent majority can be heard.

M.A.Gibson, Downer

NO TEXT TOUCHDOWNS

As long as journalists try to educate readers about American football with information like "Most return men opt to take a knee for a touchback in that situation ..." ("How Hayne turned into the headline act", Sport, August 17, p19), I fear the sport will remain a mystery to many of us.

Gordon Fyfe, Kambah

VOTES WON, JOB DONE

On Tuesday night our state Member of Parliament, Pru Goward, answered questions at Goulburn Mulwaree Council. I asked did she have an update on the escaped prisoner from Goulburn jail? Her reply was facetious: "No, he didn't call me to let me know." Oh what a difference an election makes!

Cr Robin Saville, Goulburn, NSW

Escape from maximum security by tying bed-sheets together! Richard Attenborough must have turned in his grave.

Phil O'Brien, Flynn

PRINCE PULLS RANK

Due to downsizing, the highest rank a serviceman in the Royal Navy or British Army can aspire to is that of admiral or general respectively. I was bemused to see that Prince Charles, when attending the commemoration of the D-Day Landings in June and then the VJ Day commemoration in August, wore firstly an admiral of the fleet's uniform, followed by the adornment of a field marshal. And he is not even King yet.

J.J.Goold, Mudgeeraba, Qld

BACK TO GRASSROOTS

I love it when an unexpected sentence in an otherwise workaday piece reminds me of Old Australia. Jack Waterford quotes Gareth Evans to Bob Hawke: "It's time to move on. The dogs are pissing on your swag." ("Model T Abbott no better than first version", Forum, August 15, p1). I could almost love Old (white) Australia but for the dispossession and killing of Aborigines.

Kenneth Griffiths, O'Connor

BOOMERANG BARNABY

Industry and Science Minister Ian Macfarlane has lashed out at environmental activists and anyone who is against coal mining, saying they're a threat to our future.

I'm sure that Barnaby Joyce will now scurry northward to proclaim that none of this applies to anybody in the electorate of New England.

G.Agnew, Coopers Plains, Qld

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