The Woden case involved a long list of serious breaches; the restaurant continued to trade; a re-inspection did not occur for several months; and the subsequent inspection revealed additional breaches. All of this information was withheld from customers. The prosecution case has taken since 2011 to get to court, involving considerable public resources.

This is obviously not unusual, with the prosecution of a restaurant involved in a major food poisoning case in 2013 not due to reach court until 2016 ("Copa Brazilian Restaurant mass poisoning criminal trial delayed", canberratimes.com.au, August 20).

A much more sensible approach is a "scores on doors" program of the type that operates successfully in hundreds of cities around the world. These programs typically require the display of food hygiene scores at entrances to restaurants and cafes, with more-detailed information such as inspection reports available online.

Scores-on-doors programs create a "win-win-win": a win for consumers, who are less likely to suffer food-borne illness; a win for the majority of food businesses, whose food safety compliance is acknowledged; and a win for governments, who spend less on costly prosecutions because the simple act of making food hygiene information publicly available is the most powerful incentive for recalcitrant businesses to "do the right thing".

The community is already on side: a 2014 ACT government-commissioned survey found that more than 80 per cent of Canberrans want food hygiene ratings displayed on the doors of food businesses ("'Scores-on-doors' hygiene ratings will ease eating-out fears: poll", canberratimes.

com.au, July 14).

This is not a complex public health problem it is a simple one, with an obvious solution.

Karina Morris, Weetangera

According to Michael Phillips ("What can be done about school tech failings?", Times2, November 19, p5) there is no "easily identifiable ... group of teachers" who teach digital literacy skills. What about teacher librarians?

We specialise in teaching these essential skills! Unfortunately, I can see why Dr Phillips might have overlooked us because teacher librarian numbers are in sharp decline across our public school system. Indeed, less than a third of Canberra public primary schools now have a qualified teacher librarian on staff.

Holly Godfree, Kambah

Minister for Justice Shane Rattenbury defends the injustice of allowing cyclists to be pretend pedestrians while riding over crossings (Letters, November 16). He should do some basic arithmetic before advocating this anomaly.

Even if, and that is a big "if", a cyclist abides by his conditions of looking for approaching traffic and not exceeding 10km/h (good luck with that given the standards of compliance of cyclists) they will still be travelling at 2.8 metres per second, which is twice normal walking pace. This means that if a cyclist veers onto a crossing they will be in the middle of the nearest traffic lane before a driver with a good reaction time (0.75 second) responds, having travelled at 50km/h some 11 metres before beginning to brake and then having to stop (about another 28 metres under good conditions).

This means that if a cyclist rides across a crossing when a car is within 40 metres under perfect conditions there will be a collision. Under less-perfect conditions (slow reaction times, poor braking effectiveness) even a car 70 metres away doing only 50km/h will inevitably collide with the cyclist.

Allowing cyclists to ride over a crossing makes it nearly impossible for the driver to avoid a collision; this is unjust. Cyclists must be made to dismount and be pedestrians on a pedestrian crossing to minimise the chance of a collision.

Michael Lane, St Ives, NSW

As we all go round in circles, going nowhere with light rail in Canberra, it is useful to note that light rail certainly works in lots of places; and works because it connects people with all sorts of useful spots, and is mostly in the inner city connected to outer services of buses and trains; and so it is useful and connected.

One example of success cited is in Edinburgh so it is very instructive to check out more than the success rates and look at the routes the trams service to find out why the success.

Then what shows up is the pattern of utility and connectedness: the Edinburgh route is one line but a route that connects the main city shopping centres, galleries and museums, main sports stadium, conference centre, zoo, the showground, neighbourhoods and the airport!

So far we are not being "sold" anything as useful as this!

We are not being given a public transport plan that shows how our buses will continue to be enhanced and will connect with any light rail.

If we could just be treated seriously and sensibly by the ACT government, we could all stop going round to nowhere.

Marguerite Castello, Griffith

Arthur Davies (Letters, November 19) proposes the most startling piece of motivated reasoning I have seen in years.

As everybody else understands, Professor Peter Newman's considerable international reputation is based primarily on his extensive, detached and scholarly observation and analysis of a wide range of public transport systems around the world. Yet the one highly successful project he was directly involved in is cited as evidence of the invalidity of his opinion because it entailed heavy rather than light rail!

As an aside, Arthur, by your reasoning, does the fact that I drove trams in Melbourne in 1977 privilege my opinion over yours?

But, more seriously, there may be a useful idea hidden in the confusion.

I believe that the only people involved in the Canberra project with proven track records in light rail are some staff members of Capital Metro and the two short-listed consortia. So maybe it would be best if the rest of us the Downies and Dobeses,

the Corbells and Coes and Arthur and I just shut up and let the real experts get on with the job.

Felix MacNeill Dickson

It is wonderful to read Tim Scully's commentary on security ("Stopping Defence leaks", Times2, November 18, p1), because it shows that optimists are still alive in the defence industry. The solution to all security problems is apparently Big Data!

Pour everything you know into a big computer, stir it around, and out will pop some magic information to tell you what your security risks will be. Ignore your vetting agencies (which are apparently "outdated" and "fallible"), ignore your personnel, and ignore your own involvement in the problems you cause we'll just solve all of that with big computers.

Oh to live in that world! A world where computers can predict the future with perfect clarity; a world where all those annoying, year long waits for security clearances will be discarded. A world where the data can never be manipulated, go missing, show false correlations, or contradict what experts like Tim Scully predict.

If only we had such a technology now.

We could predict the weather perfectly just pour all the data into the computers and they'd predict the weather for the foreseeable future. We could predict crime and arrest people before they'd committed it, like in the movie Minority Report.

We could find every corrupt politician, union official, policeman, and underworld figure simply by putting everyone's data in the gigantic machine and stirring vigorously. And how could they protest? The computer would have said so!

I wish him luck, in this wonderful alternate reality in which he lives.

Paul Wayper, Cook

Mike Reddy's reply (Letters, November 17) to to A.Pavelic (Letters, November 19) accuses him of something he did not say (closing borders) and, somewhat ironically, of "one-eyed" and "short-memory" barracking.

That was followed by a syllogistic and largely linear claim of cause to effect that Australia "played a major role in the rise of [the so-called] Islamic State" to 2014 by joining the 2003 intervention in Iraq.

In a complex geo-political situation, other factors surely played predominant roles over this decade.

First, the Shiite sectarianism and general corruption and incompetence of Iraq's Maliki government once free elections had been enabled, international forces had left over 2009-11 and there were few external or internal restraints on Nouri al-Maliki's counterproductive actions.

Second, the Arab Spring and particularly its resonance in authoritarian Syria, where the supposedly malign "Western" influences to which Mike attributes continual blame have been almost totally absent, and no actual military interventions have occurred, since the final French withdrawal in 1946.

Finally, the ideological or other simplistic belief that countries contributing to multinational stability and peacekeeping operations in overseas trouble spots incur some kind of additional responsibility for refugees fleeing such locations surely turns morality, logic and the UN charter on their heads.

Instead, it is the countries that avoid helping UN and other multinational efforts to ameliorate or resolve crises at source so refugees can safely return home that are usually the same humanitarian bludgers who refuse to sign the Refugee Convention, or only pay lip service to its obligations, even for crises in contiguous countries.

For all our occasional faults in execution, and especially in contrast to virtually all our neighbours, Australia rightly takes both types of international obligation seriously.

Neil James, executive director, Australia Defence Association

So, Dr Marjorie Curtis (Letters, November 20) laments the absence of Winston Churchill to lead the response to the terrorist atrocity perpetrated in Paris.

Would this be the same Winston Churchill who was secretary of state for war when both Sunni and Shiite communities in Iraq revolted against British rule in 1920, in the first "Arab Spring", and who directed its ruthless suppression?

The same heroic Winston Churchill who advocated the use of chemical weapons "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment", adding "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes to spread a lively terror" in Iraq?

John Richardson, Wallagoot, NSW

H.Ronald (Letters, November 18) had hoped the Grand Mufti would have denounced the attacks in Paris as "an affront to Islam". Obviously, the Grand Mufti is aware as we should be that violence and Islam are not uneasy bedfellows. History reveals that during the seventh and eighth centuries AD, Islamic warriors subdued about half of the Christian population by violent means, and killed many non-Muslims over the centuries that followed.

We must keep in mind that ultimately the subordination of all people to Muslim rule is the objective that lies at the heart of traditional Islam. One way to achieve that goal is through violent jihad. Koran 2:216 advises: "Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it", while 9:123 tells Muslims: "Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you".

While Paris is on many minds, may I draw readers' attention to the church-burning that has taken place recently in Aceh apparently with the approval of the authorities. Did Mr Turnbull allude to that barbarity when he met Indonesia's President, Joko Widodo, recently?

Henk Verhoeven, Beacon Hill, NSW

For someone who has spent close to 40 years teaching and doing research at the university, I confess to being baffled by the Turnbull government's decision to reduce the funding to those universities that allow their research-active staff to publish their findings in academic journals ("University watchdog puts 'gamers' on notice" November 18, p6).

It makes one ask who is advising the government on this matter?

Surely, these advisers must be aware that before one's research output is accepted for publication, it has to be scrutinised thoroughly, for quality and authenticity, by academic peers.

So, who on earth is going to take notice of our publications, even if they were to reveal new findings, if they do not appear in one of the popular international academic journals, to which most of the libraries subscribe.

Sam Nona, Burradoo, NSW

My thanks to Mike Dallwitz (Letters, November 19) for suggesting I undertake a quantitative analysis of the impacts of an increase in the rate of GST. Thankfully, Ben Phillips and Matt Taylor from the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling at the University of Canberra have done that for us.

Relying heavily on Australian Bureau of Statistics household expenditure data, modified for the purposes of their analysis, they conclude that an increase in the GST rate and expanding its base to include fresh food, health, education and financial services would hit the poor and less well paid more than the rich. Rich people spend more overseas, on holidays for example.

But there is more to it than that. As Phillips and Taylor say: "Low-income households tend to spend proportionately more on necessities, such as food and petrol. Of particular importance is the reality that higher-income households, on average, save some of their income, while low-income households spend more than their income. This has important implications for the regressivity of the GST with respect to income."

Their paper, "The distributional impact of the GST" (November 2015) is available online. It is well worth the read.

EXPLAIN, PLEASE

Elizabeth Farrelly's article "Food lands under attack" (Times2, November 19, p4) was most disturbing. Australians are quick to call corruption on our Pacific and northern neighbours for destroying forests for timber and plantations. What is the explanation in Australia?

H. Simon, Watson

AN I.S. INCIDENT ...

What about the media reporting any future IS attack as an "incident", giving only the time, place, and number of casualties, along with the fact that the police are dealing with the matter. It would be today's version of Britain's "loose lips sink ships" policy during World War II. Why do the terrorists' work for them?

(Mrs) Lyn Kalbar, Latham

LET US BUY FARMS

S. Kidman and Co apparently can't get an Australian buyer for its vast cattle empire. What about us?

It is appropriate that land of this type, location and scale be in government hands, and subdividing the holdings is clearly not an efficient option. The current owners already lease the raw land from us. They have the properties expertly managed and they're profitable. So, let's go total public (Australian government) ownership, and retain the current managers.

Jack Kershaw, Kambah

WHY DO THEY BOTHER?

You would have to wonder at the lengths the Chinese are going to in building more territory in the South China Sea with dredging and sand when Australia is only too keen to accommodate them here.

K. Davis, Pearce

FIRST MINISTERS

Annastacia Palaszczuk refers to "the premiers, the first ministers and the prime minister" meeting at COAG ("Tax reform marks beginning of end of Palaszczuk-Turnbull honeymoon period", November 20).

Scotland and Northern Ireland have first ministers, but the ACT and NT have chief ministers.

However, "first ministers" could be a useful term to refer collectively to the premiers, the chief ministers and the PM (shorter than "heads of government" or "heads of jurisdiction").

Michael McCarthy

HERITAGE EYESORES

Who or what is the Heritage Council? An elected parliamentary body, or a bunch of unelected, unaccountable busy bodies? The so-called "heritage units" in Northbourne Avenue are an eyesore ("Heritage approval for Northbourne", November 20,p2). What not let the elected government make the decisions for a change?

R.C. Warn, Weston

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