In his budget in reply speech, Bill Shorten plied us with platitude after platitude, many devoid of facts, interspersed by innuendo and personal attacks on the Prime Minister. It's hard to think of one possible golden promise that he missed in his address, thus conjuring up the suspicion of a slick con job.

Yet when he was then put under the hammer by Leigh Sales on the ABC 7.30 Report he seemed uncomfortably lost for definitive answers – reverting instead to those repetitive platitudes! Sorry Mr Shorten but Australia needs more than slick smoke and mirrors. Nor do we need to revert to union style brawling, rather reasoned debate aimed at uniting all facets of our diverse national identity.

Soap box oratory and playing the man is in stark contrast to Professor John Warhurst's incisive article pleading "Let's be best civil in campaign" (Times2, May 5, p1). Should be mandatory reading for the Opposition.

Len Goodman, Flynn

I've been trying to find an apt comment on the wake of Bill Shorten's post-budget electoral undertakings. I then remembered my favourite words of wisdom from a great man that I liked quoting when I was a young and foolishly risk seeking student of socialist political economics under Ceausescu's regime: Here they are: "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." The author? Winston Churchill.

Mario Moldoveanu, Frankston, Vic

Eight years ago the CT kindly published a letter in which I criticised Wayne Swan's first budget. It lacked incentives to create a low-carbon Australian economy. I gave three examples of the kind of budgetary initiatives that would contribute to this necessary transition: discontinuing subsidies to fossil fuel industries; creating green jobs by mandating increases in the efficiency of energy usage; and prohibiting the clearing of native forests to safeguard their vital role in carbon capture and storage. Successive Australian Treasurers have ignored these and other low-hanging fruits.

Scott Morrison is no exception.

Australia still has one of the highest per capita CO2 emissions in the developed world, over 17 tonnes per person per year. Meanwhile, 500 million people in the European Union have halved their CO2 emissions per capita, from 12 tonnes per annum in 1990 to 6 tonnes today. China, the US (the world's largest emitters) and many other countries are now following their lead.

If this were a sporting contest we might take it seriously and lift our game. At the moment we are not up with the pack in reducing emissions. What's at stake here is crucial for our future.

David Teather, Reid

Malcolm Mackerras (Letters, May 3) makes an important point in criticising the Australian Electoral Commission for concentrating its advertising about the new arrangements that abolish group voting tickets on the false assertion that the Senate ballot-paper instructions must be complied with when savings provisions will accept as formal votes marking just one party box or six candidates' names in sequence.

The information campaign would be much more effective if its starting point was that the marking of Senate preferences is now just an instruction about the order in which candidates can have access to anything still unused of an individual's single transferable vote.

Once electors grasp that fundamental point, they will either decide to maximise their chances of having a fully effective vote by numbering as far as they actually care about what might happen, or declare that they are supportive of only a small subset of parties or candidates come what may, and risk wasting all or part of their vote.

That's the point at which the ballot-paper instructions or the actual requirements for a formal vote can usefully be brought in.

Nothing is gained through advertising that deceives electors while failing to empower them.

Bogey Musidlak, convener, Proportional Representation Society of Australia (ACT Branch)

In presenting the proposed changes to company tax rates and thresholds last week, federal Treasurer Scott Morrison claimed that "this will mean 870,000 businesses, employing 3.4 million Australians, will have their tax rate reduced, including a 2.5 percentage point cut in the tax rate for up to 60,000 businesses with a turnover between $2 million and $10 million, employing around 1.5 million Australians."

Yet an examination of the latest published Taxation Statistics, for 2013-14, shows that of the 887,349 companies lodging tax returns in that year, only 363,325, or 41 per cent, paid any net tax.

The other nearly 60 per cent have already found a way to pay no tax, and so will not need the assistance offered by the Treasurer.

Either the Treasurer didn't bother to check with a competent public servant, or else he is guilty of grabbing the biggest number that would make himself look good.

Let's get rid of the spin cycle!

Chris Mobbs, Torrens

I learned last week that a nuclear waste dump in South Australia is a near certainty. Can we be assured that this dump will only be utilised for Australian waste and not become a depository for overseas waste?

Garry O'Gorman, Binalong, NSW

It is disappointing to hear people complain that they didn't get something out of the budget. To quote John F. Kennedy: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

Col Tennant, Gordon

How is it that an independent tribunal feels that politicians' salaries must go up in line with inflation (or even higher) while those same politicians can freeze Medicare rebates?

Maria Greene, Curtin

The National Capital Authority performs a special role as trustee of the National Capital and so it serves the interests of all Australians. It cares for nationally significant parts of Canberra and after today, that will not include the Murrumbidgee River ("Sweeping changes to ACT planning", May 4, p1).

It is hard to imagine how this iconic river, that is a major tributary of the Murray River, within the Murray-Darling basin, isn't nationally significant. The National Capital Authority is a check on power, so that the ACT government cannot wantonly damage or remove a nationally significant asset. It is apparent that this change will serve the interests of a few over the interests of the many.

The community movement to save the Murrumbidgee River corridor in Tuggeranong will only grow in strength and support following this sneaky backroom deal by politicians in favour of development at any cost.

Matthew Frawley, Kambah

One wonders just how stupid and out of touch this current ACT government can be. Not content with extorting extra rates from residents because of its Capital Metro and green energy plans, now, acting on a thought bubble, they want to close down most businesses in Phillip ("Drivers to be slugged in Woden pay parking plan", May 6, p5)!

Why would customers of businesses in Colbee Court, Dundas Court, etc pay the government for the pleasure of using on-street parking while their vehicles are waiting to have mechanical work done or tyres fitted? It is not as though customers have a choice as there is no off-street parking.

Is this change really about forcing workers into ACTION buses, or just a sneaky way of forcing a change in zoning from commercial to residential without paying compensation to existing businesses? Ah, the power of the development dollar!

Jeff Carl, Rivett

After reading the article "Batteries in Greens bargaining over budget" (May 5, p5) I have concerns.

I have rooftop solar with our electricity provider and I contacted them about the ACT government's far-sighted trial of battery storage to see if it was viable for my household on a cost/benefit basis. We have a 3kw system and save around $650 per year in savings from it.

The battery available under the trial required a charge of 8wh per day to fully charge the battery but on our generation figures that would only be achieved six months out of 12, and the projected savings on that basis was an additional $150 per annum against a capital cost of $5000.

The killer was that the battery life was five years. So on a simple cost/benefit ratio it was not viable economically for my household as the battery needed to be replaced after five years. The Greens proposal needs significantly more detail to ascertain the actual economic viability of it and it would vary greatly household to household.

The analysis above was based on existing technology costs and current electricity prices – a change in either would lead me to reconsider the household economics of the issue.

Rohan Goyne, Evatt

Kenneth Baldwin ("ACT's renewables program the only game in town", Times2, May 3, p5) cherry picks Stage 2 of the South Australian Hornsdale Wind Farm contracted at $77/MWh. Stage 1 Hornsdale is to receive $92/MWh, the same as the recently approved Sapphire Wind Farm in northern NSW, all 3 contracts for generators of 100MW.

The ACT is not buying the wind farms' electricity. Hornsdale's will be sold into the SA market often at low and sometimes negative prices. If the average price achieved is $40/MWh, ACT electricity consumers will pay subsidies of $21million and $15 million for Stage 1 and Stage 2 respectively. Instead of providing the ACT with electricity, each year Hornsdale's generation will offset 800 gigawatt hours of fossil-fuelled electricity contained in that sourced from NSW.

SA might achieve 50 per cent renewables in its electricity mix but a large proportion of this will be from wind farms supported by the Renewable Energy Target scheme. In 2020, the ACT will rightly book its share of the national scheme, a credit of 500GWh at a cost of $25 million to its electricity bills. Double counting?

Technological and economic improvement in renewables continues. Professor Baldwin's argument that the ACT gains economically by rushing to fully support expensive and mostly remote electricity generation a decade or two before the rest of Australia is unconvincing.

John Bromhead, Rivett

The only practical answer, at this point, to Ed Dobson's concerns (Letters, May 4) about powering a city with solar and wind on a still night would be a peaking gas-fired power station. These are designed specifically for that purpose.

Are we now going to see the monster that AGL has approval for proceeding at Dalton?

The only reason it was put on hold was economics and it would suit the ACT government because it is out of sight on the other side of the border.

Chris Morgan, Evatt

The largely unlamented death of Neil Prakash and other Islamist terrorists in Iraq and Syria again highlights logical and ethical inconsistencies in those still quibbling about the necessary stripping of citizenship from traitors who go overseas and take up arms against Australia.

Particularly when they agree with the majority of Australians who note that such battlefield deaths are a direct and indeed proper consequence of the treachery involved.

Double standards about enforcing the reciprocal citizenship responsibilities every Australian shares are especially unfair to those citizens in our defence force that we lawfully deploy to such conflicts on our behalf.

Why should our diggers and our allies ever have to fight such traitors with the traitor still wrongly able to claim the privileges of Australian citizenship after choosing to reject, and indisputably betray, them.

Strong and consistent measures are always necessary to mark both our national abhorrence of treachery and to deter and punish such a serious crime.

Especially when the traitor cannot be captured for trial in Australia – and no digger's life should be unduly risked to do so when killing them still delivers the appropriate deterrence and punishment.

Neil James, executive director, Australia Defence Association

As a retired scientist, it is obvious to me that curiosity-driven research and long-term monitoring are both essential parts of science. But neither are attractive to commerce. They used to be well supported by universities but reduced funding has necessitated more dependence on industry support.

So it is important there is an "independent" research body such as the CSIRO, able to cover the basic science necessary to understand the environment as well as tackling the long-term, rather than the short-term commitments associated with grants. With climate change we're facing a catastrophe that will eclipse all other concerns if it is allowed to.

We have to do two things. One: monitor exactly what is going on in the southern hemisphere so we can predict as accurately as possible what will have to be faced. This has to be long term: natural variation clouds the short term.

For the rest of the world, our contribution is very important – there is no way predictions can be made for the northern hemisphere without accurate data on what is happening in the very different southern hemisphere. Two: prepare the adaptations that will be necessary for the new climate, only possible with the predictions [one: monitoring], that will change with time.

What an inappropriate moment to cut funding to the body responsible for this research. Even if another government reinstated the funding it would be too late, the scientists would be gone.

Joanna M. Jones, Lyons

I am told on good authority there are well over 1000 bores in Australia that are uncapped. That means gallons of precious underground water continually pour (not trickle) and just soak into the ground from these uncapped bores 24 hours every single day and have done so since the very early 1900s.

Unbelievable and completely irresponsible. Shame on all governments for not acting to remedy this.

D. Page, Kingston

TO THE POINT

The Canberra Times wants to hear from you in short bursts. Email views in 50 words or fewer to

letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au

POWER COSTS DOWN

George's Papadopoulos's comments (Letters, May 5) about skyrocketing energy costs arising from a shift to renewable energy are wrong. The trend in wind and solar power costs across the world is "down, down, down". The companies bidding these sharply declining prices are hard headed capitalists who have calculated that they can make a profit on these contracts.

Doug Hynd, Stirling

SYSTEM SLIP CORRECTED

My letter (May 3) on the Senate electoral system carried a mistake which might have been caused by a transcription error. The last part of the fourth paragraph should have read: "If this dishonest system comes into force I shall treat the advice as though it reads: 'Place the numbers 1 to at least 6 in these boxes to indicate your choice'. Were I to do that I would still vote formally".

Malcolm Mackerras, Campbell

DUTTON CRACKS A SMILE

Ed Highley (Letters, May 6) asks if anyone has ever seen Peter Dutton smile. I have when he quipped about the plight of Pacific island nations facing rising seas from climate change. He said "time doesn't mean anything when you're about to have water lapping at your door".

Felicity Chivas, Scullin

A QUESTION OF TIMING

Julie Bishop is seen constantly using her phone during Parliamentary Question Time. Is she addicted to Facebook or revealing an appalling lack of manners in her workplace?

Erica Mehrtens, Northcote, Vic

PAPERS IN THE MAIL

On Tuesday May 3, I posted a parcel from Monash, to my son in Townsville. On the same day medical papers were posted to me from Woden. On Thursday night, my son rang to thank me for the parcel however I have still not received the medical papers.

Can anyone tell me why the delivery time is in inverse proportion to the distance that the mail has to travel?

James Crane, Monash

KAMBAH A NEW WODEN

May I reassure both Greg Jackson (Letters, May 3) and Frank Cassidy (Letters, May 6) who are concerned about Kambah's lack of representation under the new electoral changes, that if Woden is known in real estate terms as the "new inner south" then there is nothing wrong with Kambah being the new Woden.

Lynne Bliss, Swinger Hill

CASH TEMPTED ABBOTT?

Tony Abbott was offered cash and he needed to seek advice. Must have been tempted.

Tony Martin, Duffy

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