It is a popular service with residents going to Civic or to Woden as it also passes the Canberra Hospital in Garran.

But as of October 9 this service is to be cancelled. In its place will be Route 6 which will not run through lower Narrabundah but travel instead along Jerrabomberra and Sturt avenues where there are no planned stops.

Those residents who presently use bus stops in Kootara Crescent will now have to walk to and then cross over Jerrabomberra Avenue at the crosswalk opposite Narrabundah College to reach a bus stop in Goyder Street.

Lower Narrabundah has many elderly residents plus a high proportion of government-provided housing. There is a heavy reliance on public transport by people who are often on a low or fixed income, who do not own a private vehicle or can perhaps no longer hold a driver's licence due to advanced age. The walk from the Narrabundah shops to the bus stop in Goyder Street took me almost 20 minutes. I doubt that I will use Route 6 as the bus stop is too far away for me to reach easily, as it will be for many others.

It does make me wonder, though, why our rates continue to increase but our services are being cut.

Valerie Baxter, Narrabundah

Re "Did the ACT keep its word on tax changes?", Forum, September 9, p11).

Authors John Stanhope and Khalid Ahmed say stamp duty is imposing a burden of 43¢ in compliance, administration and economic efficiency costs for every dollar of the tax collected.

This is mind boggling. When I recently bought a property, my lawyers looked up the relevant rate, then wrote a cheque to the ACT government.

The government didn't need to do anything, just cash the cheque! So if it costs 43¢ per $1, then when stamp duty is finally removed, over $100million annually will be saved.

Can the economists please explain where the government will save and how much, and where economic efficiency will be gained and by whom, by transferring stamp duty to rates.

Then maybe we could understand the benefits of removing stamp duty.

M. R. Arnold, O'Connor

On the 10 June 2012, Chief Minister Barr was reported as saying: "On average Canberrans move once every seven years, so they pay stamp duty every seven years."

This seemed to be the back-of-the-napkin basis that land tax would replace stamp duty.

Based on that calculation, every year the average Canberran home owner would be paying 14.2 per cent of the stamp duty at time of purchase as land tax at the end of the 20 years implementation plus any reasonable cost of living increases.

For a $500,000 house in 2012, the stamp duty was $18,050. That equated to approximately $2563 per annum. We are only five years into this plan and for most people, our rates are already above that and to add insult to injury, people who purchased the $500,000 house in 2012 would have paid the stamp duty as well.

This is double dipping to the extreme and it appears that with the ever-increasing rates, the person who purchased in 2012 and is still in their house in 2032 will have paid at least four times the stamp duty.

The government needs to consider that the seven-year average might be an anomaly for Canberra based on historical public servant movements and adjust the land tax on that basis. People who have paid stamp duty should have a different land tax percentage applied to their rates to reflect that they have already paid a sizeable amount.

Stephen Petersen, Dunlop

We know the tram project will not recover its capital cost or run at an operating profit.

The question is not whether it should be built (that horse has bolted) but, rather, what is the correct policy prescription for dealing with such an investment error?

The rational decision-maker avoids the sunk-cost fallacy of throwing good money after bad.

As completion of the project is a sunk cost (due to contractual obligations), the only relevant costs are its future operating losses.

If there are lower cost alternatives for carrying commuters from Gungahlin to Civic and back, then the Canberra community would be better off if any or all of these alternatives were substituted.

Buses, in rapid transit mode, spring to mind.

What about the trams? I suggest we find someone gullible enough to buy them. A friend of mine suggested the South Australians. That was a bit gratuitous. Why not auction them off along with the steel rails, overhead gantries and wires?

That leaves the concrete right of way. Why not lease it to some eager R and D entrepreneur interested in developing autonomous vehicles (buses, cars) instead?

Brendan Cox, Richardson

That boat left four years ago, Michael Warrington, of Garran (Letters, September 8).

To continue to blame the previous government for the LNPs economic woes has nothing to do with the debt left by the ALP and the interest incurred but everything to do with their mismanagement of the economy. The $122 million dollars for the same-sex marriage postal vote is a complete waste of money and will add to their already unwieldy debt.

Jan Gulliver, Lyneham

In Rachel Packham's story "Luxury hotel booked for Garema Place" (September 8, p3) she states: "Chief Minister Andrew Barr recently returned from an official trip to Hong Kong, where he met with a number of international hotel chains in a bid to [entice] the firms to build more five-star international hotels in Canberra."

What has happened to Brendan Smyth, the ACT's specially appointed "Commissioner for International Engagement"?

John Milne, Chapman

Your editorial on the Auditor-General's investigation of the land swap between the ACT government and the construction union's Tradies Club and the article on donations from organisations and others to political parties, converge to bring into question, yet again, the independence, impartiality and transparency of the political class in making decisions, purportedly in the public interest.

No matter how vociferously the parties to these transactions protest to the contrary, the beneficiaries' obvious purpose is to gain access and influence, the effects of which are concealed from the citizenry.

A reason democracies of the world are being shaken from within is that, increasingly, the power elite – the ruling class and an influential few – are perceived to have expropriated the voices of ordinary citizens.

Democracies have evolved over time, so a show of hands is no longer feasible, but we certainly deserve greater transparency, especially here in Lilliput. It has been raised many times before, but a start would be to ban all political donations, and, unappealing an option as it may be, fund from the public purse sufficient of our taxes to allow politicians to set out their respective policies and intentions at election time, plainly, openly and without the hype, fanfare and obfuscation we have wearily come to expect.

A. Whiddett, Forrest

While speaking in support of the successful motion to withdraw all subsidies to renewable energy ("National Party votes to remove all subsidies for renewable energy", canberratimes.

com.au, September 9) George Christiansen MP argued that cars weren't subsidised to replace horse-drawn carriages so why should solar panels and wind farms be subsidised to replace coal-fired power stations?

The answer, George, is that as the internal combustion engine increased pollution of the planet and increased the risk of dangerous climate change it did not deserve a subsidy.

By contrast, the faster we can replace fossil-fuelled power with renewable energy the more we can lower pollution and the more we can slow climate change.

That such an issue should dominate the Nationals conference is very sad: where were the issues that related to animal husbandry and agriculture?

The Country Party changed its name to the Nationals several decades ago. Perhaps it is time that it stopped the pretence and took the label Coal Party; after all, he who pays the piper generally calls the tune.

Mike Reddy, Curtin

No one much likes coal-fired power stations, especially old ones (Peter Harris, Letters, September 9) but, once our electrical generating capacity was privatised and the Electricity Commissions, which did comprehensive, long-term planning, were abolished, the ad hocery of today was guaranteed.

It wouldn't be smart to replace coal with solar power as solar generating capacity requires almost as much electrical energy to manufacture it as it will produce during its life time.

Neither would we want our hillsides covered in ugly wind turbines which become beautiful only with very deep green spectacles, so we are in a hole.

Nuclear? No one much wants that either. But we don't want blackouts so I don't know where to go, perhaps Peter Harris does but I doubt that too.

Stan Marks, Hawker

So the Nationals have voted to remove all subsidies for renewable energy.

Well, now it's all on public view — the flat-earthers in the National Party not only reject mainstream climate science out of hand, but they also don't understand the economics of many decades of taxpayer financial support for coal-fired power stations.

The PM's current brainwave to use taxpayer funds to keep the Liddell coal-fired power station operating for a further five years is just another example of governments playing fast and loose with the public's money.

Phyllis Vespucci, Reservoir, Vic.

When one Christian school in recent days wrote to its parent community advocating a "no" vote in the upcoming postal survey, it made national headlines.

How was that remarkable or newsworthy when a voting choice is after all being offered? It is not as if they were advocating informal voting, or (as far as I know) any inflammatory views, or anything else irregular.

It also made national headlines when the Barr government spent tens of thousands of ratepayer dollars advocating a "yes" vote with rainbow bus branding. In this case the headlines were justified by the fact a position was being taken by a public administration presumably representing all Canberrans.

I can honestly state that I have not decided my vote.

One of the things that clouds the decision for me is the arrogation of virtue by one side, and the finger pointing at the other. That is a shade of ochlocracy (mob rule).

It drives the frankest discussions underground, some of the opposition into silence, defensiveness or extremity, and it may well serve to undermine the ultimate community acceptance of the likely "yes" result.

People or groups respectfully advocating "no" should not be newsworthy, and we should urge media to step back and see that.

The branding of public buses is symptomatic of the audacious licence that is available to the "yes" campaign.

Ross Kelly, Monash

If Aung San Suu Kyi openly supported the persecuted Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar she would immediately lose support of the majority Buddhist population.

Rod Matthews, Fairfield, Vic

THANKS FOR NOTHING

Our loved allegedly Mr Fluffy home, which never had loose-fill asbestos installed, is now rubble in an ACT government tip. I have just received the government's First Right Of Refusal letter: they are offering me the opportunity to repurchase my block (which has no guarantee of cleanliness) at a non-negotiable price of $50,000 more than I was forced to accept from them.

Kathleen Read, Gundaroo

JUST SAY NO — YES!

Nice to be able to simultaneously vote "no" to Bill Shorten, Malcolm Turnbull and the Greens without electing another silly politician.

John L Smith, Farrer

POPULATE AND PERISH

There's environmental criticism of the royal Cambridges having a third child (Letters, September 10), yet a few pages before is a Somaliland refugee ("Once a refugee, he's now an MP", September 10, P13) with seven children. Bet there's no complaint here, yet overpopulation is everyone's concern.

Greg Cornwell, Yarralumla

TRUMP CHALLENGE

Yes Ian Forno (Letters, September 11) I should have thought of that when I wrote the letter.

Maybe someone could read the book to Trump very slowly.

V. Harris, Yass

LNP DOUBLES DEBT

Michael Warrington, of Garran (Letters, September 8), refers to the "debt that Labor left when last in office". I can only assume that the writer is referring to the debt that the LNP has more than doubled (in four years) to over a half-trillion dollars?

Roger Terry, Kingston

WISDOM FOR 'NO' CAMP

My thanks goes to Claude Wiltshire for his good sound advice to all opponents of same-sex marriage (Letters, September 7). I am one of the opponents who will definitely be voting no.

Anne Prendergast, Reid

COAL-POWERED SUBS

Further to Peter Harris' suggestions (Letters, September 9) for Australia's marine defence, may I put forward a suggestion that seems ideally suited to our national requirements and current Government objectives. Coal-powered submarines.

A. Moore, Melba

LIGHTWEIGHT NATS

Ah, The Nationals. One Nation lite in a broad brimmed hat.

M. Moore, Bonython

MAKE ROOM FOR SCO MO

So Sco Mo is a better treasurer than Turnbull is a PM the pollsters say. It's only a matter of time before he, not Abbott, gets the top job.

N. Johns, Ainslie

Email: letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au. Send from the message field, not as an attached file. Fax: 6280 2282. Mail: Letters to the Editor, The Canberra Times, PO Box 7155, Canberra Mail Centre, ACT 2610.

Keep your letter to 250 words or less. References to Canberra Times reports should include date and page number. Letters may be edited. Provide phone number and full home address (suburb only published).