May I clear up a couple of misconceptions. Despite other commitments, I went to that hearing mainly to hear the Price media team's submission.

I am not a voting member of the committee but can submit a dissenting report. I'm what is known as a "participating senator" and try to get to as many different hearings as I can – as well as involvement in two other committee inquiries into the national redress scheme and transvaginal mesh.

On the day I write this letter, I am at a family law hearing in Sydney and tomorrow in Melbourne.

May I also point out that there are 56 Coalition and Labor senators who are assigned by their parties. I am merely one lone senator, trying to cover as much ground as possible.

P.S. I admire Price's work.

Derryn Hinch, senator for Victoria

Apparently, we Canberrans live in the best-educated city in the country. Why, therefore, when we come to discuss issues of national importance, do illogical and irrelevant arguments seem to feature so prominently in the letters pages of the Canberra Times? For instance, Lucille Rogers (Letters 24 February) has virtually accused Treasurer Scott Morrison of lying by omission in the debate on corporate tax reductions by failing to mention that US companies pay for their employees' health insurance. What she fails to mention is that, unlike Australia, the US does not have Medicare-style national health insurance, thus rendering the payment of health insurance premiums a justifiable investment by US companies in the wellbeing of their workforces.

Chris Pratt (Letters 24 February) concludes that companies such as NAB and Rio Tinto are reducing their workforces to increase profits, a process that will, over time, lead to further automation and thus job losses. Chris, automation is not exactly a new development. Companies do not reduce their workforces through increased automation out of some form of malevolence. If they take this action, it is strictly a business decision based on maintaining or improving market share in an intensively competitive world.

Neither of the above arguments, nor those advanced by others recently, negates the case for a corporate tax reduction.

Rather they are pitched at the sort of level we are becoming used to seeing on our increasingly disappointing national broadcaster.

Michael O'Loughlin, Griffith

The SBS Program Muslims Like Us was excellent, but I was sad that the one woman wearing a niqab seemed to have huge focus as her views were the most conservative and extreme.

As the others said, she was a very nice person, but she was presented as unable to accept others' views, which was not surprising.

If you are brought up in a narrow community, you are not exposed to other views so it would have been a shock for her. The same occurs in many other religions where the fundamentalists refuse to accept the more broadminded.

I would like SBS to do a program called Christians Like Us so people could see a similar range of views within Christianity. The fundamentalists, like Assemblies of God, are against gays and abortion and believe the man is the head of the household (as I know personally as my brother is an Assemblies of God pastor). Roman Catholics range from those against gay marriage and contraception and for celibacy of priests, to those with the opposite views — as we know from Tony Abbott and his sister Christine Forster.

Protestants range from high to low Anglicans, to the Uniting Church and in most cases have acceptance of gays, abortion and female ministers.

SBS could follow that with programs on Jews whose fundamentalist sect in Israel has a huge influence on government policy, compared with the majority of Jews in Western countries, and then Hindus and Buddhists.

Caroline Fitzwarryne, Yarralumla

Philip Alston, an Australian, a Professor of Law at New York University, is the UN Special Rapporteur on Poverty. He has just issued a preliminary report on poverty in the US.

Professor Alston reports: " ... neither its wealth nor its power nor its technology is being harnessed to address the situation in which 40 million people continue to live in poverty."

People barely surviving on Skid Row in Los Angeles, homeless people in San Francisco told to move on but nowhere to go to.

Sewage filled yards where state governments don't take responsibility for sanitation. People with no teeth because dental care is not available to the very poor ... and so on and so on, and on and on.

What a bloody awful ramshackled excuse for a country the US is.

A country that is bombing and droning and killing people in umpteen countries that are not in the least threatening to it, cannot even look after its own population.

Is Australia like that? I hope not. I hope Australia never becomes like that.

Kenneth Griffiths, O'Connor

Recent actions by our conservative political leaders, past and present, have done nothing to increase Australians' trust in their governments.

All the statements about the alleged importance of the Liberal/National Coalition simply beggar belief by ordinary Australians.

Nationals' Deputy Leader Bridget McKenzie then uttered a stream of platitudes and cliches in praise of departing Leader Barnaby Joyce, whose "contributions " as minister responsible for the Murray Darling Basin still need to be thoroughly re-examined by an independent body for their probity and adequacy.

Statements by other high-profile Coalition figures, inside and outside government, are mostly designed to increase mistrust.

Trevor Wilson, Chifley

What a big day out it was for the Joyces on Friday. First, we had the Qantas Joyce lining up to proclaim bumper profits and how if we could just get those corporate tax cuts the milk and honey really would flow.

Then we had farmer Joyce beating a tactical retreat and allowing the government to get back to "jobs and growth" and those corporate tax cuts.

As that other Joyce so famously wrote, it's a "yes, yes, yes for BCA boss Jennifer Westacott and the rest of corporate Australia".

Stewart Sweeney, Adelaide

The triumph of public administrations' PR fluff over substance and respect for the community is increasingly breathtaking.

Thus, at the park end of the footbridge over Parkes Way, we have evidence of a budget for the lovely new sign to the "New Acton Cultural And Cinema Precinct" – which can only make sense if the historical and iconic National Film And Sound Archive is the intended point of reference. A commercial cinema maketh not a cinema precinct, of course – and it would be corrupt for public money to be spent suggesting so.

But actually enter the NFSA, ever more in the five years that George Brandis and then Mitch Fifield have pretended to be Arts ministers, and you will find a funds-starved moribund institution, not even a ghost of what it was at the start of this decade – when it still had a functioning library, an exhibition gallery and permanent and temporary exhibitions, a substantial daily public program of screenings of our audiovisual heritage, a shop, and a very good own cafe.

They are all gone, together with the funds to actually carry out even the NFSA's fundamental preservation mission adequately. The Friends of the NFSA have been saying as much for years.

At least one advertised screening at its Arc cinema in recent times could not proceed because the archived film crumbled in the hands of the projectionist at the previous evening's trial run.

So there you have it – the power of Aussie world-leading PR flim-flam to sanitise anything.

Alex Mattea, Kingston

The evaporation rate from dams during the intense heat and dry of extended droughts is huge. Dams have recently gone completely dry in many places in the world.

A new dam also submerges much landscape and alters river ecology.

During the Brisbane flood of 2011, so much run-off water thundered into the over-flowing Wivenhoe Dam that engineers had to allow large water releases to preserve the structural integrity of the dam.

Years of massive deforestation meant massive flood run-off, maybe even in the form of lethal 'inland tsunami'.

These Wivenhoe release surges were blamed for exacerbating flood inundations of Brisbane suburbs along the Brisbane River.

It seems to me dams are of yesterday, given our present and future climate conditions, with ever-worsening and more frequent storms and floods, alternating with droughts.

Underground storage caverns or huge underground tanks built in flood zones to collect or harvest flood run-off will end evaporation losses.

They would also stop waste of this huge volume of fresh water flowing into the sea, and the ground above could be used, say, as sporting fields.

Solar-powered pumps could move water later up to huge concrete storage tanks on high ground.

Desalination plants could also be solar-powered.

Our electricity grids have demand enough already.

To fund all these clever jobs building clever water infrastructure, we'd need to get serious about collecting fair taxes from all and realistic royalties from our coal and ore mining.

Boofhead Nation becomes Clever Country.

Les Hutchinson, Maitland, NSW

From time to time I have read letters of criticism in these columns about the poor performance of Canberra Emergency departments in the hospitals.

Last Thursday I had the opportunity to make my own judgment of them for the first time as I collapsed at home about 7pm and was taken to Calvary Hospital Emergency and admitted.

I had nothing but the best of care and compassion from the ambulance staff, through admissions and in the ward.

All staff were calm, thoughtful, good at explaining what was happening, monitoring my situation and all with good humour and common sense. If this is the standard we have here in Canberra, there is nothing to complain about with our emergency system.

I was eventually released about 1 am. Thank you particularly Matt and Mark, the ambos. Thank you senior nurse Holly, thank you registrar Zara. You all made a difference and I very much appreciate your help.

John Robinson, Gungahlin

M Philip (Letters, February 27) has visited an Amsterdam set in a reality quite different from the one I visited last year.

In my Amsterdam, the "killer bikes" swarmed on and across roads, paths and public spaces at break-neck speed. They had apparent right of way over any adjacent moving object, whether vehicular or pedestrian. I join in disputing Shane Rattenbury's use of Amsterdam as an example of safe helmet-free cycling, at least until local cyclists have achieved their universal safety as in Amsterdam, by cowing everyone (including drivers) into scattering in alarm whenever a cyclist approaches.

G. Williams, Gowrie

John Widdup suggests that because there would be crediting of imputation credits, the setting of company tax at zero would involve no loss of revenue to the Commonwealth government (Letters, February27).

He overlooks the fact the loss of imputation credits means the tax bill of every investor would rise by the absence of that 30 per cent on all investment income, so it would be a massive tax gain for the Government.

It would mean a massive tax increase for every investor/taxpayer because of the loss of that 30 per cent tax credit.

Michael Adler, Gungahlin

To the person who picked up my bag of groceries from Woolworths at Mawson on Thursday from the self check out, which I had checked out and paid for and briefly left unattended.

I say God bless you, I do hope it went to a good cause.

Noreen Bird, Farrer

The latest suggestion to ban food junk at supermarket checkouts is excellent but what will parents bribe their little darlings with? A fresh, healthy orange just isn't as attractive to a four-year-old.

Dennis Fitzgerald, Box Hill, Vic

CHEAP SOLUTION

C'mon Bob, (Bob Salmond, Letters, February 27) your simple and cheap solution to make drivers aware of school zones by painting the road forgets the obvious. How would our local government recoup the revenue stream it presently brings in?

Byam Wight, Griffith

TURNBULL'S OPPORTUNITY

Malcolm, with a new Nats' leader, you have an opportunity to renegotiate a new deal. Make the most of it for your sake and that of the country.

Jeff Bradley, Isaacs

FLOODS MORE FREQUENT

I've only lived in Canberra for 50years but have just witnessed the second "one-in-a-100-year weather event".

Remember January 1971 — Woden Valley/Yarra Glen. Seven people died, swept away in flood waters. At least this one was limited to property damage.

Brian Bell, Isabella Plains

POETIC PLEA FOR JOBS

Whether the weather is fine, or whether the weather is not, Let's Weatherill the weather, whatever the weather, And also create some new jobs.

Alison Coster, Jerrabomberrra, NSW

WATER WEAKNESS

Given that Northbourne Avenue was under water for much of Sunday, could Andrew or Shane please let us know if the tram floats? More seriously, fixed transport infrastructure can't be re-routed if there is a repeat of Sunday's weather. Busses, on the other hand, can go anywhere they like.

Nick Murray, Evatt

PLANNING FOR TRUMP

If, through the PM's reciprocal generosity, we are to endure a visit by President Trump, could we not confine it to a small but most interesting part of Australia — Heard Island?

Paul E Bowler, Chapman

LACKING LAND SALES

To say that land sale profits have been set at 44 per cent is wrong. There are no land sales in the ACT. The land is leased from the ACT government. The lease fee is paid, or bid for, for that lease but there is no ownership of the land. Therefore there is no sale.

Michael Bungey, Mawson

FIND ANSWERS IN FICTION

Graham Downie (Letters, February27) needs to read Alice in Wonderland. This would explain to him how making public transport less efficient and less convenient encourages people to use it.

Maria Greene, Curtin

TRAM'S FINE MESS

Each time I travel north from Civic, I am confronted by the mess made by the tram works. The possibility the same kind of mess could happen on the south side appals me.

A. V. Peterson, Kambah

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