We older Canberrans recall with great respect the dedicated service that Jim Fraser gave to this community.

Those tiny minds at the AEC would do better to concentrate on devising ways to insure against any loss of ballot papers, rather than insulting Canberra.

Trevor Marks, Holt

Bogey Musidlak (Letters, January 14) is on the right track regarding party manipulation of voter's intentions. However, I'm not sure that the average voter ever gets his/her head around the (admittedly fairer) Hare-Clark system. When I give a candidate a 1 on the ballot paper, I am indicating that he/she is my first preference, and the value of that vote is 1 point.

When I give a candidate a 2, that means that I want them to receive some value less than 1, say 0.75 of a vote.

And so on down the line of 0.5, 0.25, 0.1 for my 3rd, 4th and 5th choices. Surely that reflects my intention as a voter, and intention is what voting ought to be about, not some party committee making backroom deals with my votes. I dare say this is just too simplistic because it is honest and politics is certainly not about honesty – at least for much of the time.

The available computing systems can handle this simple algorithm with no difficulty. It just requires some government honest enough to employ it.

Baden Williams, Lyneham

With regard to Clive Williams' article on fire protection ("Shelter from the firestorm", Times2, January 13, p1), he cites the Anderson shelter produced in Britain in 1939. This was successful in the era of the blitz. Living outside a built-up area, my family did not consider one necessary, although in the brief V1 (buzz-bomb) time, the house being on the top of a hill was considered a target, and we slept in a trench in the garden, excavated by Canadian soldiers.

My family rejected the Morrison shelter. It was a cage of two solid steel plates, supported by ribs. It was thought that in the event of a house being hit, it was likely to burn down, and the inhabitants of the Morrison shelter would be trapped.

Jack Palmer, Watson

Our government has splashed out more cash on signs scattered around the city to advise dog walkers that all mutts must be kept on a leash while ambling along our shared pathways, to ensure, among other things, the safety of cyclists.

Nowhere to be seen are any signs setting out some measure of courtesy to be displayed by cyclists to ensure the safety of pedestrians (and their mutts).

Memo to all cyclists, particularly the Lycra-clad set: shouting out "Bike!" while approaching silently from behind at breakneck speed doesn't cut it, particularly for the elderly, infirm and hard ofhearing.

While Shane Rattenbury and co are in a legal frame of mind, perhaps a further change to the rules governing the use of our "shared" pathways may be to ensure that cyclists approaching pedestrians from any direction slow down to no more than one step faster than walking speed, and keep at least one metre distance between them and pedestrians when passing.

Perhaps we motorists, when passing cyclists, should wind down our windows and shout "Car!" as we whiz past (but keep at least one-plus metre away).

Peter Toscan, Amaroo

When skiing, if a faster skier wants to overtake another skier who is downhill of him, it is his responsibility to manage the manoeuvre without making contact with the other skier.

He may or may not call out to the other skier, but may not be heard because of wind noise or a helmet. The uphill skier has to wait until he is sure that he can complete the operation without contacting the other. This can mean that the operation may take several minutes until an opportunity presents itself. There are no circumstances in which a collision is the fault of the slower skier.

This behaviour is observed in all the places where I have skied around the world. I believe the same rule should apply to cyclists on the shared paths around Canberra.

It should be the responsibility of the cyclist to manage the encounter and not rely on predictable behaviour from elderly pedestrians or those with dogs and children. A warning bell or call is useful, but only to those who hear them, and not everyone does.

George Beaton, Greenway

Megan Gorrey's article "Ownership of firearms increases 3 per cent in ACT" (January 13, p3) quotes Roland Browne, vice-president of Gun Control Australia, as saying, "The less guns there are, the less gun crime and less gun misuse". He would say that, I suppose.

However, the Melbourne Institute Working Paper No. 17/08, prepared 12 years after the 1996 gun buyback, which removed almost 700,000 firearms from circulation, said, "There is little evidence to suggest that it [the National Firearms Agreement] had any significant effects on firearms homicides and suicides.

"The evidence so far suggests that in the Australian context, the high expenditure incurred tofund the gun buyback has not translated into any tangible reductions in terms of firearm deaths." A somewhat different perspective.

Peter Moran, Watson

Those residents frustrated at having to pay a fee for document certification (Letters, January 12 and 13) should know there is no need for anyone in the ACT requiring documents to be certified to pay a fee.

Businesses who have staff who are not a JP and who exercise some JP functions charge a fee, as the provision of this service impinges on their capacity to undertake their normal commercial work.

JPs, of which there are 950 in the ACT, are prohibited from charging a fee for their services because of the honorary nature of their office.

They do that by administering oaths or affirmations, witnessing statutory declarations and affidavits, witnessing signatures and attesting and certifying documents, all at no cost.

The ACT government has an online list of all ACT JPs. Additionally, JPs may be found at all operational police stations during normal business hours.

Noel McLaughlin, Macgregor

Rick Godfrey's response (Letters, January 12) to Jack Waterford's opinion piece deserves a round of applause. Waterford's article ("Labor needs to clean up its act", Forum, January 9, p1), claiming union "corruption" makes the Labor Party unfit to govern, is about as logical as arguing that "some cats are black, therefore all dogs are black". Equally puzzling is the idea that the findings of a fair-minded royal commission would have been more damaging for Labor than the final report of the Abbott/Turnbull set-up.

The evidence for his assertion seems to derive from the very report that Waterford admits is "easily dismissed as partisan, predictable and lacking in balance". More importantly, as Rick Godfrey suggests, Jack Waterford fails to consider whether the Liberal Party is fit to govern!

We have seen a parade of dishonest, sexist and stupid behaviour from key members of the present government, all of which calls into question the quality and security of Malcolm Turnbull's leadership. How did Mal Brough retain his ministry for so long? Why is Peter Dutton untouched?

Let's face it; Turnbull is tolerated by the party because his poll ratings offer hope of re-election. We should not be fooled by the results of "most preferred PM" surveys.

When it comes time to vote, we don't get to elect a prime minister. The party does that.

In reality, election results are decided by the results in each electorate. If people vote for the local Liberal candidate because they like Malcolm Turnbull, the result may very well be an LNP government with LNP policies and a temporary Turnbull in charge for as long as the Right allows him. How long will the "one-trick pony" remain leader? Policies, not personalities, please.

John Hood, Hackett

With federal parliament about to resume shortly in this election year, it's time for some home truths for Bill Shorten and the Labor Party. If Mr Shorten thinks he is an alternative prime minister of this great country, it's about time he showed it and earned it. I used to think he was made of sterner stuff. Where is he?

The Coalition is getting away with whatever rubbish it feels like dishing out to the public. The behaviour of Ministers Briggs and Dutton is a disgrace, but Mr Shorten's comments about their appalling behaviour have been limp.

Prime Minister Turnbull talks a lot, but actually says little of substance. He is being allowed to get away with it because he is not Tony Abbott; he is the darling of the media and Labor seems to be missing in action.

If Mr Shorten's heart is not in the job, he should do the right thing by long-suffering Labor supporters and hand over to someone who will take the fight up to the Coalition. Labor can win the next election, but it needs a leader on the front foot and out there developing and selling its policies as well as holding a largely incompetent Coalition government to account.

Barry Harris, Curtin

Recent articles in the CT have detailed "glitches" in the computer systems at the Bureau of Meteorology, Centrelink, and other government departments. There's no such thing as a "glitch". It's an error – a defect – plain and simple.

Some IT professionals advocate systematic, rigorous, structured testing as sufficient, but it's no longer done within many government IT departments or their contractors. Testing demonstrates only the presence of defects, not their absence; testing is done after code is written, the "end" of the system development life cycle.

How to find and eliminate defects earlier?

Since 1976, inspections and quality reviews have demonstrated significant cost savings and improved the quality of systems. If we get requirements clear, correct, complete and consistent, there's a statistically higher probability of building the systems correctly. Same for design.

When I worked at Immigration, I introduced inspections on requirements documents. Our conservative cost model showed 10:1 cost savings across the inspections we did. One early review surfaced a privacy breach – before millions of dollars were spent on system implementation, before more millions were spent on fixing it.

Last I checked, many government IT departments and contractors didn't use basic quality techniques. Inspections and systematic testing must be returned to the tool kit used on government systems. And demanded by government IT managers.

Judy Bamberger, O'Connor

L. Christie (Letters, January 12) says that Daria Gavrilova, rather than Nick Kyrgios, led Australia to victory in the Hopman Cup. How so? It is true that Gavrilova beat a higher-ranked Ukrainian opponent in the final (thanks to an unbelievable meltdown by the Ukrainian in the second set tiebreak). But if it can be said that a mixed team has a leader, Kyrgios's claim is the stronger by dint of his success in all four of his singles matches (including a magnificent victory over world No.2 Andy Murray) while Gavrilova lost two of her three round robin singles encounters.

And good luck to Eric Hunter (Letters, January 12) with his doomed campaign to get sports commentators to distinguish between majors and grand slams.

Frank Marris, Forrest

While I agree with Michael McCarthy's dictionary (Letters, January 11) that "news" is usually treated as singular, I don't see that his example ("No news is good news") illustrates the point. One might imagine a factory manager saying at the end of a safe month, "No injuries is good news" (which has a different meaning to "No injuries are good news").

In both examples, the actual singular subject is the implied "the fact that there...". The singular usage of "news" is better illustrated by comparing "The fact that there is no news is good news" with "The fact that there are no injuries is good news".

As for the original complaint by David Sheppard about being dudded by the FOCUS word puzzle treating "news" as a prohibited plural, presumably that was taken into account when setting the target for that day's puzzle.

Ian Douglas, Jerrabomberra

I know the world has many worrying issues to resolve, but the question of just how many indoor pot plants exist in various government departments and agencies and their cost to the public purse ("Our utopia-esque obsession with plants", January 14, p5) isn't one of them!

It must be that time of the year: nothing much to report and it's too hot for the reporters outside, so stay indoors and rummage through old files and renew those old prickly reports. Then accept congratulations from those politicians who love to denigrate such expenditure, but who nevertheless permit the placement of such items in their own offices.

Never any mention of the much reduced cost of partitioning by the intelligent use of shrubbery, and how sterile workplaces deliver less quality outcomes than those which provide better work environments.

I recall years ago when tiring of such questions each year at Senate Estimates I returned all hired office pot plants and purchased an equivalent number for our organisation. Our staff did the watering and sometimes fertilised them, and they lasted about one to two years, at which time they were replaced. It all cost a little more than the former hire regime, but it was beaut when we received no further damning questions on the issue.

Kevin Gill, Kingston

I liked R.S. Gilbert's P.G. Wodehouse quote (Letters, January 12) in answer to Ian Warden's comments on the quality of letters to the editor. As a writer it has been a long haul for Ian Warden himself, from the humble Paspalum Place of the 1980s to upper Aranda, lower Garran and Gang-gang.

Evelyn Bean, Anslie

WORDING MISLEADS

It is sad see that almost all the media reports relating to the Essendon "drugs scandal" saga contain very misleading wording. Essendon Football Club players were not found guilty of taking "dope" or "drugs".

They were adjudged guilty, on very scant evidence and by majority decision, of taking a supplement – the supplement being thymosin, a natural product of the human body.

Dr Bill Anderson, Surrey Hills, Victoria

INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Thank you, Brian Hatch (Letters, January 14). I can remember my parents talking about that day, January 11, 1939. It was called Black Friday. As you said, this is an inconvenient truth.

Anne Prendergast, Reid

GLOBAL NANNY STATE

Julian Cribb ("Dawn of a quantum tyranny", Times2, January 11, p1) warns of a global police state enabled by supercomputers using tiny particles – the "nanocracy". If we have a choice, I would prefer a global nanny state – the "nanycracy".

Michael McCarthy, Deakin

CIVIC DUTY

Jane Craig (Letters, January 13) disagrees that it is unreasonable for pharmacists to charge a fee to certify documents. As a member of an accounting body, I am authorised to certify documents. I consider it a civic duty to perform the task when asked, without expecting payment.

G. Bell, Franklin

TPP BENEFIT 'SFA'

On the World Bank's assessment ofthe benefit of the Trans-Pacific Partnership to Australia, Peter Martin ("Australia to gain almost nothing from trade deal" (January 12, p1) writes: "The annual boost to [economic] growth would be less than one half of one-tenth of 1 per cent".

Talk about circumlocution: "less than 0.05 per cent", for goodness sake. Alternatively, "three-fifths offive-eighths of SFA" would have got the message across.

Ed Highley, Kambah

HARDLY A PEARLER

I have a Transport for London Oystercard and a Glasgow Subway Smartcard, both of which never expire. I recharge them on my infrequent visits to those cities. However, the Interstate NSW Gold Senior/Pensioner Opal card is valid for only 60 days, and then requires another application for a new card, which is mailed out.

This seems to me an unnecessary inconvenience and means an interstate senior can be without an Opal card on a spontaneous visit to NSW.

Felicity Chivas, Scullin

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.

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