You aren't wrong Steve. People have a right to be concerned when they are retrenched or are experiencing low wage growth and a decline in the labour share of income. Apart from the government's failure to produce any tangible policy on employment initiatives, the first line of attack for businesses experiencing lower output prices, is to lay off staff to lower their unit costs.

And the government's response, pushing the dubious benefits of wide ranging trade agreements (eg. TPP), that appear to benefit large corporations chasing lower wage environments, and opening the doors to manufactured goods and services that will place further competitive pressure on smaller Australian businesses to keep unit costs low to remain in business.

And the sop, company tax cuts, also built around the dubious assumption these businesses will spend more, hire more staff and buy new equipment to make them more productive in our new globalised world. I am not alienated, but I am a sceptic.

Robert Luton, Sutton

The full Cotter reservoir (Cotter Dam spills over as dam declared full for first time, CT Online, July 7) is a testament to the vision and planning which will see Canberra through the next drought far better prepared than last time.

Indeed at present critics might point to something of overkill with the $155 million Murrumbidgee to Googong water transfer not needed since its commissioning on August 24, 2012, by then Chief Minister Katy Gallagher.

But those who endured the 10 years of drought with crippling water restrictions should thank the team at Actew, led by Mark Sullivan, and Chief Minister Jon Stanhope, for providing our city with reasonable water security well into the future.

There was also much made of the cost increase for the Cotter Dam from $363 million to $409 million.

This was largely caused by the need to counteract a geological fault and to repair damage during construction, ironically caused by a flood. The cost will not be questioned when water is needed during the next drought.

The project, which will benefit all Canberra and Queanbeyan residents, stands in sharp contrast to the present government's proposed Gungahlin to Civic tramway. Canberra Liberals, and indeed many Labor and Greens supporters, are correct to oppose this project which will further fragment public transport at an eventual cost of twice, perhaps three times that of the Cotter Dam.

Graham Downie, O'Connor

My first federal vote was cast in a foreign country, Malaysia, where I was serving this nation as a soldier. I think it was 1962.

Since about the 1970s the honesty and integrity of the political parties has eroded into a rabble of power hungry groupings of the self-interested.

We lost most of the generation that created a nation with character and ethics.

We now have baby boomers and generation X.

These politicians [have] developed legislation that stymies free speech and comment, has eroded the nation's character, honesty, cohesiveness and [belief in] a fair go. Britain exported socialist trade unionists to Australia post World War II.

In time the respect and courtesies between opposing political views widened. Then came open hostility in the 1990s.

Half a century since I first voted most of my generation have seen enough.

We dislike intensely what we see with the "you owe me so give me more" attitudes created and sustained through social engineering from the left.

The left has removed the nation's heart and lungs leaving a frail and weakening people who are disillusioned by chaos in state and national parliaments.

Robert S Buick MM, Mountain Creek, Qld

Around the world we are experiencing political unrest with the UK, Europe, America and Australia unsettled. They all have one thing in common, capitalist influence or control. In Australia it is called Liberalism.

The Liberals' agenda is a market based economy. Market based or, trickle-down economics, demands control being dictated by wealth at its head, with any leftovers passing (trickling down) to workers.

They demand the removal or reduction of regulation.

Wages and working conditions would be removed and individually negotiated as experienced in the American system.

History reminds us of the origin of the French and Russian revolutions.

Similarly yesterday's and today's third world populations deserve, and will eventually achieve, living standards equal to the West.

Wally Reynolds, Perth

Now that both sides have acknowledged there is a winner (even if it is ever so small) would it be asking too much of those who want to continue manning the trenches to lay down their weapons?

And allowed Malcolm Turnbull to get the wheels of government slowly turning and come out swinging at the Abbott supporters who want to continue their guerilla war against him.

This minority of spoilers should be silenced without haste if Australia is to start moving forward again after almost three months.

D. J. Fraser, Currumbin

Dr Rachel David's letter ("Rebate reduces stress", Canberra Times, Times Two, July 13) was a spirited defence of government support for private health insurance. But three points of clarification are needed.

First, those who criticise support for private insurance are not "opposed to the private sector".

The private sector will always have a role in providing health care. The criticism is about how health care is funded, not how it is delivered.

Second, the annual budgetary support for private insurance is around $11 billion, not $6billion, which is only the direct cash outlay on the health insurance rebate.

Third, there is no evidence that private insurance reduces pressure on public hospitals.

When a privately insured person enjoys priority treatment for a hip or knee replacement, someone on the public waiting list is pushed one place further down the queue.

Ian McAuley, Yarralumla

Ron Walker ("Marriage referendum", Letters, July 12) proposes that, instead of a "legally inconsequential plebiscite", we should have a referendum to amend the constitution, so as to define "marriage" as including "a solemnised union between two people regardless of their gender".

However, a referendum is unnecessary, as the High Court has already decided that the meaning of the word "marriage" in s. 51 (xxi) of the constitution is broad enough to encompass same-sex unions.

In December, 2013, when the High Court held that the ACT government's Marriage Equality (Same Sex) Act 2013 was invalid, the court unanimously rejected any narrow interpretation of the word "marriage" that would have confined its meaning to heterosexual "marriage" as commonly understood at the time of Federation.

Instead, the court looked to developments in jurisdictions outside Australia as justification for construing the word "marriage" more broadly, so as to include same-sex unions.

Thus, there is no doubt that the Commonwealth Parliament can extend the definition of "marriage" to encompass such unions, if it so desires.

The question to be resolved is whether it should make such a change.

Allan Hall, Isaacs

With few exceptions, there has been a deafening silence by politicians and in the media during the recent elections regarding the threat posed by runaway global warming.

It is a poignant irony to recall the Malcolm Turnbull statement in 2010: "We are as humans conducting a massive science experiment with this planet.

"It's the only planet we've got ... We know that the consequences of unchecked global warming would be catastrophic ...

"We as a human species have a deep and abiding obligation to this planet and to the generations that will come after us."

Nor has there been much discussion of the risk posed by some 15,000 nuclear missiles, many of which are on hair-trigger alert.

As tensions grow between the world's superpowers in the South China Sea, Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere, the probability of a nuclear exchange by accident or design is only growing, as indicated by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists which set the Atomic Clock on three minutes to midnight.

Given the climate and nuclear threats, reinforced by the confrontation between the large power blocs, there is no evidence governments are undertaking effective measures to prevent the existential threat to civilisation and nature.

Dr Andrew Glikson, Kambah

Chris Smith (Recalling Menzies, Canberra Times letters, July 9) makes the curious claim that Jim Killen won the seat of Moreton in 1961 with the benefit of Communist Party preferences.

In fact, the claim that Sir Robert's Coalition government won the 1961 election on the preferences of the Communist Party of Australia is one of the great myths of Australian political history.

Jim Killen won the seat of Moreton on the preferences of the Democratic Labor Party, a profoundly anti-communist social democratic party. The Communist Party candidate was the first eliminated. After Communist Party preferences were distributed, the Labor Party candidate J. E. O'Donnell led the Liberal Party's Jim Killen by 2753 votes.

Killen defeated O'Donnell after receiving 85.31 per cent of the Democratic Labor Party's preferences.

And on what basis does Smith claim that Sir Robert was an "Old Deceiver"?

Even his political opponents thought he was straight and honest.

He must have been competent to be able to govern comfortably with a majority of one for that term, not to mention several more years after that.

The fact that he won seven elections must also say that he got something right.

Steven Hurren, Macquarie

And here we go again, having a post-election mandate debate as seems to happen after every election.

Last election Abbott said that he had a mandate and everyone else should get out of his way.

Turnbull has a mandate and responsibility to try to implement his policies.

That's what those who voted for him want him to do.

There really should be no argument on that score.

By the same token every other member of the House of Representatives and the Senate (Labor, Green, or Independent) has the mandate and the responsibility to implement the policies of those who voted for them.

If that means voting down or amending the Turnbull government's legislation that is what they must do.

Rory McElligott, Nicholls

TO THE POINT

SENATE RESULTS

What happens when Senate results are not available by the date for return of the writs?

John Donovan, Weston

TURNBULL NO LEADER

Nicholas Stuart is on common ground with his report ("Turnbull on borrowed time", Times2, July 12, p4). Stuart, like most commentators, holds that Turnbull has "already demonstrated his critical flaw: he doesn't understand public opinion. He's too much of an individual". Every penny has two sides.

Turnbull's problem is far more general than individuality. He isn't a leader. All his successes, outstanding as they have been, have been made standing on somebody else's coat-tails. As soon as he made a killing he got out of the game and slid into another.

Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor

THE OTHER PAULINE

The worst possible election result: Pauline Hanson is back in my lounge room. I hope Pauline Pantsdown will be back too.

C. Shipp, Tuggeranong

WRONG PARTY

Senator Cory Bernardi can rest assured he now has a suitable party leader in the Parliament whom he can trust.

He has not yet worked out that he is in the wrong party and needs to defect forthwith, along with George Christensen, to One Nation.

R. Schnapp, Randwick

MENTAL HEALTH NEEDS

Mental health is badly under-funded.

De-institutionalisation spread the concentration of people with problematic behaviours from mental hospitals to regular hospitals, jails, boarding and rooming houses, smaller institutions for the criminally insane, family carer responsibility, suicides, and rough living homelessness.

It's not good enough.

Rod Matthews, Fairfield, NSW

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