What assistance you might get from the government now in negative gearing, you save the taxpayer later when you are not eligible for a pension or healthcare card. Looking back on all the worry and weekend work to maintain the property, supervise the sometimes disrespectful renters as well as your family doing without to pay the property bills, you might think twice about the strategy.

How will you afford to repair the shoddy building on new units costing some $30,000 and keep the family's home. If negative gearing goes and repairs are no longer deductible, then owners may find maintenance all too hard. Some suburbs may look even more dishevelled. Renting when I first came to Canberra, I appreciated the landlord might redirect some family income to do repairs.

S. Homan, Greenway

What is this Coalition government doing, trifling with the precious jewel of citizenship? ("'Unintended consequence': how Australia stripped an Australian of citizenship", canberratimes.com.au, June 26) I am shuddering at the impact on thousands of Australians who have gained Australian citizenship like Teresa Mullan. Just starting with the thousands of people who came here through the government's Overseas Adoption Program, babies were granted citizenship on arrival being adopted by Australian citizens. Having worked with people who were stateless, having witnessed the emotional citizenship ceremonies where people pledge allegiance to my country, having seen how blithely ignorant some people can be about the significance of citizenship, I hope this report in today's paper is not true. But if it is, the Australian government needs to get its head and heart together and fix this outrageous anomaly.

Marguerite Castello, Griffith

Paul Malone raised the disturbing issue of the stability of our legal system and its apparent politicisation ("Bad luck if PM disagrees with ump", June 26, p20). He used industrial relations as the prime arena and mentioned, in opening, the establishment of "the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration created in 1904". A massive problem is the plethora of tribunals and commissions that usurp the roles of the judiciary and, indeed, of the legislature. These bodies, which are not courts, are effectively delivering judgments and making laws.

The apparent conflict deepened when Malcolm Turnbull took to sacking the umpire, to abolishing such bodies, and ignoring their findings. The independence of such structures in the legal system was thus compromised but also the propriety of their authority to effectively deliver industrial awards, that is laws, was brought into question.

Malone unfortunately complicated the issue unnecessarily by delivering his own opinion of two such recent conflicts in the IR arena. One was the abolition of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. He championed its highly contestable decision that aimed, totally ineffectively it could be argued, "to make our roads safer by ending the incentive system that encourages truckies to drive longer hours".

The question is not, "Why, if cost of transport by owner-drivers could solve this problem, were the proposed increases not to be applied to fleet trucks also?" It is why the tribunal had such authority and that without recourse.

Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor

The Turnbull government has assured voters it is not planning to privatise Medicare. This may be technically correct. However, the Productivity Commission has recently been asked to undertake an inquiry not only into Medicare, but "into introducing competition and informed user choice into human services".

In other words, all our human services will be up for "contracting out", i.e. technically not privatised, but run by the private sector. We are told this is to promote competition and efficiency. But is this really the best way?

Given the effort involved in managing competition and the duplication this will entail, not to mention factoring in private profits, how can this possibly improve efficiency? After all, the primary aim of business is to make a profit. This is the American model of public administration, and even American commentators have been warning us for years not to follow their example.

A previous Labor government used similar arguments to introduce private providers into the TAFE system, with disastrous results. Unfortunately, potential students who signed up to dodgy institutions have used up their government assistance and don't get a second chance. The privately owned businesses have run off with our money and we have also lost out on trained workers.

If the Trans-Pacific Partnership comes into effect, large foreign corporations have said they intend to move into service delivery over here. They will be allowed to bring in an unlimited number of foreign workers, without labour market testing, and to repatriate their profits.

Should our governments dare try to regulate their activities, they will be able to sue us for millions of (unfunded) dollars in foreign tribunals not subject to appeal. When we cede control of our services to profit-making foreign companies we give up control over our budget, cede sovereignty and lose our democracy.

Pauline Westwood, Dickson

If cancelling the tram contract is seen as "reckless and lunatic" by Capital Metro minister Simon Corbell ("Trams ordered, cancellation cost $220m", June 28, p1), then it follows that he would also harbour the same thoughts about those considering to vote for the Liberals because of this project.

But Simon, such voters would only be asking themselves whether it is such a good idea to support a project that is not even close to being viable without all the rubbery wider economic benefits included. Second, Simon, perhaps such voters are struggling to see the difference between paying for something they don't end up getting and paying a lot more for something they will never get to use. Reckless and lunatic? I don't think so.

Philip White, Crace

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