We adore our Raiders; we avidly support the GWS Giants so now is the time to dig deep and support the Brumbies.

Despite being the most successful Australian team in the Super Rugby Championship, SANZAAR, the governing body having expanded the championship beyond sensible manageable conditions, are now looking to reduce the number of teams competing in the Championship.

The Brumbies are being considered as one of the teams to be axed.

This, of course, is absolute nonsense as Brumbies contribute almost 40 per cent of the Wallabies team. However, crowd attendance is a factor considered by SANZAAR, hence the necessity for GIO Stadium to be filled to capacity for the Brumbies v Highlanders match on Saturday evening.

It is unfortunate that because of broadcast and TV rights the match has to be played in the evening when it is not a really friendly-family time and the weather can be very cold later in the season.

Hopefully, The Canberra Times will get behind the Brumbies and drum up support and it would be great if the Raiders got on board as well.

The Brumbies need your support so please come to this match if at all possible.

N. Bailey, Nicholls

Just in case you have wondered why you haven't heard from me lately, I am writing this letter to you.

This will be delivered by my son Tony after my death.

Thank you for publishing many of my letters.

Thanks also to those who've taken the time to read them. I've enjoyed it all. Farewell, dear friends.

I won't be back to haunt you. I'll be sleeping in my dusty bed until, by the grace of God, I am awoken by the Life Giver.

Best wishes to you all, hope to see you later.

With affection.

Evelyn Bean, late of Ainslie

Mick Gentleman's Office advised Bruce Payne (Letters, CT, March 24) correctly in advising "there is no minister in charge" of ActewAGL.

However, I do hope that Bruce was also informed that ActewAGL is made up of two partners, ActewAGL Retail and ActewAGL Distribution. The ActewAGL Retail is comprised of Icon Water Pty Ltd , formerly ACTEW, and AGL Pty limited. ActewAGL Distribution is comprised of partners Icon Water and Jenner Ltd.

Icon Water is owned by the ACT government and its two shareholders are the Chief Minister and the Minister for Environment. We, via the ACT government's two ministers, are joint partners in each of the respective two entities of ActewAGL So I assume we can influence ActewAGL's meter reading practices through being represented by Andrew Barr and Shane Rattenbury as the shareholders of Icon Water, which owns half of ActewAGL's Retail and Distribution entities. If not the Assembly should consider legislating for domestic gas consumption to be charged by meter reading.

Gina Pinkas, Aranda

ActewAGL and their gas distributor, Gemena, need to join the rest of us in the 21st century when it comes to service time frames.

While quick to take your money for the service, they are slow in actually putting in gas meters for connections.

Understandably, it's reasonable to expect a gas connection to take more than hours.

Although receiving a notice from ActewAGL acknowledging the request, stating standard connections can take up to 25 business days, still no connection. And no date in sight.

ActewAGL and Gemena play a good game of "client tennis" sending the client back to each other when trying to ascertain when the connection would be completed.

Credit to the ActewAGL call-centre staff trying to resolve the issue, but Gemena don't seem to think delivery of service a priority.

Who pays the price – Canberra builders and thus the Canberra economy, not to mention the families needing to move into their homes?

It's not like there is an alternative provider.

Rachael Mitchell, Downer

At the local scale, another thing that Crispin Hull could have added to his list of the damage done by John Howard (Forum, March 2, p2) was the sale of Canberra Airport.

Imagine the benefits that could have been obtained by having all the office space currently at the airport distributed among the town centres, particularly Gungahlin and Tuggeranong.

Other businesses would have received a boost and traffic might be better balanced.

There wouldn't be thousands of office workers competing with airline passengers needing to make their flights.

The money spent upgrading roads to the airport could also have then been used for more productive purposes.

Good on the Snow family for seizing the opportunity and developing some fabulous, high-quality buildings.

It's sad that they have had such a detrimental effect on Canberra planning. I'm sure Howard would have seen stuffing up planning in the Labor-voting ACT as a bonus.

Jim Derrick, Florey

M. Moore (Letters, March 23) says the roar of an F-18 is the sound of freedom. The phrase is derived from what Bob Rich said about the Blackbird in Skunk Works, the story of top-secret US aircraft designers.

Bob Gardiner, Isabella Plains

Ticket inspectors boarded my bus today (Wednesday) and checked all the passengers' tickets.

The inspectors referred to themselves as "transport officers" and called the ticket inspection a "revenue check"!

This is the first time I have encountered ticket inspectors on a Canberra bus since catching my first bus here in 1964.

John Burge, Curtin

Gerry Murphy (Letters, March 24) asserts he will say whatever he pleases and no one will shut him up.

He appears never to have come across the adage "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove any doubt."

Eric Hunter, Cook

Recent terrorist attacks can be traced back to 1979 when the USSR invaded Afghanistan to prop up a dictatorship.

The US aided the locals with arms, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, and the USSR withdrew after about 10 years having failed from both a political and military prospective. The fighters, which included many from the Middle East, including Osama bin Laden, were trained and armed and looking for a fight and to cause trouble for the next decade or so, culminating in the attack on the US in 2001.

The US irrationally decided to invade Iraq based on fake intelligence and no links to Bin Laden and 14 years later a stable Iraq dictatorship with good infrastructure has been reduced to chaos with millions dead, wounded or displaced.

Australia should never get involved with the US or UK north of the equator ever again and concentrate of trade and friendly relations in our region, including with the dictatorship in China, as we do currently.

Every war Australia and the US have been involved in since 1945 have been military and often political failures and Iraq will be no different.

The Kurds will be abandoned by the US-led allies and shafted by countries in the region even though they were effective militarily and a democratic and civilised people.

Adrian Jackson, Middle Park, Vic

It is refreshing to hear a judge support the abstract principle of justice ("Worry about wrongdoing, not class actions: judge", CT, March 23, pp18,19).

Federal Court judge Bernard Murphy asked, "Shouldn't we be more worried about corporate wrongdoings rather than the number of class actions?"

He said "the [class action] regime gave improved access to justice".

Last month Vince Morabito, a professor at the Monash Business School, said: "A government-backed fund is needed to ensure access to justice for cases where litigation funders and plaintiff lawyers are unwilling to back court action" ("Call for funding of class actions", February 28, p32).

Justice Murphy pointed to the issue of, "corporate wrongdoings". Rather than just civil misfeasance, the class actions often prove to be based on corporate crimes.

Arguably they should have been pursued by the public prosecutor.

The current regime effectively outsources law enforcement, a complete abrogation of responsibility.

"Victims of crime" payments could become part of the prescribed sentence in such an expanded criminal justice system so that the perpetrator funds compensation, not the state.

Punitive fines could be replaced by court costs.

Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor

Regarding Mr Turnbull's statement of sympathy for the Britons after Wednesday's terrorist attack in London (delivered on March 23), I have only one thing to say: it was proper and fitting for a Prime Minister to issue the statement he did in support of our ally, but it irritated me greatly for some reason.

It is possibly because our Prime Minister has no sympathy or feeling of any kind for that sector of the community in Australia that has suffered and continues to suffer terrorism enacted against them here.

I do not think it is an overstatement to say that being thrown off cliffs, living with the fear of being insulted or beaten up if you publicly hold a partner's hand, needing at times to obscure your intrinsic identity, suffering the indignity of being subjected to a proposed plebiscite on your civil rights and being vehemently denied the legal protection and social acceptance that come with the granting of access to marriage, is to suffer a form of terrorism enacted against a class of people on arbitrary grounds.

So, Mr Turnbull, when do we expect to see some interest in tidying up old legal anomalies [and] hear an official statement ofapology for atrocities enacted by this country against LGBTI people even well within my adulthood?

Meg Foreman, Queanbeyan, NSW

In your article "Barnaby Joyce: Decentralisation is core business, and there will be more of it" (March 23, p4) the Deputy Prime Minister declares decentralisation as being good for Australia.

If that's the case, then where is the government's strategic policy?

How can such an important policy decision be made simply on a whim, and a political whim at that?

Why has there been no white paper process and consultation with a wide range of stakeholders?

Ironically, it was the Greens who back in 2015 pushed for a Senate inquiry into decentralisation and regional capitals.

And Ken Henry in the Henry Review of Taxation recommended a land tax that would make businesses more price sensitive to location.

But there has been no action in this policy direction.

The lasting legacy of the Whitlam Labor government's decentralisation agenda are the two urban growth centres of Albury-Wodonga and Bathurst-Orange.

If Mr Joyce wants to emulate the Whitlam government, then show us the plan.

After all, as Mr Joyce laments, we don't want just two cities – Sydney and Melbourne – so a detailed decentralisation policy should focus on them.

Brad Hinton, Garran

I take my hat off to Barnaby Joyce for his admission the decision to relocate the APVMA to Armidale is "one of the biggest positive things" he has done as Agriculture Minister ("New England move just the start", March 23, p4).

With Australia farmers facing challenges of drought, flood, land salinity, crop disease and unconscionable conduct by the middlemen, it is remarkable that this minister and the government can make such inspiring and economically important decisions like moving a few public servants to regional Australia.

Keep up the good work. May Australians vote you out of power at the next election.

J. Grant, Gowrie

BARNABY'S VISION

The CT quotes Barnaby Joyce ("New England move just the start: Joyce", March 23, p4) as saying: "The action of a government with vision is not to ask people their personal opinion, it's to do with what is good for the nation." What is good for the nation? Obviously, whatever is the personal opinion of Barnaby Joyce.

Sandor Siro, Ainslie

SHOUT IT OUT

Two questions for the chief minister in regard to Manuka Oval media "centre". Why and how much? SHOUT it out!

B. Moore, Kingston

DISTORTED VIEW

Parents pushing for a smaller catchment area for Melbourne Girls College want to separate their daughters not only from boys but from girls from lower income families ("Education apartheid: Melbourne Girls College zone change uproar", canberratimes.com.au, March 22). What kind of distorted view of society will these girls acquire?

Michael McCarthy, Deakin

CASUALTIES

London – so much grief for the casualties. Yemen – so little grief for so many more casualties.

Peter Moran, Watson

PENCE LOOKALIKE

Is Malcolm Turnbull beginning to look more and more like US Vice-President Mike Pence? He seems to be regressing politically in that direction too.

John Passant, Kambah

TRUMP OFF THE RAILS

What are the odds that Donald Trump will be impeached by Christmas? Might be time to start making a book on his longevity. Sportsbet? Are you listening?

B. Pascoe, Barry, NSW

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