So now a gang of former federal politicians has launched a High Court bid to access higher retirement benefits, including the much sought-after "Gold Pass" ("Politician entitlements: Former MPs High Court bid to boost allowances", Canberra Times, August 9).
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The only pass these gold-diggers should get from the taxpayer is a "flick pass".
Let them eat cake along with the rest of us.
John Richardson, Wallagoot, NSW
'Doing' ideas the best
Adam Gantrell's article ("Tony Abbott's do-nothing government", Sunday Canberra Times, August 9) says it all. Having instigated over 50 reports, Abbott has cut off options during their development and truncated good social debate simply by eliminating options that are speculated in media.
This limits public debate and weakens our society. Where are the ideas that will provide a value-added future for our children and future generations?
Come on Mr Abbott, we'd like to see the lights on and someone at home.
J Grant, Gowrie
Future rumble on
Paul Malone is spot on with his chastening critique of the TPP ("Australia should be wary of the TPP", Sunday Focus, August 9, p15).
If Andrew Robb steps through the ropes and into the ring with Hulk Hogan, he will be beaten; it's a simple calculation.
The best he can expect is to be scooped off the canvas at the end of the rumble and hoisted onto the beaming Hogan's broad shoulder while the PA system exhorts the crowd to "give it up for this great guy, and from such a wunnerful country".
You just won't win in any real sense from a trade negotiation with a superpower that has you in vassalage. And if this particular iteration of the classic feudal system has changed at all, it is for the worse.
In medieval times the arrangements of fealty and homage were pretty much out in the open. Now – and since WWII – we pretend independence; while in the smallest, oakiest meeting rooms we find out where we'll go, what we'll buy, and the best outback spots for strange-looking round buildings.
Secrecy should play only the tiniest part in a democracy; and yet it has lately become such a mainstay of our politics that it rightly should field its own candidates at the next poll!
Ross Kelly, Monash
Since attaining office the Coalition has been so busy seeking downed airplanes, threatening Soviet leadership, declaring war on IS, sandbagging political ramparts and collecting Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) they've had little truck with vision, policy or economic management.
Like boy scouts collecting butterflies, they've already scored three FTA scalps – China, Japan, Korea – and are now blindly chasing really big fish, the Trans Pacific Partnership.
While FTAs gain headlines, predominantly negative, research suggests, the Howard-negotiated, Australian-US FTA, despite exuberantly optimistic predictions, failed to boost Australia's terms of trade.
Research suggests FTAs, rather than freeing-up trade, proscribe it by regulation, thereby restricting it. Agreements stifle competition and efficiency because parties trade with each other, to the detriment of consumers, who are thereby prevented from exploring other sources which may offer superior products at more attractive prices.
FTA's act like "loyalty cards" or "memberships", inducing consumers to act against their own best interests by settling for higher prices or lesser quality. Australian trade negotiators are delusional in contemplating "equitable" agricultural deals with Japan or the US. Japan has always treated its subsidised rice crops as sacrosanct, untouchable. US agribusiness, the planet's most highly subsidised and cosseted, is controlled by global behemoths like Del Monte, Cargill and Monsanto, which have enormous political clout.
Both Abbott and Obama are desperate to sign-off this economically toxic Faustian TPP, respectively, to boost electoral chances and seal a political legacy. Consumers be dammed!
Albert M.White, Queanbeyan
Space for everything
The solar-access problems with new estate housing that Tony Trobe identifies ("Solar rules cast design shadow", Sunday Times, August 9, p27) are rooted in two things: the severe shrinking of block sizes while permitting very large building footprints, in the (mistaken) belief that "urban sprawl" (which we don't have) will be prevented (incongruous beetling blocks of flats like those along noisy John Gorton Drive, are apparently not enough); and the (also mistaken) belief that every block must have a street frontage.
Those conditions lead to land-gobbling, high-energy, and costly estate infrastructure, while significantly preventing the use of sloping land, and delivering boring built environments with perfunctory landscaping.
Allegedly compensatory "public realms" will become rundown. Vested interests love all that. They include the Directorate of Economic Development, its Land Development Agency, the real estate, banking, and spec building "industries", and civil engineering and contracting firms.
Larger blocks with lower plot ratios (building footprint: site area) enable much better solar access, as well as improved family amenity. Space for a granny flat, shed, vegetable garden, pool, or trampoline, are all largely missing in Coombes, Wright, and the like, and that's downright inequitable, given the high property prices there.
Group housing subdivisions, like the very successful and value-holding Urambi Village, Wybalena Grove, and the upper Mugga Way and Mawson groupings, use land better, save heaps on infrastructure costs, provide a range of good sized plots, excellent solar orientation, privacy, quiet living and interesting architecture and landscaping.
Jack Kershaw, Kambah
Simple solution
It will never be possible to catch all cheats ("Systematic cheating rampant at universities, taskforce finds", CT, August 11, p2), but high school teachers have long had a practice that can minimise it.
Early in a semester, students are required to do an extended unaided writing task in the classroom under the direct supervision of their teacher or lecturer. At the end of perhaps 90 minutes the papers are handed up, closely marked with the results recorded, photocopied, and the originals including teacher feedback returned to the students and the copies retained by the teacher.
Later in the semester when students submit their major essays or assignments it is not difficult to identify obvious cases where a Phd-quality paper has been submitted by a student who was unable to spell, construct a sentence or write with any fluency in the earlier in-class task. Students can be shown both papers and challenged with the obvious evidence of ghost-writing or plagiarism.
Steve Ellis, Hackett
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