Two years ago we visited and found Floriade to be fabulous, floral and festive. This year, well, flaccid comes to mind. With the potential to be an international festival of renown, it seems to have lost its way and its flowers!
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Even worse, last Thursday we caught the third free bus of the morning out to the (closed) front gate of the festival. No signs on the gate, just a padlock and perplexed patrons peering through the bars at the distant flowers. Why have free buses running there and then why wait till 11am to announce the closure on your Facebook page (but nowhere else) — not even place a notice on your publicity signs around the city centre.
Make up your mind, Floriade organisers and Events ACT.
Owen Davies, Wellington Point, Qld
We attended Floriade Nightfest at the weekend and had a lovely time. We were disappointed, however, that despite coming equipped with refillable water bottles we were unable to locate a single ACT government funded drinking fountain, leaving us to line up for prolonged periods and to spend a small fortune on overpriced bottled water.
It wasn't until leaving that we spotted one of the elusive fountains, tucked behind rows of turnstiles at the main entry point and inaccessible to the general public.
Rachael Lizars, Kambah
Keep them honest
Fantastic work by Auditor-General Dr Maxine Cooper ("Damning report on LDA", October 1, p1). Someone has to keep the b******s honest. Her report into the operations of the Land Development Agency clearly proves a need for constant surveillance of Andrew Barr and his cronies, inside and outside government. She is certainly fulfilling her brief.
Heather McMillan, Greenway
Housing pipe dream
The recent changes to the role of the LDA announced by the Chief Minister are all very well, but don't go anywhere near far enough.
The "new" LDA will continue to have the twin objectives of developing and releasing greenfield land for revenue and ensuring the Labor-Greens Government meets its affordable housing targets. These objectives are fundamentally opposed and irreconcilable.
How can the government make housing affordable when it insists the LDA sells land on the basis of maximising profit (revenue) to the government? Until the government changes the objective of the LDA to selling land at a price sufficient only to cover the cost of development and release for sale, then affordable housing remains a pipe dream.
Don Sephton, Greenway
'Older folk' ignored
Jack Waterford ("A Problem of Perception" Forum, October 1, p1) has identified the Andrew Barr trait to reject opposition from "older folk" labelling them "opposed to any development or change". Why would a leader ignore the opinion of a large group that is arguably the best educated and most widely experienced of any such group in Australia?
Is he so insecure that he cannot handle criticism? If he is so certain about the tram why hasn't he responded to the weight of arguments against the project instead of making the "King Canute" announcement of a second stage Civic-Woden link that has confounded even some supporters?
When your Auditor-General states in her report that even the meagre benefit-cost of 1.20 of the Gungahlin-Civic tram line "needs to be used with caution" and cites the Barr government's admission that realising these benefits will involve 'land development decisions undertaken by ACT government' commenting that "there is a lack of transparency and accountability as to what needs to be done, when and by whom", you sense that there is much going on behind closed doors.
I am just one of numerous members of the "older group" who have advanced many unanswered arguments that this so-called "light rail" project is not a viable transport development for Canberra. It is an increment of a larger proposal that has not been subject to any formal evaluation.
It just happens to have the necessary emotional appeal that might allow a head-strong leader to redesign the city according to his liking. Perception may indeed be reality.
A. Smith, Farrer
Election crumbs
Is there an election on sometime soon? A few weeks ago plans for an upgrade to the Kambah Village Centre appeared stuck on the window of the Brumby's Bakery.
Was that you, Mick Gentleman, that rustled around in the dusty back office and retrieved the often-trotted-out plans and snuck into the Village Centre in the dead of night to put them up?
Just wondering.
Myles Parker, Kambah
Diplomat drivers
Anyone who has lived in Canberra for a few years is likely to have witnessed or been involved in traffic infringements by overseas diplomatic staff ("Diplomats uphold right to break road rules", October 4, p2).
It is an issue that crops up ever few years.
When it does, The Canberra Times quotes Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade staff and the relevant minister, who invariably promise that action with be taken. At very best this seems to involve nothing more than a good talking to.
It would be interesting to know whether any diplomats have ever had their diplomatic immunity waived and then been expelled for putting the lives of their hosts at risk.
I suspect not. Our protocol staff and ministers just don't have the spine to take real action. Perhaps they will when the inevitable death or serious injury takes place due to diplomatic arrogance.
Timothy Walsh, Garran
Political divide
Ross Fitzgerald's proposition that the destabilisation of Malcolm Turnbull is starting (PM's left-right dilemma", Comment, October 3, p16) is probably very close to the mark. Australian politics is a poisonous concoction of the prosaic and the febrile, a recipe for extreme ennui, and internal party politics is not exactly marked by common sense.
Turnbull cannot be what presumably he would wish, a Liberal wet, in a party room where the god-bothering and back-to-the-workhouse factions have the numbers. Not if he wants to remain party leader at least, which presumably he does, though one might ask why he wants to bother.
Further, calls for him to "lead" fail to take account of the position in the legislature. There, the numbers require consensus negotiation, not captain's calls (risible or otherwise) or trips to a phone box to change into the Superman suit. That's actually a benefit, since political arrangements require adult leadership, not schoolyard solutions. Managing that process is true leadership.
But the problem goes much further than that. It embraces the separate but related significant difficulties in the Labor Party.
What Australia is now seeing is a sea change in politics that one day should result in a centre party that would accommodate Labor's secular right and the Liberals' secular left, plus those two parties' centres. No one wants to talk about that, of course, since (in each case) their present settings in amber suit the suits very well.
Richard Laidlaw, Subiaco, WA
Beholden to unions
Those who complain about union influence on the processes of the Labor Party miss a key point – the party exists as the political wing of the union movement. Labor falters when it abandons representation of its base – the Gillard pledge that no private school would lose even a dollar under the Gonski funding model, making the program incapable of implementation comes to mind. So does the party's decision to support the stripping of $100 million a year from the old age pension entitlements of former public servants, former unionists all. But for the taking of these two decisions Labor would have denied Malcolm Turnbull even his current minimal majority at the most recent election.
Equally, many influential people hold deeply conservative views on current levels of taxation, support for private schools, the mining of coal for profit, the nature of marriage, responses to climate change. Their parties of choice are Liberals and the Nationals.
Clearly, Malcolm Turnbull, their theoretical spokesperson does not share their attitudes. Ross Fitzgerald's prediction of mutterings of removal (PM's left-right dilemma", Comment, October 3, p16) can scarcely come as a surprise.
Noel Beddoe, Kiama, NSW
Power loss blame
It comes as no surprise that H. Ronald (Letters, September 30) has been sucker enough to swallow the claims by some that the tragic loss of power in SA in recent days had something to do with the state's renewable/non-renewable energy mix.
Any number of experts have made it clear that there is not a scintilla of truth in these claims, that it was solely a weather event and that the level of renewable energy capacity was irrelevant.
One might observe that perhaps more could have been done to ensure the security of the system. Particularly since the state Liberal government of some years ago, being blinded by ideology, outsourced the electricity supply to a Chinese concern and short cuts and elimination of back-up facilities have occurred ever since.
The entire Eyre Peninsula now has a history of frequent extended blackouts caused by failure of its single-strand supply line.
T. J. Marks, Holt
Road to nowhere
As the lights went out over much of South Australia in a storm signifying the rise in intensity of extreme weather events associated with global warming, it was disappointing to hear the Prime Minister, formerly a strong advocate of mitigation of climate change, and other members of the government, refer to the promotion of renewable energy as "ideological" and "aggressive". This is not least in view of the PM's earlier statement: "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." (Malcolm Turnbull, 2010).
It appears that, despite a global scientific consensus, recently reaffirmed in open letters by 144 scientists including Australia's leading climate scientists, and by 375 of the world's top scientists including 30 Nobel Prize winners, world governments including in Australia are continuing to lead humanity and nature on the road to nowhere.
Andrew Glikson, Kambah
Next UN leader
Gwynne Dyer's analysis of how the next UN Secretary-General will be chosen ("The next UN chief: No charisma required", Comment, October 3, p17) throws a flood of light on an important issue.
The five permanent members of the Security Council (United States, Russia, Britain, France and China) effectively choose the applicant, and have always favoured candidates who can be relied upon not to challenge Security Council power, relative unknowns with a record of having never taken decisive action.
The Security Council members seem to have forgotten what they are there for. They have accepted the heavy responsibility to 'save succeeding generations from the scourge of war' as the inspiring preamble to the UN Charter puts it. They have failed badly to do this so far.
As Dyer says, 'the UN has no military forces or financial resources of its own', and must rely upon the good faith of its most powerful members, who have been more renowned for bitter quarrelling amongst themselves than carrying out their duty.'
By the way, if they do choose Helen Clark, the former New Zealand prime minister, they may get more than they bargained for.
Harry Davis, Campbell
TO THE POINT
GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS
A trapper would be delighted to bag a national record of rabbits but the record would be a matter of despair for the farmer on whose property they were caught.
Similarly, ACT Policing's capture of "one of the largest hauls of cannabis in Australia last year" ("Police seize $6 million of cannabis, October 1, p15).
The large catch shows cannabis is plentiful.
Bill Bush, Turner
FALL GUY WANTED
The damning findings of questionable conduct in the upper echelons of the LDA by ACT Auditor-General Dr Maxine Cooper demand government's swift and decisive action: sack the Auditor-General.
A. Whiddett, Yarralumla
Given the Mugabe-esq goings-on here in the ACT, perhaps Canberra should now be twinned with Harare.
Lee Welling, Nicholls
LIBS DROP THE BALL
Football grand finals are sacrosanct. So did the Canberra Liberals really think that the high-rotation advertisement they ran throughout last Saturday's AFL grand final would have a positive impact?
Stephen Barber, Narrabundah
FLAWED ARGUMENT
"Tram$ = higher rates", the road signs tell us. They do, in exactly the same way as hospitals, schools, buses, roads, sports grounds, Floriade and support for the arts equal higher rates.
Bruce Wright, Latham
POLITICAL POLLUTION
The proliferation of election posters on our streets is outrageous. Almost every vertical pole has at least one sign attached to it. It deserves a simple description: "political pollution".
Jim Crane, Monash
WORDS REVEALING
Notice how the Liberal posters are saying "Hospital (note the singular) before trams". I thought they werepromising two hospitals withthe money set aside for the trams?
I am confused. Are the Liberals already reneging on a promise even before the election?
L. Christie, Canberra
FLOWERY SLIP
Events ACT spokeswoman Jasmine De Martin claims of this year's Floriade that "No, there is not less flowers. There's the same amount of bulbs and annuals" (Floriade footprint wilting for some fans", October 4, pp2-3). A better grasp of English grammar might give her a little more credibility.
Alan Robertson, Canberra City
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