But he has left his mark elsewhere. Look at the failure of the inner city bike path, the construction of which required the removal of one lane of traffic along busy Marcus Clarke Street, to again see the stupidity of proceeding on the basis of ideology without serious analysis. It cost several million dollars over its full length but practically no one uses it.

I think his crowning glory must be the failure to complete the bridgeworks on Parkes Way near Sullivans Creek.

Stan Marks, Hawker

Following the last ACT election, in response to a headline along the lines of "Greens smashed; support crumbles", I wrote to the CT saying that the Greens had previously been lucky to get four reps in and now had only just missed out on having two members elected.

Their natural constituency had not fluctuated like an overactive flibbertigibbet and their natural constituency probably equated to two seats out of 17. I wondered how they would go with one member as a member of the government, rather than a minor party with four and whether this would constitute a useful lesson for the Green movement.

Your editorial "Rattenbury does Greens proud?" would seem to indicate that one MLA embedded in government can be more effective than four as a minor party. Does this make an utter travesty of democracy?

S.W. Davey, Torrens

You asked the right question ("Rattenbury does Greens proud?"). Aside from the fact Greens' policies are puerile and adolescent, achievement is not in their lexicon. I look forward to the day when reason overcomes emotion among their deluded supporters, mostly self-absorbed youngsters and well-to-do, upper middle-class, wannabe hippies, and the Greens are sent packing to Bob Brown's forest cabin in Tasmania or the crazy planet from which they came.

Gerry Murphy, Braddon

The ACT government produced an economic analysis of bus rapid transit two months before the October 2012 election, but did not make it public until July 2013.

On September 21, 2012, Katy Gallagher announced Labor's decision on transit between Civic and Gungahlin. If she had released the economic analysis at the same time, Jenny Stewart ("No transports of delight", Forum, April 16, p5) would now be asking "How should we evaluate the arguments, pro and con, for Canberra's bus rapid transit?"

Leon Arundell, Downer

Jon Stanhope's claims (Letters, April 16) about the new visiting schedule at Alexander Maconochie Centre ignore the fact that the current system actually prevents many detainees from accessing visits because a small cohort of visitors book well in advance, restricting access to visits. It is simply not fair, nor responsive to our human rights aspirations, to ignore this and not make changes in that context. Recognising the importance of prison visits for detainees for their rehabilitation, the ACT continues to be a leader, facilitating visits five days a week, the most generous visit system in Australia. Mr Stanhope suggested this was equivalent to Goulburn and Cooma; however, the facts are that visiting only occurs two days a week at both of those facilities.

Finally, Mr Stanhope reflects on the vision to build a human rights-compliant and rehabilitation-focused prison.

I too share this vision; however, it is too easy to look back with rose-coloured glasses. It is clearly evident that the AMC was built too small and also lacked any prison industries, which are integral to providing skills and structure for detainees. These are both highly significant shortcomings which I have been able to address in my time as minister.

Shane Rattenbury, Minister for Corrections

I recently endured yet another example of abject failure in ACT roads system design. It took me 23 minutes to travel two kilometres from Duntroon roundabout to Beltana Road. Such delay is not uncommon and it will not improve when the present roadworks are complete. The system that now funnels all airport, Fyshwick, Queanbeyan, Majura Park and Brindabella Business Park traffic into one stream does not work.

Traffic lights have replaced the previous perfectly good free-flowing, self-regulating roundabout at the Duntroon bridge, functional roads have been torn up and Fyshwick traffic now transits more lights to join Monaro Highway. The link that previously facilitated visiting Majura Park has been removed, requiring a pointless loop out to Pialligo and back to Majura Road. All this at great expense and a total waste of ratepayer taxes to achieve totally disrupted traffic flows.

What was needed was to maintain the elevation on Majura Parkway to facilitate an underpass near the Duntroon bridge for Fyshwick-bound traffic to join Monaro Highway southbound, at traffic lights, as previously.

These same planning geniuses are about to give us the Barton Highway/Gungahlin Drive light-fest when a simple overpass at William Slim Drive elevation is the logical solution.

For previous incompetent ACT traffic planning and design, see Glenloch Interchange, Caswell Drive/Aranda access, not to mention the "never to be built" second bridge over Belconnen Way or the College Drive/Whelan Street intersection.

For further profligate wastage, think propagation of needless signage, painting out of road lanes and reconstruction of almost every easy-merge corner on major roads.

What is desperately needed is competent ministerial management and a clean-out of the perpetrators of these debacles.

A small advisory group with real-world roads-user experience and common sense is needed to oversee and review TAMS roadworks plans before they get set in stone. Then we would see better road outcomes for the ACT, traffic flows that work, and a massive reduction of the financial black hole that ACT roads have become.

Ken Keeling, Bruce

It's disturbing as a truck driver to see the gross politicisation of safe pay rates by Coalition politicians. To be able to drive safely, professionally and manage fatigue well drivers need to be fairly remunerated so they are not forced by financial circumstances to work the maximum permissible hours allowed by state road authorities. These maximum hours are 72 or 84 hours over six days, with a mandatory 24-hour break.

As you can imagine after 48 to 60 hours in a week, concentrating behind the wheel of a big rig, often outside daylight hours, fatigue management can become an issue.

By paying drivers a reasonable rate from the first hour at work, there is a recognition that they will not be forced by circumstances to accept work to the maximum.

With a sensible pay structure drivers will be happier, healthier and stay in the industry longer, therefore becoming more familiar with road conditions. The end result will be a slightly larger and more professional workforce. The few per cent added to the transport component will hardly be noticed and the only way to make this fair is for it to be mandatory. Perhaps remuneration changes need to be more gradual due to the apparently slim profit margins relating to wages and other costs for operators, but the changes should still go ahead in the interests of public safety and a professional workforce.

Matt Ford, Crookwell, NSW

My vote on July 2 will go to the party whose leader can most satisfactorily answer the weightiest moral and economic question of our time. That question of course is: "Have the birds got jobs?" Voters with a moral conscience will well remember the first raising of the matter in cinemas everywhere in Monty Python's Life of Brian back in 1979. It is surely a scandal of modern times that the question is yet to be answered or even taken seriously by politicians. Our avian friends deserve much better.

I want Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten to tell the Australian people honestly just what it is their parties have against the birds, that this defining question of our age could remain unanswered for so long.

Let there be an end to all frivolous political rhetoric and commentary.

Lance Lawton, Cooma, NSW

I refer to David Wroe and Rory Callinan's article "Conduct of SAS troops under independent review" (April 17, p5).

The activities of our special forces tend not to be well publicised, and it is not unreasonable to conclude that 15 years of successive deployments may have been marked by incidents that one might wish to forget. One hopes that the findings of the investigation will be shared with the citizens of Australia, in whose name these special operations have been undertaken.

As a Vietnam veteran, allow me to suggest that the likelihood of questionable conduct occurring in the first place would be much less were it not for the eagerness of successive Australian governments from both sides of politics to respond to the dog whistle of our American masters.

On April 25, we will remember the sacrifices that Australian military personnel have made in defence of our country.

So we should.

Lest we forget, those pompous politicians who have glibly consigned our young people to the meat grinder of unnecessary conflict.

Peter Grabosky, Forrest

A pity, Bill Deane tells us (Letters, April 18), that Shane Duffy and Jackie Huggins' article on Aboriginal deaths in custody ("Time to change the record for the next generation", Times2, April 15, p5) doesn't mention paragraph 3.5 of the 1991 royal commission: "The proportion of deaths in police and prison custody was similar for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people."

A pity Mr Deane didn't check his references a bit more carefully. His sentence isn't in the 1991 report. It comes from a 1996 report from the Office of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, and it isn't talking about overall death rates in the two prisoner populations.

The report in fact finds that Indigenous prisoners "are 1.26 times more likely to die in prison than non-Indigenous prisoners".

Still, the rates are fairly similar. Mr Deane could, in fact, have plucked some sentences from the 1991 report to make his point. Their context in the argument of that report, though, would have brought them uncomfortably close to "an interesting lament of Indigenous victimhood", Mr Deane's assessment of the Duffy and Huggins article: "The conclusions are clear. Aboriginal people die in custody at a rate relative to the proportion of the whole population which is totally unacceptable and which would not be tolerated if it occurred in the non-Aboriginal community. But this occurs not because the people in custody are more likely to die than others in custody, but because the Aboriginal population is grossly over-represented in custody. Too many Aboriginal people are in custody too often." (1991 report, 1.3.3) " ... on almost every statistical indication of the status, or wellbeing, of the Aboriginal population, we find its members to be in a highly disadvantaged position. This is the case both in absolute terms and in comparison with the position of the non-Aboriginal society. The conclusion we must draw is that the level of Aboriginal disadvantage is very great, and that it underlies the phenomena of Aboriginal over-representation in custody and Aboriginal deaths in custody." (11.3.25).

Colin Jeffcott, Campbell

Sadly, Sir David MacKay, physicist and professor of engineering at Cambridge, died of cancer on April 14 at the age of 48. Something of a genius of our time, he made significant breakthroughs in the field of information theory and was active in teaching mathematics in Africa, but became famous for his book Sustainable Energy –Without the Hot Air, published online for free, which led to his being appointed chief scientific climate change adviser to the British government. This book, and his TED talk summarising it, brilliantly debunks the myths and reveals the realities of sustainable energy (at least for Britain, and much of it applies anywhere). Anyone interested in energy solutions should dive into it.

Matt Andrews, Aranda

Naively, I thought my bank was apolitical. I now learn that my former bank (as of today), National Australia Bank, is co-footing the bill for a post-budget dinner event for our Treasurer and his assistant – with my money, without asking me ("Help for glitzy fundraiser", April 16, p1)!

As Massola and Heath intimate, we now know why the NP/L are opposed to a royal commission probe into the Australian banking sector. Will the NAB now change its name to the Liberal National Bank of Australia now it has shown its political allegiance?

P.R. Temple, Macquarie

I was interested in the UNICEF report Fairness for Children highlighting worrying trends about Australian children struggling to reach basic maths, science and reading standards ("UNICEF: Australian children are falling behind in health, education", canberratimes.com.au, April15). It is deeply worrying that politicians are neglecting the necessary funding for our most disadvantaged kids.

However, another education issue that our government neglects is that of impoverished children in ourAsia-Pacific region. Over30 million children in the local region alone, one-third of all Asia-Pacific kids, face severe poverty.

This means that, far from the dropping rates of exam success in our country, they struggle to even make it to school with substantial health challenges or lacking safe drinking water. That is why it is essential in the next budget that our support for these kids doesn't go the way of the Gonski.

The federal government should ensure foreign aid remains the same at the very least. If we truly care about combating disadvantage affecting education, let's make sure we look beyond our own backyard too.

Robert Cook, Acton

TURNBULL'S TOP HAT

Let the games begin, because that is what Malcolm Turnbull is doing; treating Australia like his own personal Monopoly game complete with top hat.

Jan Gulliver, Lyneham

HOSPITALS, NOT SUBS

Put this to any voter. What would you rather have? Two brand new 500-bed hospitals in your town with every whiz bang medical diagnostic tool known to man or one nuclear submarine that sits in the water all day getting its brass polished waiting for a war that will possibly never come? I think we all know the answer!

Now phone your local federal Member of Parliament.

Ray Armstrong, Tweed Heads South, NSW

LET IT ALL OUT, BISHOP

Perhaps now dear Bronwyn Bishop can finally "let her hair down".

Brian Breach, Greenway

WHO WILL APOLOGISE?

The sad funeral of murdered toddler Sanaya Sahib has passed. Now is the time for a resounding, public apology to the maligned African communities.

Who will speak up?

C. Stewart, Spence

POLITICIANS SCARED

Ross Fitzgerald ("Minority rules on euthanasia", Times2, April 18, p4) makes clear that our politicians are so fearful of the clergy that they

ignore the majority of Australians who are frustrated by the lack of change.

No wonder Mr Fitzgerald has joined the Australian Sex Party to support Fiona Patten MP as she campaigns to legalise voluntary

euthanasia in Victoria.

Dr Peter Smith, Lake Illawarra, NSW

POT AND KETTLE

Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary Martin Parkinson warns about "a lethal mix of arrogance and ignorance" capable of plaguing public policy ("Parkinson warns against 'arrogance"', April 10, p1).

I suspect many very capable public servants in policy and line agencies are well acquainted with this in their dealings with Mr Parkinson's department.

Peter Edsor, Bungendore, NSW

IN STATE ABOUT STATES

Clearly I have not thought out the consequences of my proposal to abolish the states (Letters, April 15), as Peter Baskett (Letters, April 19) kindly points out. As an NRL fan I am appalled at my oversight.

I love rugby league State of Origin. Apologies.

Ian Jannaway, Monash

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