Encouraged to vote after reading ("Something on your plate", January 28, p.2), I logged on to the site.

As I didn't have an account (on yoursay.act.gov.au) I went through the process of registering and logged in.

I received no on-screen acknowledgment that I was registered nor to date have I received an email. When I logged on to vote I received an online message to say I was blocked as I had tried to log in too many times.

Is trying to log on once too many times? How am I to vote?

It would have to be one of the worst sites I've tried to use and needs some attention by the site programmers.

I'd like to ask: what the hell is wrong with the existing slogan? I feel our government has far more important issues to address without spending unnecessary money on number plate slogans.

As for "CBR", to most people it's a baggage code used by airlines to follow checked luggage to its final destination, not for promotion of our city.

Another lame duck idea by our government.

Peter Desmond, Flynn

Divinity a stretch

The government's divine right to rule by decree, by retrospective legislation, has now been extended to contract law according to the report "Tax Office puts the brakes on land-speed glory" (January 28, pp8,9).

Apparently the Australian land speed record holder, Rosco McGlashan, was granted a cash injection "but when ATO investigators took a closer look they found the money should not have been paid and demanded it back".

There has been no report of any allegation of misrepresentation or fraud, only of a "botched application by an outside consultant for 'R&D money' in 2014".

The major error was in granting the application despite it being "botched". The ATO made that error. It contracted to supply money for a purpose and paid it. That money has been spent for that purpose.

By what divine right does the ATO demand repayment?

Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor

Friends not flunkies

Reports the US will send its largest-yet aircraft deployment to Darwin with the next rotation of US Marines arriving there in April should set alarm bells ringing for the government.

The likely new US Secretary of State, former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, has called for a blockade of China's facilities in the South China Sea.

Australia should not get dragged into this dangerous brinkmanship. The late strategic studies expert, Professor Des Ball, indicated that containing a conflict between China and Japan would be implausible. The same would no doubt apply even more to the two nuclear-armed powers of the US and China, which both now have belligerent leaders.

The Turnbull government and Shorten opposition, if they have any sense and want to preserve peace in the region, should declare they will not contribute to the escalation of this conflict.

Australia must take control of our foreign policy and not continue our disastrous subservience to the US of recent decades.

We can be friends without being toadies.

Kathryn Kelly, Chifley

The American extreme

Sue Wareham wrote, "The US tends to bring war, not peace" (Letters, January 31), and it got me thinking.

The US can exhibit such extremes. My favourite example is the Congressional Research Service publication "Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2016" (https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf).

We are all products of our history. Theirs includes religious persecution, invasion, revolution, slavery, the West, civil war, exceptionalism and guns.

And we think we are the weird mob.

Eric Pozza, Red Hill

By any other name

If someone sends thousands of emails describing a fantasy designed to induce gullible, vulnerable people to send them money, that's a scam. If someone sends thousands of false invoices hoping that overworked people will just pay them that's fraud.

If Centrelink raises thousands of dubious debts and pursues those "debts" in the hope that frightened, powerless people will just pay them without challenge, and they do so, that's called a success.

Wal Collins, Scullin

Hear hear, Amanda

Amanda Vanstone ("An authentic politician", January 30, p12) seems to be regaining her pre-Howard ministry days sense of moderate conservatism.

Amanda's observation that politicians always find a way to blame someone else for their own failings is spot-on.

She also says the media isn't solely to blame for making "news" of comments from the likes of Alan Jones.

Keep it up, Amanda, and some of those who have said they don't bother reading beyond your name might decide you do have worthwhile comment to make.

Eric Hunter, Cook

Tide of disbelief

So Tony Abbott wants to ditch the renewable energy target.

What's your target for sea level rise, Tony?

The consequence of ineffective policy implementation to mitigate climate change coupled with your worldwide appeal to maintain fossil fuel use leads to rising temperatures and sea levels.

Is 40 to 50 metres enough or would you like us to fulfil our full potential and reach 100 metres?

Chris Hansen, Rivett

Development application stress could bring down the curtain

Thanks to Caroline Le Couteur for her welcome examination of yet another Development Application meeting local resistance ("Building plan slammed", January 31, p.1).

Her opinions seem widely shared across our city ("City in State of Neglect"; Beware Rough Paths"; "Listen to the Experts": letters, January 31).

It now seems to be technologically difficult even to register such objections ("On Submission Roundabout", Letters, January 30).

David Biles' (recent) concerns about that DA at the Curtin shops are especially apposite.

Interested parties have just been advised that the owner will close down all the Curtin businesses involved, when their leases expire in October, and fence off the site, if the DA is not approved.

This "advice" included the following: "If the DA is not approved, indefinitely until such time as a development that the owners consider to be economically viable is approved."

So much for the owner's expressed concerns for the Curtin residents.

I do hope that this will not influence the final decision of the Planning and Land Directorate.

Peter Graves, Curtin

Thinking long-term

I do sympathise with John McKerral (Letters, January 30). Nobody could have known that buying a house at the bottom of a sheer, south-facing cliff would prove to be so costly further down the track.

I assume that's his predicament, otherwise his 30-to-60-year return on investment to install solar panels appears to be an exaggeration similar in order of magnitude to his disregard for the natural environment and the wellbeing of future generations.

James Allan, Narrabundah

Teachers not tests

I was flabbergasted and horrified to hear that the federal government is now proposing a literacy and numeracy test for year 1 students.

This proposed test implies that teachers do not know which of their students are struggling. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

Teachers do know and are desperate for more teaching resources and time to help these children.

It is high time that the federal government listens to teachers – schools need more teachers, not more tests.

Gay von Ess, Aranda

Slow death by jargon

We have been told that the education standards of Australian school students have been slipping behind some other countries.

This decline is said to have occurred over the last several years. What changed in Australian schooling to "cause" such a decline?

The biggest single change has been the introduction of NAPLAN, the compulsory, national standardised testing of primary school students. If "result A" has only happened after major "change B", surely there is a relationship between "A" and "B". Now we are told we are to have such testing of children in year 1 – six-year-olds – to promote "improvement" — just like NAPLAN testing was to identify learning problems to enhance standards.

Many school principals demand staff teach NAPLAN because its results "judge" schools' standing, regardless the disparity in resources caused by huge differences in the socio-economic status of students' families. I pushed chalk for 11 years (in the days of blackboards, later termed "chalkboards").

Then I spent some years in projects to enhance skills of beginning teachers. The teacher truism was "phonics are best for teaching reading and spelling"; after a few years the truism was "phonics cause reading problems"; teaching must change: "Not 'back to basics' but 'forward to the fundamentals', ad nauseam".

Teacher effectiveness is drowning in jargon, ever more homework and reporting demands.

Rod Olsen, Flynn

Grim reading

A parliamentary Senate committee is currently accepting submissions regarding suicides by veterans and ex-service personnel.

The submissions are available for viewing at the following address and make for disturbing reading.

They certainly reflect my own experiences in dealing with the Department of Veterans' Affairs.

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary—Business/Committees/Senate/Foreign—Affairs—Defence—and—Trade/VeteranSuicide/Submissions

I would strongly recommend anyone who is thinking of enlisting to read these sad accounts.

At some point you will almost certainly suffer a service-related injury that will probably impact on the rest of your life and you will be abandoned.

Chris Morgan, Evatt

Tough on offenders

Who are we kidding when we say we are trying to defeat the "scourge" of domestic violence? When perpetrators can laugh off a suspended sentence for driving a car containing a terrified woman into a lake, or being bailed for making threats to kill ("Man charged with making threats to kill partner granted bail", January 22, p.10) no domestic violence victim can feel safe.

The Quincy Solution has run for many years in the United States, with its central provision being that a first-time offender will immediately be jailed – no "low-end of the range" pleas, no excuses. Banged up. The prediction was that the jails would overflow.

The reality is that the overall prison population has fallen, as perpetrators realised the consequences and general offences dropped.

Bob Gardiner, Isabella Plains

Thanks to saviours

We who live in Latham owe a huge debt to the wonderful men and women who put out the fire so quickly and efficiently on Monday (January30).

The response to our peril, with all the ground units and helicopters, was truly amazing.

We live in a beautiful part of Canberra, in proximity to Ginninderra Creek and the bushland surrounding it, and we know that it is a dangerous place.

It is lovely to know that our fellow citizens are willing to put their lives on the line to keep us safe.

John Mason, Latham

SPEAK UP, PM

Malcolm Turnbull has said it is not his job as PM to "run a commentary on the domestic policy of another country". He must realise the Trump domestic policy he will not comment on is affecting residents in countries all around the world including Australia.

Turnbull is displaying a lack of spine.

Robyn Lewis, Raglan

On the subject of acceptance of refugees, I suspect that Malcolm Turnbull and members of the Australian Government will not criticise the actions of Donald Trump and members of the US government because our would-be leaders fear being accused of hypocrisy, by Americans as well as Australians.

John F. Simmons, Kambah

Contrary to what Jack Waterford says ("Leader paralysis", Forum, January 28, p.1) , I believe Malcolm Turnbull has achieved the impossible. He is so bad he makes Billy McMahon look good. Please come back, Tony Abbott, all is forgiven!

Ken Maher, Ainslie

I had a vision of Malcolm Turnbull in 1938. "It is not my job, as prime minister of Australia, to run a commentary on the domestic policies of other countries."

John Passant, Kambah

VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

The USA's population is around 325 million. The number who voted for Trump was around 63 million. That's just under 20 per cent. Now the world has to put up with the nonsense that is coming out of "the greatest democracy". What gives?

Bruce Kennedy, Melba

USA 2017 Civil War II.

Brian Hale, Wanniassa

DRESSING DOWN

Raising the idea of advertising billboards (Letters, January 30) brands Chief Minister Barr as a Liberal in Labor clothing.

James Walcott, Mawson

USING YOUR HEAD

Rosco McGlashen ("Tax Office puts the brakes on land-speed glory", January 28, pp. 8,9) is a man with a vision of travelling at 1000mph (1600km/h). I'm glad he shows safe responsibility by having his safety helmet.

Robyn Steer, Hawker

ROGER V NEMO

Was there a bloke by the name of Nadal playing in the final of the Aussie Open? The media reports seem to indicate that Federer (a definite champion) was solely responsible for the brilliant final.

Alex Wallensky, Broulee, NSW

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