Nazi memorabilia issue highlights painful past and present

Yet I find it extremely difficult to accept rabbi Meltzer's reference to tolerance and respect in regard to the recent sale in Canberra of certain items relating to Second World War Germany ("Nazi items popular at ACT sales", CT, December 7) The treatment of the general Palestinian population by Israel today is atrocious, lacks any degree of tolerance or respect and indeed could be prosecuted as war crimes. For a nation still so focused on an horrific past to be so determined to inflict unmitigated suffering on women and children in Palestine is beyond comprehension.

Patrick O 'Hara, Isaacs

Corruption and skulduggery in forestry is not confined to Tasmania, but is rife in Papua New Guinea, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, Philippines, Sabah and Sarawak ("Corruption hampers logging battle", Sunday CT, November 30, p19).

The Amazonian rainforest is being destroyed at a breathtaking pace, often to provide grain-fed beef for fast-food hamburgers! It is estimated 80per cent of Peru's Amazonian timber harvesting is illegal. Corrupt practices in India involves criminals, in league with politicians, engaging in indiscriminate clear-felling and timber substitution. In Mozambique 93per cent of logging is illegal, timber resources being exploited principally by Chinese companies.

In Sabah and Sarawak [Malaysian Borneo] aggressive deforestation means valuable timber corruptly vanishes into the, conscience-free, untraceable, murky, market void. Clear felled areas are burned-off, annually curtailing air traffic in Singapore. Denuded, unprotected, rainforest floors, churned up by equatorial rains, run in roiling torrents into the South China Sea, staining it for kilometres off-shore. Orang-utan extinction is threatened by habitat destruction, as are unique elephants, rhinoceros, banteng and clouded leopards.

Palm oil plantations continue to replace rainforests in order to meet the insatiable manufacturing demand for raw material for soaps and foodstuffs. Without local political will, funds, however named, will continue to disappear into the vortex of corruption, which extends all the way up the food chain. In retirement, recalcitrant tyrant Mahathir, PM for 22 years, now, ironically, calls for illegal logging limitations!

New Indonesian PM, Joko Widodo, has ordered his Ministry of Environment and Forestry to review logging licences. Hope indeed springs eternal from the human breast!

Albert M. White, Queanbeyan

I disagree with the rabbi's call for Nazi 'memorabilia' never to be sold. (CT Sunday) My father, who fought in Europe with the British Army, had a couple of minor things which were instrumental in getting me to learn about the horror.

Many young people have no idea about the holocaust, and it is important we keep that memory alive, even through the artefacts of the perpetrators. We need to teach them. In fact I believe Morris Gleitzman's book Once should be compulsory in the curriculum. Lest we forget.

Roseanne Byrne, Jerrabomberra

I too am truly frustrated when people living in larger cities such as Melbourne and Sydney, like Mitch Goodfellow (Letters, CT Sunday, December 7), assume that public transport models in those cities can successfully transplant into Canberra.

Being 'born and raised in Canberra' does not guarantee any understanding of what Canberra needs in terms of public transport, and the assumption that models from other places will work simply stifles innovation. Most light rail proponents, including Capital Metro, advocate a trunk line formation between the town centres (nodes), with passengers transferring to light rail via feeder buses.

While this trunk line model works well in larger and/or denser cities, Canberra's unique design, sprawl and lack of density all actively work against that model, which forces passengers to 'backtrack' to nodes in order to transfer to another service that will take them to their actual destination.

ACTION's past emphasis on trunk line services clearly demonstrates that model's lack of success in Canberra. However, ACTION now has its innovative Xpresso bus routes, which overcome these difficulties by bypassing town centres and/or minimising the requirement to transfer.

A more widespread network of Xpresso bus routes would significantly increase public transport viability in Canberra without the unspeakable costs and delays of light rail. Unfortunately, this flexible, value for money public transport option, which ACTION is already successfully implementing, appears to have been completely ignored by light rail proponents. This is to

Meg Blackman, Chisholm

David Shearer, the project planning director at Independent Property Group has rebutted my opinion, "Shearer is so impressed that he has kindly offered to pocket the council's profit by buying the rezoned Mr Fluffy sites directly from the owners." (Letters, November 30). The precise words I referred to in Tony Trobe's printed interview with David Shearer were: TT: "If Mr Fluffy houses were rezoned now to allow this type of redevelopment, would this create the right conditions for builders to buy and redevelop, possibly save the government and Canberra taxpayers the hundreds of millions being touted in the press?"

DS: "Sensible rezoning would definitely create the right economic conditions for redevelopment to occur. The government could step back and let Canberra's architects and building industry fix Mr Fluffy at little cost to the government ... Question is, will the government only rezone the land after they purchase it in their buy back program?

I would think the rezoning should be on offer now ..." ("Single-level townhouses a sensible answer to the Mr Fluffy quandary", November 23, p23) David is technically quite correct when he writes, "Gary, I haven't made any such offer to buy a single Mr Fluffy house" (Letters, December 7).

Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor

As I watched the cricket match on Thursday I saw the incident pictured (CT, December 12, p38, "Johnson bouncer opens memories") But not only did Michael Clarke check on bowler Mitchell, he and his team also ran to check and console the batsman, Virat Kohli. Thankfully he was not injured.

Evelyn Bean, Ainslie

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