The Chief Minister and her government are visionaries who can see the growing need for an efficient transportation system in the ACT. Light rail is a costly venture and it may even take a bit more of our taxes than we anticipate before it comes to fruition. But once it is operational, the howls of those naysayers will gradually cease and begin to work with ''Team Canberra'', recognising the latest asset for its long-term value.

I suspect that if the first rail line had been run from the back of Tuggeranong to the city the ''southerners'' would be strongly supportive of the idea. I suggest also that those doubters should take a few deep breaths and focus on other issues now the project is set to go ahead.

W. Book, Hackett

If only someone would find a legless lizard in the proposed light rail corridor.

Linda Jepsen, Curtin

In calculating the economic benefit of light rail, it is assumed the funds are obtained through debt at 7 per cent. An alternative is for the community to fund infrastructure projects by issuing its own credit. This can be done so the cost of credit returns to the community.

In present-day terms, light rail funded by debt is calculated to cost the community $1873. If light rail is funded by the community using its own credit, the cost to the community is the cost of the project or $775.

A community can issue credit to its own residents by allowing the prepayment of rates and taxes where the prepayments earn discounts the longer the credit is outstanding. The reduced cost of rates and taxes to ACT residents is how the cost of credit stays within the community.

It means ACT residents can invest at the equivalent of a 9 per cent flat interest inflation-adjusted government-backed investment.

The ACT government is urged to look at alternatives to debt financing so that the returns of all past and future infrastructure are shared across the whole community.

Kevin Cox, Ngunnawal

It is probably true that people think ACTEW is ActewAGL and ActewAGL is ACTEW (''ACTEW plans rebrand after years of confusion'', November 1, p1). And it is certainly true that ACTEW Water is considered silly because the name repeats the word ''water''. But now? What does ''Icon Water'' have to do with anything?

My prediction: people will still be confused - this time, about what this new water company is and what it has to do with the ACT. Given the amounts of money spent on these exercises, you have to ask: Icon - or simply another con?

Karina Morris, Weetangera

The word icon (sacred picture) has long been degraded by being used to describe a thing or person worth admiring.

It is used even less meaningfully in ACTEW Water's new name, Icon Water (''ACTEW plans rebrand after years of confusion'', November 1, p1). There's nothing sacred about Canberra's water, excellent though it is. So it was a pleasant surprise to find photos of three genuine icons on p22 of the same edition.

Michael Travis, Cook

I con water. The truth at last!

Ed Highley, Kambah

The Land Development Agency being told to start selling more blocks now won't help evicted Mr Fluffy victims much (''Land action in Fluffy's wake'', October 31, p1). To moderate the 2015 Fluffy house-price spike requires actual completed houses, and building lags for land released ''soon'' mean they'll be unavailable to the 1000 Fluffy families kicked out of their homes before June next year.

So traumatised victims will be forced to pay through the nose in the scramble for homes or sign a one-year lease on something and have to move again.

Why, when it was clear months ago that demolition was the only option (while Gallagher fruitlessly negotiated with the feds), was the LDA not quietly told to sustain its higher 2012-13 rate of sales? Besides, why are victims all being kicked out at once? With demolition planned over five years, couldn't families with no asbestos fibres in living areas more sensibly vacate over say, three years?

Veronica Giles, Chifley

David Fuller (Letters, October 30) wrote a clear letter on the incorrect language used by some journalists to describe blood-alcohol concentration levels above the 0.05 g/100 l blood (simply 0.05) limit. The point was that the expressions ''times the limit'' and ''times over the limit'' are often confused.

Now Bruce Glossop writes a cryptic letter that again confuses the matter (Letters, November 1). He claims Fuller wrote something he didn't, and then quotes a sentence from the AFP website that is plainly incorrect since 0.05g of alcohol in blood or breath is a mass, not a concentration.

That same website earlier, and correctly, spells out the limits for fully licensed drivers as 0.05 g/100 ml for blood and 0.05 g/210 lt in the breath arising from that blood level. Thus there are two concentration limits for the same situation, and breath analysers internally convert a breath reading to the blood alcohol concentration using the appropriate factor (x2100).

So, there is a specific limit, Bruce, 0.05, although not everybody understands the detail of what this means.

Greg Jackson, Kambah

Besides being arithmetically challenged, Bruce Glossop (Letters, October 1) must also have difficulty reading. I did not write that the limit is not .05 or that .05 is zero, I wrote ''The limit IS .05''.

David Fuller, Duffy

Furthering L. V. Hume's excellent suggestion that households have a list of all sources of emergency medical help (Letters, November 3), perhaps Canberra's emergency departments should give a fridge magnet with this list to each patient presenting to emergency with non-urgent conditions. The magnet should also list afterhoursact. com.au as a resource.

M. Silling, Fisher

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that time to act decisively on climate change is quickly running out (''World fast approaching last chance'', November 3, p6). Our government is responding by undoing most of the positive steps taken by the previous Labor government, including scrapping a carbon price that was working as planned, and pulling the rug out from under the renewable energy industry.

The government has put in place its Direct Action policy, which does little more than pay lip service to effective action. Instead of making industry pay for its polluting habits, it reverses the money flow by using $2.55 billion of ordinary taxpayers' money, with no apparent obligation attached, to pay industry to find unspecified ways to reduce its pollution.

Then there is the Carbon Farming Initiative, a vague undertaking to support again unspecified means (other than planting or just not cutting down trees) of sequestering carbon into vegetation or, somehow, into soils.

Meanwhile, the coal mining and coal seam gas industries are left free to carry on their ''good for mankind'' polluting ways, desperate to make their profits as quickly as they can, before they are left with enormous stranded assets. The quick buck, it seems, is far more important than the long-term welfare of the planet.

Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin

Our Treasurer will be pushing the G20 to tax earnings properly in the country in which profits are earned. He should be promoting the same principle for calculating national carbon pollution totals.

Australia produces about 400 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, but also exports 300 million tons of coal. Assuming the coal is 50 per cent carbon it produces 550 million tons of carbon dioxide when burnt overseas. Unless we give the coal away, the exported carbon dioxide should contribute to our national carbon footprint as it does to our economy. Political squabbling over the RET is based on a fraud.

Adrian Gibbs, Yarralumla

The history of tax reform in Australia has produced at least four lessons that should not be ignored (''Merit in mature tax debate'', Forum, November 1, p2). First, experience has told us when the government promises to reform the taxation system, it means it wants more money and more control over our lives so that the state can enjoy longevity. Taxation has given the government enormous leverage over the economic and social life of Australia.

Second, since Federation Australians have endured continuous political rhetoric about tax reform, but taking the long-term view, the tax cuts were piddling and transitory.

Third, no matter how much the government collects in tax revenue it always spends and borrows more.

Fourth, too many discussions about tax reform try to avoid the issue of government spending. The only way to cut taxes is for the government to spend far less than it spends today: 113 years of tax reform has delivered higher taxes and bigger government and a tax system that is complicated, unfair, abusive and invasive. God save us from tax reform.

Victor Diskordia, McKellar

Instead of telling readers of The Canberra Times how cruel Australian farmers are, Paul Murphy (Letters, October 31) should head to one of the many Arab and Islamic embassies in Yarralumla and explain to them forcefully that mindless cruelty has no place in the modern world, and if they don't stop, he will stamp his feet or call for a BDS campaign against them, and an end to immigration from those countries. If in a crazy-brave state of mind, he could even call for an end to the barbaric halal slaughter of animals right here in Australia, due to popular demand. Perhaps he considers animals to be of use only in furthering other objectives. Israel also has halal slaughtering, but at least it is enlightened enough to be embarrassed about it.

Christopher Smith, Braddon

Bravo Sweden! The long, long road to legitimising the Palestinian State begins now (''Swedish acceptance of Palestine slated'', November 1, p13). For too long Israel has exploited the well-earned holocaust guilt of Western nations - the UK, US and others.

It's time to review our perspectives on the Israel-Palestine conflict with a view to legitimising its Statehood. The longer the killing and degradation of Palestinians persists, the more it resembles the fate of indigenous Australians: in other words, a foreign body entering a country uninvited, and treating its original inhabitants as vermin to be managed appropriately. By any definition, historical or otherwise, Israel, by its actions appears as a powerful colonial society bent on suppressing all opposition.

Ralph Sedgley, O'Connor

Mark Hearn (''A shifting centre of gravity'', Times2, November 3, p1) makes a lot of sense when he laments potential lost opportunities in the government's reluctance to participate in China's new infrastructure bank. Rather than ''pining for a world whose politics, culture and economy are forever defined by a familiar Atlantic compact of Great Britain and the United States'', as Hearn puts it, Tony Abbott should remember the old Chinese saying ''better good neighbours that are near you than relatives far away''.

Phil Teece, Sunshine Bay, NSW

Our Prime Minister has turned his back on the world by refusing to join other countries in sending medical staff to West Africa to combat Ebola.

With a mindset and ideology influenced by non-elected advisers and lobbyists, Tony Abbott, ever ready to follow the US in questionable war activities without consulting Parliament and the people - and knowing war deaths will occur, professes to express concern about possible loss of life of medical staff from infection.

He has shamed Australians by refusing to answer the call from the World Health Organisation for medical staff to open field hospitals in Africa.

As the epidemic spreads, America, to its credit, is working closely with Cuba, a small, undeveloped nation notable for its extensive training of doctors and nurses, with 50,000 health workers active in 66 countries and more than 250 medical staff in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

Dr Bruce Aylward, assistant director of WHO, said he hopes Cuba's contribution of trained medical staff to Africa will send a strong message to other countries to do likewise.

When it is estimated that the death rate from Ebola could reach 1.4 million in Sierra Leone and Liberia alone by January 2015, Prime Minister Abbott must immediately respond and send in trained health workers.

Keith McEwan, Bonython

I wrote (Letters, October 29) of Tony Abbott in relation to Islamic fundamentalism ''Rather than trying to spook us into latchkey paranoia …'' From this, Michael McCarthy (Letters, October 31) ponders my view of Abbott as either a latchkey child or a lackey or both. I'll put his mind to rest by quoting some advice I read on a recipe for pan-fried snapper with zesty asparagus and chips: ''Butter is actually a fruit. Two pats of butter a day is the recommended dietary intake.''

Peter Robinson, Ainslie

PHOTO OPPORTUNITY

With climate change on the G20 agenda, perhaps Tony Abbott could arrange a photo opportunity for the world press: Greg Hunt signing a batch of cheques to big polluters under Direct Action. Presumably, the first cheque will go to Clive Palmer's nickel refinery.

Thos Puckett, Ashgrove, Qld

HEARTFELT TRIBUTE

Baden Williams (Letters, November 3) might like public servants to pay for a symbolic memorial to Gough Whitlam in the form of a tethered ''sky whale'', but for those of us who ''spontaneously'' supported the great man, he entered our hearts and minds and has never left. That is perhaps a more enduring memorial.

Lorraine Ovington, Fisher

IN LINE FOR SAINTHOOD

Gough Whitlam may be considered a demi-god by many, but I doubt even he had the ability to bring wars to an end, as Christopher Smith (Letters, October 31) seems to suggest. That said, if indeed he stopped two decades of human carnage in Indochina, then he's already light years ahead of any other Australian PM and assured of atheistic as well as political sainthood.

Jon Stirzaker, Latham

CIA BEHIND THE SCENES

I don't know how to break this to Waleed Aly (''Lone wolf threat emerging'', Times2, October 31, p4) but Islamic State was created by, and is trained and funded by, the CIA. Its purpose is to destabilise the Middle East and to create the pretext for all-out war against Syria and Iran, and eventually Russia. Only sleepwalkers still believe in the terror threat rubbish peddled by Western governments and their complicit media.

Chris Williams, Griffith

BAN THE CLOWNS

I was pleased to see the article on issues associated with allowing clowns to roam at large within our community (''We no longer see the funny side of wicked clowns'', Times2, November 3, p5). I have always agreed with Jerry Seinfeld's observation that clowns are really just very annoying people. Perhaps the ACT government could, for a change, turn its collective mind to something of real importance, and declare the ACT a clown-free zone.

Gordon Fyfe, Kambah

UNNECESSARY DEATHS

I gave up supporting the racing industry long ago. The tragic outcome of the last two Melbourne Cups has just vindicated my position. I hope the industry and its supporters acknowledge the devastating and unnecessary deaths of both Admire Ratki (2014) and Verema (2013). RIP.

Chris Doyle, Gordon

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