Who will pay the billion dollars-plus cost of these ego-massaging schemes? In Barr's case it will be the ratepayers of the Australian Capital Territory and in Joyce's case it will be the taxpayers of Australia.

By the way, is the present Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull or Barnaby Joyce?

Ted Tregillgas, Flynn

How dare Barnaby Joyce ask 170 public servants to move to Armidale so his chances of being re-elected are improved. A disgraceful misuse of power.

Mike McGettrick, Reid

The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority should be relocated to Armidale at soonest ("Joyce pushes on with PS move", June 11, p5). There is an urgent need to develop a pesticide to counter the spread of a virulent breed of tomato common to the New England region. This non-green variety is tardy to adapt in times of drought and is patently unsuitable for the export trade. And there appears little in the genetic background of this variety that has the ability to cope with the onset of climate change.

Peter Crossing, Curtin

Jane Freebury's article "Homegrown Hot Docs fills a film festival gap" (Arts, June 9, p7) states that Hot Docs will be "the first festival dedicated to documentary from across the world and fills a gap". This is incorrect. As discerning Canberra cinema goers will know, since 2013 Stronger than Fiction Documentary Film Festival has been screening the cream of the latest international feature documentaries to packed houses and holding popular Q&A sessions with visiting filmmakers and experts. Jane also states that "Canberra's Stronger than Fiction is dedicated to Australian documentaries". However, in reality Stronger than Fiction has always been an international festival with just one or two Australian films.

This year, Stronger than Fiction, by chance, is entirely made up of international films.

And finally, the powerful film, Jim-the James Foley Story ' does not screen at Hot Docs. but rather at Stronger than Fiction on July 31 along with a fantastic selection of recent international award-winning feature documentaries all specially chosen for Canberra audiences.

Deborah Kingsland, director, Stronger than Fiction Documentary Film Festival

Well said, Jack Kershaw (Letters, June 8.) We don't need a boutique hotel at our Arboretum. Probably, such an establishment would be way beyond the means of ninety-nine per cent of the people who visit Canberra. If you really must have the champagne, chocolates, organic pork belly or larks' tongues in aspic, there are other places you can go. Something along the lines of Jack's suggestion would enable ordinary Australians to wake up in the morning to the splendid vista of the place they have, after all, paid for.

Peter Downie, Banks

As Kirsten Lawson reported ("Metro tram postcards handed out after veto", June 7, p8) Capital Metro spent $1900 designing and printing 6000 "myth buster" postcards, which were supposed to have been pulped after the Electoral Commissioner Phillip Green had determined that they constituted "unauthorised electoral matter". Apparently, however, someone at Capital Metro furnished a bulk quantity of post cards to a third party and some of them were distributed at a meeting of Tuggeranong Community Council in breach of section 292 of the Electoral Act 1992, which makes it a criminal offence for any person to disseminate "unauthorised electoral matter".

I suggest that any Capital Metro officer who furnished the post cards to any person who could reasonably be expected to disseminate them would be complicit (an accomplice) in each and every offence against section 292 that was committed by the disseminator.

Although it is bad enough for Capital Metro to have spent tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of ratepayer dollars generating and disseminating light rail propaganda, it is completely unacceptable for any Capital Metro officer to have been party to the commission of criminal offences against section 292 of the Electoral Act.

Likewise, if the person who disseminated the post cards holds any ACT government office he or she should immediately step down.

Bruce Taggart, Aranda

That the ACT government proposes to spend $21.4 million over four years in response to domestic and family violence is an appalling commentary on our society ("$21.4m for domestic violence reforms", June 8, p4).

Domestic violence is not new and no government should be blamed for the upbringing, or lack of it, which sees successive generations perpetrators and victims of this scourge.

So it might seem churlish to object to an annual $30 charge for such a valid cause.

However, as with so much of this government's contempt for Canberra's residents, it has used a justified cause as another fund-raising opportunity while squandering money on other unnecessary and/or inefficient services.

Graham Downie, O'Connor

As H. Ronald (Letters, June 10) is seeking information on renewable and coal-fired electricity generation costs, I am happy to enlighten the writer.

Since last year, new-build wind and solar is cheaper per KW/hour than new-build coal-fired electricity generation. As solar and wind technology matures this price difference will improve.

Extant coal-fired power is currently "cheaper" because capital costs have already been

amortised whereas solar and wind power is still recouping some research and development costs.

However, if one adds the costs of 3000 Australian deaths each year directly attributable to coal-dust and burnt ash particulate pollution, then solar and wind is already more economical than coal.

It's just that healthcare and lost productivity costs are funded by the community through taxes and not included in the KW/h amount on your electricity bill.

Tim Herne, Calwell

Where do these political aspirants of both parties get off by displaying their egos along with their army uniforms ("Kelly quits reserves, soldiers on after uniform demand", June 11, p1)?

I was under the impression that it was generally acceptable to wear a military uniform only on official occasions, certainly not as a form of personal advertising.

Once again, it seems, political figures of all parties consider themselves to be outside the range of normal behaviour. Actually, I would be more sympathetic to a candidate who was wearing the uniform of an ambo, nurse, SES volunteer or firefighter. But then, I suspect, those people are likely to be more self-effacing types.

Eric Hunter, Cook

I'm flabbergasted that a senior serving officer of the Army Standby Reserve, Mike Kelly, should not understand that wearing his uniform in election material is just as offensive as Abbott's formerly favoured wrapping himself in the flag(s). Surely a member of his length of service could see that the ADF is our apolitical bulwark when diplomacy ends, and that active duty is ordered by government.

We decry military governments overseas, but his, Andrew Hastie's and Pat O'Neill's actions are different from them only in degree. The ADF has been placed in a terrible position by the arrogant bipartisan actions of these candidates. I fully support its response.

The Canberra Times has also kicked an own goal by giving the local candidate much free publicity – in his uniform.

Bob Gardiner, Isabella Plains

A lot of political mistakes have been made lately, and it doesn't seem to be getting better.

Most politicians start with good intentions, but the entitlement mentality soon hits them.

Thankfully, there are elections, giving us a chance to kick the bums out. At the last election, we kicked out Labor and the Greens.

I hope we're not about to switch back, but the Liberals made a very poor job of their shot at running the country.

They need a swift kick in the rear end. In Eden-Monaro, the invisible Peter Hendy has three main strikes against him, because he neither listened nor spoke to us.

First, he sided with council to build the $100 million EDE – a road to nowhere that won't fix Queanbeyan's transport problems and destroys other suburbs. I think he is the only candidate supporting it.

Second, he hasn't returned multiple phone calls or emails requesting meetings. Third, his press releases say what a great job he's doing, but most things are what someone else did, and his face is photoshopped into the picture to make it appear he participated.

What can a conservative voter do when the party gives us an awful candidate who stabs us in the back?

Preferences are a wonderful thing!

Alan Gray, Jerrabomberra, NSW

In your report on candidates contesting Eden-Monaro ("For whom the bellwether tolls", Forum, June 11, p3), Christian Democrat Ursula Bennett says her main aim of contesting the seat is to give electors the option to vote for "unchanging Christian values".

This after opposing marriage equality and revealing she has nine children. I question whether opposition to marriage equality is an "unchanging Christian value", though it is understandable if churches choose not to marry gay couples in church. This is not to say, however, that Christians should not accept civil marriages and full rights for gay couples. Having nine children is more of a concern. Christians are meant to be stewards of the Earth but, if we all had nine children, humans would fast obliterate all other life on the planet. A far cry from stewardship.

Jenny Goldie, Michelago, NSW

Malcolm Turnbull presents himself as if he is addressing a courtroom, and Bill Shorten as if addressing a rowdy union meeting. No wonder the core vote of both major parties is declining. It will shrink further while one of them seems to be haranguing a bunch of boozers in a beer garden, and the other one looks as if he is coping with a bunch of slow-witted jurors in an unedifying assault case. As well as the sound, there's the look of it too.

Malcolm looks as if he is wondering when the dickens they will pass the port round the table again, and Bill looks as if he is harbouring suspicions about which rotten swine has swiped his favourite beer glass. Maybe those are the classic postures they wish to mimic. No! Please, you two of you, speak directly to the public as anyone would while taking us into their confidence.

Roy Darling, Florey

Gerry Murphy (Letters, June 10) asks me what I would feel if he started lobbing missiles from Braddon onto Murrumbateman daily. I think what I'd feel is a gnawing sensation in my synapses that the decision to force more than 700,000 people from their farms into the ghetto of Braddon was never a strategy likely to serve either peace or justice.

I would also probably start thinking that maybe the strategy of bombing Braddon's high-rise apartments to smithereens killing thousands of innocent Braddonians on a regular basis was just hardening hatreds against me and my fellow Murrumbatemanites, and that I shouldn't be surprised by the extremes to which they would die and kill for their freedom and in revenge. This finally would lead me to agitate for a two-state solution which has repeatedly been rejected by my fellow villagers because of their extreme presumptions about their racial superiority and their desire to ethnically cleanse the entire southern plain of NSW for their exclusive racial domain. I would get them to admit publicly what they acknowledge in their own dialect to each other, which is that their previous offers for peace have in fact been phoney.

Finally, I would also stop trying to rewrite history and pretend that the people we displaced were other than the rightful occupants of the land, and I would let the people of Braddon return to the countryside out of the hell hole where we had imprisoned them.

Greg Ellis, Murrumbateman, NSW

According to the Bureau of Statistics, "Australia's population grew by 1.3 per cent during the year ended 30 September, 2015. Natural increase and NOM [net overseas migration] contributed 46.5 per cent and 53.5 per cent respectively to total population growth for the year ended September 30, 2015". The ABS reported on March 30 that 28 per cent of Australia's population were born overseas. This compares with figures of 13 per cent for Germany, 20 per cent for Canada, 16 per cent for Sweden, 12 per cent for Britain, and 13 per cent for the USA.

Of 40 OECD countries, we have the third highest population growth rate, behind Israel and Luxembourg. The State of the Environment 2011 report includes the following statements: "If we consider the major environmental challenges we now face, the most confronting is the prospect of a changing climate.

"'As the driest inhabitable continent, Australia is particularly vulnerable to climate change. 'The other major drivers that put our environment and heritage at risk are the impacts of population and economic growth. These drivers are more directly under our influence than climate change.'

Rapid population growth has environmental impacts. The ABS preliminary estimate of NOM recorded for the year ended September 30 2015 is 167,700 people.

I would be interested to know the funding the government dedicated to development of the facilities that these people can be expected to need, including schools, hospitals, and transport.

M. Aken, Holder

In his interview with Virginia Haussegger on ABC TV News at 7pm on 7 June, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr described his budget as "Nation Building". Someone should point out to him that the ABC TV series Utopia is not a documentary.

Nina Davis, Flynn

TERRORISM UNLEASHED

It matters little whether the Orlando shooting was religiously motivated or not, it was committed by a follower of Islam, who it is claimed took offence at males kissing.

Robert S. Buick, Mountain Creek, Qld

The US's gun laws are an act of terrorism.

John Rodriguez, Florey

It's time to light up our national monuments with rainbow colours. We will not be destroyed in body, mind or community.

Emilia Della Torre, Barton

TRICKLE-DOWN MYTH

I want to believe in the faith-based economics of trickle-down that is behind tax cuts for big business. But the overwhelmingly evidence is that it means only relatively few get to economic heaven and ever increasing numbers are consigned to the purgatory of poorly paid, insecure jobs or the hell of unemployment and homelessness.

Max Foster, Melba

BAD MOVE

Rather than swipe out at the ABS, Leon Arundell (Letters, June 10) might like to draw breath, look again at the unsolicited email he responded to and seriously protect his privacy by not ever responding to scam emails purporting to be from an authority, saying "click here" and thus scooping up his personal information in one fell swoop.

Marguerite Castello, Griffith

AZARENKA STILL LOOMS

Don't unmute your remote yet, Alan McNeil (Letters, June 11). Sharapova may be off the scene but Azarenka is still about.

Frank Marris, Forrest

CHILDISH ACT

As a former army legal officer, Mike Kelly ("Kelly quits reserves, soldiers on after uniform demand", June 11, p1) should have been aware of the rules and regulations concerning the wearing of uniform in political advertising and, despite his having received contributions from low earners, his action could be termed childish.

Ken McPhan, Spence

BLACK HOLES THREAT

In the light of research by Stephen Hawking et al, suggesting that there is a "way out of black holes" and that they "now have the tiger by the tail" in solving the mystery of what happens to the pebbles that get thrown into them, Scott Morrison will need to have more care about how he refers to Labor Party policies during the rest of the campaign. He might not reappear for some time.

Chris Fowler, Bywong, NSW

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