The difficulty of deciding to terminate a pregnancy can only be full realised by the person immediately concerned. In a humane society, such a condition must be regarded with sympathy and compassion; assistance and discretion must be forthcoming where needed. To impose hindrance would be a selfish imposition of external opinion. It is only within recent decades that sympathy and assistance have been forthcoming, initiated by enlightened administration.
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Yet the Right to Life Association persists in trying to target and denigrate those unfortunate enough to need help ("Prayer not protest, say anti-abortionists", July 21, p2). Our government is to be commended in proposing to discourage the medieval attempts to increase the sufferings of an unfortunate few.
Jack Palmer, Watson
John Popplewell (Letters, July 21) seems to completely miss the point; the argument is not about abortion – although it is his only argument – it is about medical privacy.
The law on abortion is perfectly clear in ACT; a woman can choose what is best for her without being harassed or her (medical) privacy violated.
Being at the clinic "witnessing" women is a violation of privacy. Hold your prayer vigil away from the clinic and respect another person's personal view.
Sadly we do need the law to determine the majority view, not that of a vocal and determined minority.
Professor Pieter Mourik, Spokesperson, Rights to Privacy Albury, Barandud, Vic
Shane Rattenbury's plan to deny vigils outside a Canberra abortion clinic ("Move to ban protests at abortion clinic", July 20, p1) is yet another example of the increasing anti-Christian and anti-religion feeling of the Western world.
More worrying is the fact that millions of lives – entire generations that have the potential to offer something positive for society – are being terminated throughout the world. And yet no one bats an eyelid; abortion is quietly swept under the carpet.
Now I'm not here to profess that religion is perfect, but the moral framework provided by religion is much stronger than the one we have at present. Religion, unlike society, promotes the concept of marriage as being made up of a man and a woman.
Dare I say it but this particular family ideal has, for the most part, proven the most stable and harmonious method for raising children and for providing strong relationships. Is the current system of things really the best direction for us as a society?
Tom Quinlan, Gordon
Public housing cloudy
Public housing in a better form and standard is the praiseworthy aspect of the ACT government's housing renewal scheme. The government has released information about peppering parts of Canberra with public housing removed from the light rail corridor, the city and South Canberra, but not about how much will remain there.
It has said that new suburbs might have up to 10percent public housing. Does it believe a higher fraction is less than socially optimal?
New public housing developments flagged so far come with plans and community consultation. No detail has been released about the extent and the principles behind a part of the renewal scheme which has the potential to surreptitiously increase public housing concentration in some districts. To quote the Housing Renewal Project Team, "Urban infill replacement sites may be delivered through private acquisition or the purchase of Mr Fluffy sites from the Asbestos Response Team".
The renewal team says that when considering new public housing the concentration and location of existing Community Service Directorate assets will be taken into account, a statement open to interpretation.
In an attempt to extract as much value as possible from its public housing assets to divert to City to Lake, and Light Rail projects, does the government intend to allow market forces to dictate the location of this new build and does it intend that all districts and electorates will be given equal opportunity to host public housing?
John Bromhead, Rivett
Health needs scalpel
Health costs forecast in the Intergenerational Report are being used to bludgeon Australians into passively accepting a GST hike, a lazy, gutless political response to projected health delivery cost escalations ("Nation needs a healthy hike in GST", BusinessDay, July 22, p12). Just as this government has shown no stomach to challenging tax evading global corporations, likewise, they refuse to "shirtfront" those driving exponential health costs.
No serious attempt has been made to control Pharmaceutical Benefits costs by reining in fancy prices demanded by big pharma and aggressively introducing generics. Prosthetic efficacy and cost should be subject to rigorous review, beyond the tick-and-flick of the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
Increasingly expensive diagnostics, revealing ever more esoteric aspects of human functioning and pathology, without necessarily enhancing quality-of-life outcomes, continue to be mindlessly subsidised.
Electives, currently financed by the public purse, should be peer reviewed, and image enhancing, "just-because-I-can", fashion-driven procedures not be recompensed.
If this government is "governing for all", how come their "all" seems to be only at the big end of town?
Albert M.White, Queanbeyan, NSW
Asylum not a whim
In response to Crispin Hull's humane and insightful column ("Australia's witch trials", Forum, July 18, p2), Bob Salmond (Letters, 22 July) argues that asylum-seekers locked up in Australian-funded abuse factories in Nauru and Manus Island are "free people", and advances the startling claim that "None of these people is in detention: each is free to leave".
A remarkable assertion indeed! By this logic, if Western states had locked up Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, those Jews would still have been "free people", "free to leave", because they had the option of returning to Germany – even though they might have ended up in a concentration camp. Does Mr Salmond expect anyone to take him seriously?
(Dr) William Maley, Reid
Can someone explain how a government that is running a Royal Commission to unearth child abuse now wants to jail qualified people who report child abuse in detention centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea? Is that not a complete contradiction? Or is child abuse committed under government control somehow different to what the royal commission is documenting?
Ray Edmondson, Kambah
Hysteria oddly absent in rerun of 'great big tax on everything'
In July 2012, when Julia Gillard put a 10percent tax on carbon and made big polluters less profitable it was portrayed as "a great big tax on everything" that would increase unemployment, destroy business and have us paying $100 for a lamb roast. The hysteria that met the carbon tax was analogous to a Salem witch hunt.
Three years later, when Mike Baird (with the support of Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey) proposes to put a 5 per cent (extra) tax on just about everything we buy in shops as well as solar panels, power bills, mobile phone bills, internet fees, visits from the plumber/electrician, it is part of a "mature tax discussion" that will "support a stronger economy and job creation" ("Take politics out of tax reform urge business and community groups", canberratimes.com. au, July 21).
Huh? Looks to me that the poor will pay more for haircuts so that Joe and Mathias can buy more expensive cigars.
Mike Reddy, Lyons
Sure, the mainly conservative and wealthy elements are pushing hard again for a GST increase which will hit the less wealthy relatively harder. There is even some admission that it is regressive.
But never fear, there will be assurances of "compensation" connected to, say, pensions, family benefits and so on.
Beware, the GST will only ever go one way. But the link to compensation over time can conveniently be put aside and the treatment of pensions and other benefits adversely changed.
We have seen the government recently introduce proposed adverse changes through the linked treatment of pensions and superannuation. The concept of "grandfathering"on which people relied in financial planning for the future has gone out the window. By contrast, there never seems to be much focus on enormous tax evasion by big corporations and and the very wealthy and powerful.
David Fisher, Curtin
It is no surprise that Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand would propose an increased GST and cuts in income tax.
While income tax is progressive, consumption taxes are regressive. Compensatory provisions in John Howard's GST package did not prevent it constituting a substantial redistribution of wealth to the wealthy. The clientele of CAANZ comes predominantly from the well off so it is hardly a disinterested party.
Equally it is no surprise that the Coalition favours such a move since it would be consistent with its track record of unfair policies that benefit the wealthy.
T.J.Marks, Holt
In the last few decades the gap between the rich and the poor has grown at a staggering rate. One significant cause of this is the GST. Why? Because the GST is a grossly regressive tax; this means that the poor are much more disproportionately affected by the GST than the rich.The poor pay much more as a proportion of their income for goods and services than do the rich. Increasing the GST rate would simply further increase the gap between the rich and the poor.
The war between the rich and the poor has been going on for centuries and in recent decades the rich have been winning hands down. It is not a coincidence that the GST was introduced by the Howard government. So for the sake of the poor let's scrap the GST, replace it with equitable taxes and thus reduce the gap between the rich and the poor.
Peter Nielsen, Calwell
It's last on, first off
I presume that your correspondent Judy Bamberger (Letters, July 21) is the same Judy Bamberger who feels it necessary to tell us who she will be voting for in the United States presidential elections, and regularly tells us what is wrong with this country.
Now this American presumes to tell Reclaim Australia proponents that they are not entitled to call themselves Australian because their ancestors haven't been here as long as those of Aboriginal Australians. On that basis, does that mean that I'm more Australian than anyone who has less than six generations here? And presumably Ms Bamberger, a German – or perhaps American?
Terry McDonald, Curtin
GST on online wares
If, as Peter Martin foreshadows, the GST is to be collected on internet purchases over $20 ("Consideration to cut threshold on online imports", July 22, p5), who is going to pay collection costs? Processing fees will likely fall on consumers. CHOICE revealed a $20.31 book could after processing fees cost $72.34, a 256percent increase. These changes are designed to deter online purchases and support the high prices of uncompetitive Australian retailers. Another victory for the big end of town.
Thos Puckett, Ashgrove, Qld
Deep pockets puzzle
Racism takes many forms, but I was puzzled by Jenna Price's reaction to a dinner guest who referred to Jews as having "deep pockets" ("Wanted: leaders who promote social cohesion", Times2 July 21, p5). She says she threw him out of her house because he meant Jews were mean.
To me "deep pockets" conveys the idea of a person or organisation having extensive financial resources. My wife thought it could also mean generosity. I wonder what others think?
Meantime, dinner at Jenna's sounds like a risky proposition.
David Townsend, Curtin
Bishop queens it in air
This is not Bronwyn Bishop's first tantalising performance in the air. CT readers with long memories will remember an incident perhaps 15 years ago, when the then Senator Bishop was on board an aircraft bound for Sydney from Canberra. The aircraft was put into a holding pattern and Senator Bishop, who was to attend a function, ordered the captain to land. He refused, but not before receiving a serious dose of her ire.
J.J.Marr, Hawker
Tony Abbott now says Bronwyn Bishop's probation consists of the need to avoid more unpopular stuff-ups, same as the rest of the government. So are they all on probation, or none or them? If it's all of them, I want to know what the others have done. Or is it just another Abbott excuse on the run?
S.W.Davey, Torrens
Batteries stuck in airline freight ban
Recently, I wanted to buy a new computing tablet from the United States, but the seller was not willing to sell to "international" customers.
Perhaps, I thought, it's the battery.
Did anyone notice that the International Air Transport Association banned lithium metal batteries on passenger craft in January?
See IATA's lithium battery guidance document 2015. It's difficult to read.
Did anyone notice that some couriers have banned air carriage of all types of lithium battery, regardless of flight and regardless of packaging? This includes your favourite tablet or mobile phone, so if you leave it behind somewhere, you won't get it back quickly, if at all.
If you see a really cool new phone, tablet or toy on the interwebs, you probably won't be able to import it because the carrier will classify it as dangerous goods.
Same applies to hearing aids. Yes, it was the battery. So now we really are in the antipodes, and we can't have any new toys for Christmas.
Richard Horobin, Curtin
Another kind of clash
Just a quick observation that the power of the arts doesn't always overcome human conflict. I logged on to the Palace Electric website on Wednesday to book my tickets for the eagerly awaited Israeli Film Festival, only to find that many of the screening times and dates clash with the Arab Film Festival showing at the same time over the road at ARC.
Whilst there is a certain irony in this clash, there is a serious point too – surely these two venues, both purveyors of world cinema, could have liaised to avoid a crossover?
If the purpose of such festivals – as well as to entertain – is to promote greater understanding of different cultures through film, then both venues appear to have scored an own goal here.
John Brookes, Kambah
TO THE POINT
FACTS RAIN ON SHORTEN
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is either deluded or a magician if he actually believes we can get half our energy from wind and solar at no extra cost ("Shorten moves on green energy", July 22, p1). That is more than three times the current amount, and unless he knows how to make the wind blow twice as often and the
sun shine at night, his proposal is technologically and economically impossible.
Doug Hurst, Chapman
Great news about Labor resolving to make a target of 50 per cent renewables by 2030. Now, please would it resolve to have strong targets for emission reduction, as a minimum those suggested by the Climate Change Authority? It has suggested 30percent by 2025 and 40 to 60percent by 2030 (on 2000 levels).
Jenny Goldie, Michelago, NSW
A WING AND A PRAYER
Archbishop Christopher Prowse and his Right to Life cronies may dress their intimidation of women outside abortion clinics in weasel words like "prayer vigil" but the hypocrisy is breathtaking.
If Prowse thinks, as a Catholic Archbishop, he has a skerrick of kudos as a moral arbiter, then the continuing ramifications of his church's child abuse cover-up must have sailed over his head.
Peter Robinson, Ainslie
SMITTEN WITH GITTINS
God bless Ross Gittins. Santo subito Ross Gittins. Knighthood for Ross Gittins. Ross Gittins for president ("GST is not a magic pudding", Times2, July 22 and plenty of other examples).
Jim Jones, Charnwood
PLAIN EXASPERATING
Much obliged as I am to Marguerite Castello (Letters, July 21) for rescuing me when I stumbled analysing Ben Wright's overview of the Greek crisis ("Collective aversion to Grexit is still baffling", Times2, July 16, p5), the author's descriptors leave me with an adjectival assessment of his ability to communicate with mere mortals.
Patrick Jones, Griffith
SUPABARN HIS TO SELL
Eric Koundouris, the founder of Supabarn is 72 years old. He should be allowed to sell the business to the highest bidder and enjoy the fruits of his labour in retirement. The ACCC and other selfish naysayers should mind their own business.
David Groube, Guerilla Bay, NSW
BISHOP SAVED BY FLAG
Tony Abbott will not act against Bronwyn Bishop because she is his confederate flag.
H.Simon, Watson
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