The article "Traffic jam costs tipped to hit $700m" (May 22, p1) quotes Infrastructure Australia chairman Mark Birrell as saying "It is time for the nation to treat population growth as a fact; a fact our nation should accept and gear up for". Birrell is wrong, wrong, wrong.
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Contrary to Birrell's advice, it is time to recognise that population growth is not "a fact", but is easily avoidable.
The main reason for the growth is our extreme immigration rate (about 200,000 per year: per capita one of the highest in the world).
Just to cope with that immigration, each two years we have to build the equivalent of the city of Canberra – that is, more than 100,000 houses, plus roads, airports, dams, power stations, shops, offices, factories, schools, universities, hospitals, telecommunication networks, and sports facilities. Each year we have to replace about 2per cent of our infrastructure to meet the needs of our current population.
However, we also have to build the equivalent of another 1per cent to meet the needs of new immigrants. Therefore, solely as a consequence of immigration, each year our workforce increases by only about 2per cent but our infrastructure demands increase by about 50per cent.
Birrell wants population growth in order to create infrastructure needs for his clients to meet. However, as prevention is better than cure, we should instead reduce infrastructure needs by reducing population growth. We should reduce our net immigration to zero immediately.
Bob Salmond, Melba
Food for thought
By chance, I stumbled on the excellent online Australian government discussion paper Re:think, for which submissions from the public close on June1. There are 66 questions posed to the reader about how we could construct a better and fairer tax system. Two issues stood out for me.
The first is the unsubstantiated assertion that "we need to keep the economy growing to safeguard our way of life". We surely need to put that widely held assumption under close scrutiny. A growing global population and a growing economy per head of population is a formula for environmental disaster and we are already living beyond the sustainable means of our planet to support 7billion people. When will our economic elites give proper consideration to the design of a no-growth economy for affluent countries like Australia?
The second issue is the fact that we are a very low-taxing country by comparison with our peers. Chart 2.2 in the discussion paper shows that Australia has a total tax take of about 26per cent of our GDP compared with the OECD average of about 32per cent and that the countries of Denmark, France, Belgium, Finland, Italy, Sweden, Norway and Austria all have a tax take over 40per cent of GDP.
We have plenty of ways to reduce the deficit. Let's escape from the tired old cliches and get the innovators in.
Bob Douglas, Aranda
Rise of IS no surprise
Amanda Vanstone seeks a "wordsmith ... to lift our hearts and minds and help us win this battle" ("The West needs a new hero", Times2, May 25, p4). She sounds like the agents of the far right who trawl amateur propagandists for egomaniacs who aspire to be a latter-day Charles Martel.
Vanstone must stop the misinformation that IS has "seemingly come from nowhere during the past 18 months or so" and cease her confected amazement. "They are brand management geniuses." As Alastair Crooke, former MI6 agent, reported in February 2014 (huffingtonpost.com), "Saudi scholar Fouad Ibrahim has pointed out ... Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, in 2006 formulated ... the principles of his prospective state". Then, in 2009, the US incarcerated al-Baghdadi with Iraqi military personnel and large numbers of arrested insurgents together at Camp Bucca. The internees could meet and talk. IS is no surprise.
Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor
Centrelink calls
In response to your recent editorial "The most vulnerable on hold" (Forum, May 23,p5) I would like to clarify the key points of your article for your readers. I acknowledge delays contacting Centrelink can cause frustration. As your editorial notes, average wait times have risen from about three minutes in 2011 to more than 16 minutes last financial year. However, as the ANAO notes, this is because the previous government in 2011 made the sensible decision to allow more calls to enter the network. This lead to a significant rise in wait times but reduced the number of blocked calls from 39.9million in 2010-11 to 13.7million last financial year. The change was made so customers hear the expected wait time so they can make an informed decision if they wish to wait. Additionally, the change also allows more people to access self-service options and hear about other ways they can contact the department.
The majority of customers call us either because they want to know something that they can't find out elsewhere, or need to report a change in circumstances. Many of these inquiries are relatively straightforward. For example, each year the department handles about 10million general inquiry calls, such as customers asking about the status of their claim.
Our IT system is so antiquated that we cannot provide information about a claim to customers in real time, which means they have to call us or visit a shopfront.
Likewise, we ask customers to report information that in many cases has already been provided to government.
This is why this government is going to replace the Centrelink IT payments system. Once complete, customers will have the ability to access more of their information online and the department will have much improved data-sharing capability, which will potentially reduce customers' reporting requirements. This investment will address many of the underlying drivers of call-centre demand and is a far better use of taxpayer money than spending $100million each year to hire an extra 1000 staff to treat the symptoms that result from our out-dated system.
Due to the scale of our operations, these initiatives will take some time. Improvements to our services mean many customers no longer have to contact us via telephone.
Marise Payne, Minister for Human Services
New-generation solar batteries overhyped
There is a lot of hype around the new generation of lithium batteries for solar use developed by Tesla.
I run a self-contained solar panel/24-volt battery system with an inverter producing 240V in a holiday home that is not connected to the grid. The maximum wattage that can be run from this system is 1300W, so no hair driers, vacuum cleaners etc, but we do have a back-up generator.
I store the solar input in six conventional maintenance-free gel batteries producing 700 amp/hours at 24 volts for $5000 installed with a 10-year warranty and a 15- to 20-year cycle life (no government rebates on batteries). Average nightly use drains the batteries by about 100 amp/hours (mostly TV use and lights). My solar supplier advises that a comparable bank of Tesla lithium wall batteries will produce only 360 amp/hours for $4500, excluding GST, delivery charges and mark-up from the US, and without a given cycle life. So unless the battery cost is halved, the economics and application of this system for home use are overblown and being fed by media and company hype.
Roger Farrow, Urila, NSW
Killing time
Twenty-five years ago, as a senior CSIRO corporate financial official, I and my colleagues often experienced similar treatment to the kind outlined in the report "Senator told off over hearing wait" (May 26, p1); perhaps even worse than the incident reported. It was common to wait around for hours beyond the appointed time and, on occasions, to be told that we would not, after all, be taken that night, and requested to come back the following day or later. It is understandable that time prediction could be difficult occasionally for some items, but most other things in Parliament run on strict time schedules quite successfully. Why can't Senate committees?
Howard Crozier, Deakin
TO THE POINT
The Canberra Times wants to hear from you in short bursts. Email views in 50 words or fewer to
letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au.
WHICH TEAM PLAN?
So, George (Orwell) Brandis and the Coalition want to have a "national discussion" on what Team Australia should be thinking. Is their preferred model Animal Farm or North Korea?
Adrian Gibbs, Yarralumla
TRIENNIAL PLEBISCITE
If the figures quoted by Nicholas Reece ("Australians deserve a say on gay marriage", canberratimes.com. au, May 25) are correct, and more than 70per cent of Australians support gay marriage, then let's all vote for the parties that support gay marriage at the triennial plebiscite we have called an election. We don't need to have plebiscites for hard issues. We elect governments to make these decisions.
Tony Webster, Griffith
EQUAL BUT NOT ALIKE
Homosexual equal to heterosexual? OK. But never ever the same.
Tom Middlemiss, Deakin
GLARING INEQUITY
What does it say about equity and fairness in Australia when the Treasurer can justify (Q&A, Monday, June 25) the taxpayer paying his wife $270 per night to accommodate him, and then in The Canberra Times we read that Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade cleaners (amongst the lowest paid workers in Australia) are to have their pay reduced by 15per cent ("DFAT cleaners face pay cuts under new post-guidelines contract", May 26, p5)?
Pauline May, Lyneham
BEYOND TARDY
Any chairman getting his agenda out of whack by three hours ("Senator told off over hearing wait", May 26, p1) is indeed a "shithouse" chairman.
Olle Ziege, Kambah
NET TAX FIGURES
Thank you, Paul Feidman (Letters, May 26) for pointing out the government figures on net tax paid by individuals. Whether or not these are the definitive data I shall leave for others to judge, but I concede, on advice, that the 50per cent figure reported widely in the media from the University of Canberra NATSEM study was not a figure that should have been used without qualification in my letter.
H. Ronald, Jerrabomberra, NSW
PM'S WINNING WAYS
I am definitely not one of Tony Abbott's ardent supporters, but I am impressed by his recent incarnation that has given long-suffering Australians relief from his inability to string a sentence together without an um or an ah. One can only hope his transformation takes a quantum leap forward so that I can believe what he is telling me.
D. J. Fraser, Mudgeeraba, Qld
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