ACT Corrections Minister Shane Rattenbury (Letters, April 15) says new visiting arrangements at the Alexander Maconochie Centre are an issue of equity and not cost-cutting. Yet the Canberra Times article "Jail to trial new visiting hours" (April 7, p5) quoted a government administrator saying that it was a cost-cutting measure. Also, we now have a six-month trial and not a one-month trial.
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Does the government know what is going on?
Rattenbury's letter admits that the jail's population is growing, so truncated visits must be a cost-cutting measure. The image of some inmates' families hogging space in the visitors' centre at the expense of others is spurious and offensive to inmates' families.
Relying on timely administrative decisions to be made pursuant to natural justice in relation to special considerations for longer visits may be a tad naive, as a recent court case showed when a man's application to the court to attend his wife's funeral was heard after the funeral was held.
The ACT Human Rights Act provides, at section 19(1), that anyone deprived of liberty must be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.
Deprivation of liberty is a hard, hard thing. Why make things worse for families who want to support their loved ones?
Leonie Kennedy, Forrest
The visiting hours regime at the Alexander Maconochie Centre was designed deliberately to address the negative consequences that the separation of inmates from family, friends and other support had on their welfare, rehabilitation and reintegration into the community.
It was also seen as important in sustaining family relationships through a period of long enforced separation.
As such, it was regarded as fundamental to the vision of the AMC as a world-leading human rights compliant correctional institution to be managed and run with a primary focus on rehabilitation.
The decision to reduce the visiting rights of prisoners at the AMC to those applying in NSW prisons, such as Goulburn and Cooma, to which ACT prisoners were sent before its construction, is one more step of a number that risk the AMC becoming just another prison.
I have long accepted that in the event of the election of a Liberal government in the ACT, it would be tempted to adopt the traditional, populist law-and-order approach to the management of the AMC.
It had not occurred to me that a Greens minister in a Labor government would beat them to it.
Jon Stanhope, Bruce
Fascist feminists
It is disturbing that feminists believe you can laugh about killing all men (see #killallmen hashtag on Twitter) or assert that all men are rapists, only to turn around and claim that a ribald song chanted by group of University of NSW college students is sexist, misogynist and demeaning to women.
Singing such a song is in no way illegal.
This hypocrisy is but one example of the metastasising cancer of cultural Marxism.
Feminists believe they decide what is right and what others are allowed to think and say. Any opposing thoughts or speech are met with highly personal, even vitriolic attacks. Now, that's fascism, pure and simple.
It is time Australians who believe in equality stood up to be counted before it is too late. Cultural relativism and victimhood as preached by modern feminists must be opposed, for it is the opposite of equality. It can only lead to social disharmony and, ultimately, societal breakdown.
Damon Fraser, Weetangera
The revolting chant, said to be widespread, used by educated students of Philip Baxter College at the University of NSW advocating rape, makes me ashamed to be an Australian male.
The threat of penalty by university authorities may reduce repetition of this disgraceful demeaning of women, but the mindset of many students will not change and is likely to be representative of a wider group. This is not surprising in view of the ready availability of pornography and the titillation endemic in our culture, which present women as constantly compliant with male demands.
Unless our society can develop a mature, balanced respect for women, their suffering, so common in relationships, seems unlikely to be mitigated.
Eric French, Higgins
A tower might do
The Canberra Services Club really has been very unlucky in its quest to rebuild ("Services Club waiting 'far too long' to know its fate", April 12, p3).
After the fire, it proposed a two-level redevelopment on its original site, with underground parking. That plan was rejected on the grounds that the building would be too big for the area – and, of course, the ACT government had other ideas for the site.
Had the club proposed an eight-storey, multi-purpose development, like Grocon's towers, it would have been home and hosed.
Stephen Brown, Forrest
Go Aussie Rules
After residing nearly 25 winters here in Canberra, NSW and Queensland, I would just like to remind followers of the quaint English winter pastimes such as rugby league, union and, yes, soccer that your Australian cousins from Western Australia, South Australia, the Northern Territory, Victoria and even Tasmania live here, too.
We don't overtly begrudge the many millions of dollars the ACT government has spent on Canberra Stadium over the decades for a handful of patrons.
So please refrain from complaining about our government also supporting proper (Australian rules) footy being played at the highest level here in Canberra. I support the redevelopment of Manuka Oval, and go Canberra's part-time Giants.
Peter Heyne, Monash
Acts of kindness
Two nice things happened to me on Tuesday afternoon. I'd finished shopping at Westfield, Woden, and, feeling weary and heavy laden, I flopped into a taxi. As I was closing the door, a man bent down and asked how much I usually paid to go home. Rather puzzled, I told him.
He then paid my fare to the driver, said goodbye and walked off. Then, when I reached home, the driver carried all my shopping up eight steps to the front door. My grateful thanks to two very kind gentlemen.
June Holland, Lyons
Housing plight
Yvette Berry's take on housing in the ACT ("Right housing policies are crucial to wellbeing", Times2, April 13, p5) was a pathetic attempt to make a positive out of a negative.
At the moment, the government is selling off low-cost public housing and four blocks of public housing flats located in inner Canberra.
The housing and flats that will replace them will in all probability be anything but low cost.
We have about 2400 people on the public waiting list.
The small amount of affordable housing and public housing being built will not reach them.
The St Vincent de Paul Society helps about 1100 homeless people in Canberra each month.
About 2000 people are essentially homeless in that they live with friends, in the back of cars, bus shelters, church shelters, etc.
Because the ACT government has no low-cost land for new private housing, the median house price is the third highest in Australia, which reflects in high rentals.
The government's affordable housing project is a step in the right direction, but single parents and the unemployed will still not be able to afford the rents asked.
Yvette Berry must live in a parallel universe. It certainly isn't the one we live in.
Howard Carew, Isaacs
Biased indignation
John Popplewell (Letters, April 13) is surprised that he has never met an animal liberationist who is not also in favour of abortion.
There is really no mystery about this. In our modern secular society, we are very comfortable with selective moral indignation.
Years ago in Melbourne, a newborn baby was snatched from a pram in a busy street. A frantic search for the baby followed, until it was found unharmed in an empty house.
Yet every year 100,000 unborn babies in Australia are aborted, and this process is legal and those who question it are subject to hate mail. Selective indignation is alive and well.
Robert Willson, Deakin
Waste of money
The excellent opinion piece "Subs: are we in too deep?" (Times2, April 14, p4) reminded me that, in a letter published in The Canberra Times in March 2013, I asked the following question: "I wonder which policy and procedural settings have so improved since the Collins decision that [columnist Nicholas] Stuart thinks that the navy, the Defence Materiel Organisation and the Australian Submarine Corporation could all do better a second time around on a bigger and more complex submarine project? Recent navy/DMO projects, including Collins maintenance, do not augur well for a son of Collins. Really, how could any government contemplate another self-inflicted money pit like Collins?"
I think we should be asking the same question of the Turnbull government.
Peter Moran, Watson
Frank O'Shea ("Defence spending just a gigantic waste of public money", Forum, April 9, p6) is the latest to discuss the proposal to build new submarines, and his, like most earlier articles and letters on the subject, avoids the issue of what they are to be used for.
Am I alone in wanting to know what these submarines are to be armed with, and where those armaments are to be made or bought?
A submarine is just a mobile platform for weapons, and is probably the least expensive item of a package.
The weaponry planned for the proposed submarines seems to be such a delicate issue that it is never mentioned in public. Why?
Adrian Gibbs, Yarralumla
Certainly is acting
Barnaby Joyce is now the acting Prime Minister in Malcolm Turnbull's absence. Well, the acting bit is right. But what is the Coalition thinking?
Linus Cole, Palmerston
TO THE POINT
COMMISSION A BAD IDEA
I see the same old line being trotted out by opponents of a banking royal commission. It'll be redundant, less useful than ASIC and much slower. At the same time, it'll cost a motza and trash reputations. The only situation in which these themes can be compatible is if there is extensive misconduct to discover, and it will be cheaper and nicer for the banks if ASIC does it.
S.W. Davey, Torrens
Misbehaving banks, company tax rorts, offshore havens. When will a people's revolution eventuate? Or will we hold off until our schooners and coffee cups are empty?
Gary Frances, Bexley, NSW
REDEVELOPMENT PROPOSAL
Thank you, Graham O'Loghlin (Letters, April 14). This is precisely what myself and many others I speak to have thought all along. Process, process, process.
Sonia Hathaway, Griffith
TARDY POSTAL SERVICE
I may hold the record for delay in delivery of mail. In the first week of January 2016, I received a letter and a credit card statement from Sydney, both postmarked December 2014. A day or two later, two Christmas cards arrived from Melbourne. Why has the cost of postage increased when the service has declined?
Judith Mahony, Hawker
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