The ACT government has an ideal site in Red Hill for a large retirement village with the re-development of the Red Hill Housing Commission flats.

This site could accommodate seniors in a retirement village with a mix of villas, townhouses and apartments which would appeal to seniors moving out of large homes in the suburbs in and around Red Hill. The site is next to shops and on a bus route, both aspects very important to elderly people who can no longer drive. The re-development of the Red Hill flats is an ideal site for a spacious retirement village.

Research tells us that when moving, elderly people want to stay in their local area. The PRS Australia report states that more retirement-living developments in established suburbs would allow older Canberrans the opportunity to age in their own community.

A retirement village at the Red Hill shops would provide such an opportunity.

Elizabeth Chisholm, Red Hill

I wish to support Doug Hynd (Letters, August 25) in expressing appreciation to Simon Corbell for the wonderful service he has given to the ACT as its longest current-serving member of the Legislative Assembly. He has served as a minister across a whole range of portfolios and has done so with distinction, diligence and integrity. Not everyone will agree with every stance he has taken and I must say that my views on light rail are similar to those of Graham Downie.

But at the end of an illustrious career, credit must be given to Simon Corbell for being the person he is and the important values he brings to our community. He is to be admired for the way he was so open about his struggle with depression some years ago. To come back from that black hole and show that recovery is possible must give great heart to others. Finally, to be the owner of an Irish wolfhound is sure proof of his innate goodness.

Well done, Simon, and heartfelt thanks.

(Bishop) Pat Power, Campbell

The fulsome praise heaped upon Simon Corbell by Doug Hynd deserves a response. Unlike Hynd, I see little "vision and intelligent policy thinking" at all, going back to Corbell's support of the failed appeal against the bushfire coroner through to the promotion of the tram without any substantive cost/benefit analysis.

Corbell, along with Kate Lundy, was in a position of power for around 19 years. My management studies suggest that this is twice the recommended period for CEOs and top managers.

Ric Hingee, Duffy

Could Ed Dobson (Letters, August 25) please provide location details of the sort of environmentally damaging solar farm he describes. I have seen several on "green fields" unlikely to attract the interest of the Greens, but I would be surprised to see one developed on uneconomically located, bushfire vulnerable, flora/fauna susceptible bushland.

By contrast, as an octogenarian, lifelong bushwalker and former forest/national parks manager and user, both in Australia and overseas I have seen numerous transmission lines located through and deep inside bushland and wilderness areas, over river systems and valleys, each with its fire trail for fire prevention and regular weed control activities.

These trails are often used by off-road vehicles/drivers more likely to kill fauna and create noise pollution and other environmental damage than any number of solar farms. The Greens would no doubt be more interested in their removal or improved management.

Geoff Armstrong, Monash

Phil Potterton ("Low density no barrier to public transport", August 20, Times2, p5) has struggled to find a justification for the proposed Gungahlin-Civic light rail link.

After stating that buses "are likely to remain the core of the system" and that "bus lanes on the Tuggeranong Parkway and Gungahlin Drive [and other major links] could be considered" he cites population growth in Gungahlin, jobs growth in Civic and congestion as arguments in favour of the light rail proposal. Yet Gungahlin is projected to contain only 14 per cent of the population in 2019.

So all of these parameters apply equally to the other towns that Potterton allows could be served by bus lanes for their commuting needs to Civic. This leaves Potterton's only unique argument for light rail from Gungahlin to be that it is appropriate to the Northbourne Avenue gateway. Many would dispute this, especially as bus lanes on Gungahlin Drive with their acknowledged "speed and reliability" offer an alternative route to Civic with faster travel time than the more direct light rail route.

Potterton's article serves to highlight that Canberrans are being railroaded into a major investment in light rail without a thorough analysis of the alternatives, especially of what systems would best serve a Canberra-wide network.

A. Smith, Farrer

I love buses. But can ACTION run buses better at peak hours? Every day passengers delay my bus by paying cash. On Wednesday morning five tourists boarded a city-bound bus and were told the fare was $18.50. It happened at 8am on Northbourne Avenue. It took ages for them to find and count out the correct money. It made car drivers trapped behind the bus angry and wasted my time.

Let's ban cash and make everyone use a MYWAY card as they do in Melbourne. Then passengers and drivers don't waste time counting small change and cars aren't delayed behind a stationary bus.

Jayden Lohe, Kaleen

Colliss Parrett (Letters, August 27) claims human interference (eg, abortion) is outside natural law and my "reasoning is flawed" to say it, and all possible phenomena, exist within its bounds. Anti-abortionists can't have it both ways: they invoke contravention of "natural law" to justify their bullying behaviour, yet their interference contravenes the same law as they define it. Maybe they should stick to invoking divine law – it's logically elastic and has a fantastic pedigree for harassing women.

Peter Robinson, Ainslie

Your fine portrayal of the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, along with Eddie Mabo's daughter Gail, laying wreaths at the grave of Eddie Koiki Mabo on Mer Island in the remote Torres Strait ("Prime Minister makes history at Mabo's final resting place", August 25, p4) was heart-warming and inspiring.

Akin to Paul Keating's Redfern speech apologising for the gross harm inflicted on Indigenous people by the newcomers and Kevin Rudd's Parliament House, Sorry Day apology to the Stolen Children , Tony Abbott truthfully acknowledged that justice was denied to Indigenous Australians as the falsehood of Terra Nullius reigned supreme.

Denied native title rights, Indigenous people were dispossessed of their lands and dispersed into settlements. Now as we move slowly to reconciliation and constitutional changes, every effort must be undertaken by the Abbott government to honour such land rights and pay tribute to the role as the nation's First Peoples. We will never be an honourable nation until we uphold the truth in our history.

Keith McEwan, Bonython

It would be a serious mistake for Australia to respond positively to the US request to join in airstrikes on Islamic State in Syria. Such action would probably be against international law, and in any case be ineffective, while increasing IS recruitment and failing to resolve the undoubted problem.

Like US policies towards Syria, it also lacks clear strategic objectives. IS, while certainly brutal, is the armed opposition to the also brutal and corrupt Assad government, the overthrow of which ostensibly remains the prime target of US effort.

More importantly for Australia, the civil war raging in Syria has increasingly developed into an intense Sunni versus Shiite sectarian civil war.

Whose side are we backing? Despite political concerns about Australia's domestic security, nothing could be worse for our multicultural society and its security than an action likely to stir a sectarian conflict among our Muslim citizens.

Stuart Harris, Forrest

Treasurer Joe Hockey like most of his colleagues in the Coalition is a polylogist ("Online shoppers to pay GST on their purchases", August 22, p1). Polylogism is the intellectual inability to apply the same reasoning across an invisible line called a national border.

If a buyer and seller are on the same side of a national border conservatives say nothing. But when the buyer and seller are on opposite sides of a nation's border conservatives adopt the rhetoric of the union movement.

Australian consumers do not buy Australian goods in order to create Australian jobs. They buy an Australian product because the product will meet their needs at the price offered. Australian consumers just want a good deal for their money.

Mr Hockey says ending the GST threshold on all overseas online purchases will deliver competitive neutrality for Australian business because it will ensure a fair and equal treatment of all goods and services.

What is fair about allowing the government to confiscate 10 per cent of the value of every online purchase? Treasurer Hockey may call this fair, but I call it highway robbery.

Victor Diskordia, McKellar

Julia Richards (Letters, August 25) perfectly demonstrates the populist lunacy of protectionism. Of all the defunct Australian manufacturing industries unable to compete in the world, she got nostalgic about one of our most ridiculous: Australia's old clothing and textile industry.

The astronomical needs-based tariffs and quotas that enabled that industry to prosper here, had exactly the same impact on families as a big rise in taxation. Being forced to buy seriously overpriced products is no different from a cut in take-home pay.

That industry's protection eventually rose to levels where the rest of us would have been better off if all its workers had stayed home, with us maintaining them on full pay, rather than them going in to work.

Taxes can be spent employing people to grow hot-house bananas in Tasmania, but it's not sensible. We must do what we do well.

Manson MacGregor, Amaroo

The description of the current government having passed fewer bills than previous governments ("Abbott's team hits political paralysis", August 24, p4) as " political paralysis", is questionable. Those who favour "small government" would regard it as a good thing.

The problem is that, these days, much of the conduct of human beings that should be left to be judged by the community generally, or by those particularly affected, or by common sense, is governed instead by legislation – even though the conduct doesn't lend itself to the precision of definition that good law requires. The result is nothing more than a bonanza for the legal profession, which thrives on debate about words. Examples are "human rights" legislation and "discrimination" legislation (sex, race, age). Do we really need such law?

R.S. Gilbert, Braddon

The independent editorial audit commissioned by the ABC found that Sarah Ferguson in her aggressive questioning of Joe Hockey following last year's Budget did not show him enough respect and could inflame perceptions of bias.

If this standard is applied to Dyson Heydon in his royal commission then, by any standard of reason, he is obliged to stand down. He displayed complete disrespect for Bill Shorten and in agreeing to speak at a Liberal Party fundraiser also displayed scant regard for the judicial standard of independence and impartiality we expect from a royal commission. However, in defence of Mr Heydon, this right royal farce labelled a royal commission was obviously established by a government not to seek truth but to provide an opportunity for political point-scoring and union bashing. In this context Mr Heydon has done a sterling job.

Arguably the charges laid by the AFP could have been laid external to the royal commission by following due legal and investigative processes. And that is what has now happened.

James Grenfell, Spence

Calls to remove supposedly offensive defence equipment advertisements from Canberra airport ("Ads of weapons at airport anger city group", August 25, p3) again exemplify the emotively expressed, ahistoric and one-sided views that replace actual reasoning among the unduly ideological. Entirely missing from the claims and their false moral equivalences is acknowledgement that military force can also prevent "untold human suffering" – and is often essential to re-establish peace, the rule-of-law and the overall conditions needed to effectively negotiate an enduring end to violent disputes.

After all, we only have a UN Charter and all its subsidiary law because the principal liberal democracies led the fight to defeat ideologically-based military aggression, and indeed genocide, by the Axis powers.

Finally, it's noteworthy that the airport-ad campaign's cited leading figures are not well known for consistent criticism of the frequent, deliberate and gross violations of international humanitarian law by, say, Islamist terrorists, North Korea or Hamas.

Neil James, executive director, Australia Defence Association

Scoff all you wish, water divining sceptics, (Letters 24 August) but my first-hand (if inexpert) and observed experiences of the practice remain intact. Perhaps the term "divining" is mischievous here, and should be watered-down to "detecting" or "seeking" so as to remove any suggestion of supernatural influences at work, and perhaps remove some of the emotion attached too.

As Dr Williams inferred in his letter, there is probably a perfectly useful scientific way of explaining the phenomenon, and I will be happy to hear it.

Jennifer Jones, Spence

FIGHTING FOR NOTHING

Tony Abbott is keen to get into Syria to harass Islamic State. But with Shiite governments in Baghdad and Damascus, what is left for the 23million Sunni of Syria and Iraq? Those governments aren't going to help them. Hence Islamic State.

Abbott just believes in fighting. But he doesn't believe in fighting for anything.

Michael McCarthy, Deakin

GRAVE WORDS

Apropos the Prime Minister's activities up in far north Queensland ("Prime Minister makes history at Mabo's final resting place", August 25, p4), I would like to make it known that, after I drop off the perch, I don't want Tony Abbott publicly eulogising me, or visiting my grave with the media in tow.

Gordon Fyfe, Kambah

NEGATIVE CARTOON

Prime Minister Tony Abbott visited the island of Mer, in the Torres Strait, paying his respects to Eddie Mabo, whom he rightly called a "warrior for justice". He spoke warmly of Mabo, his family, his people and his heroic place among Australians.

I am disappointed, though unsurprised, that your house cartoonist, David Pope (Times2, August 25, p1), did not see this occasion in a positive light.

Peter Mackay, Reid

LIGHTING UP CANBERRA

H. Ronald (Letters, August 25), I doubt it would matter in your case whether it will be possible to switch on the lights in Canberra 24/7, given that your head is clearly buried so deep in the sand that you are blind to the great strides being made in renewable energies worldwide.

Rachael Thew, Geneva, Switzerland

If H. Ronald wants to switch on the lights in Canberra, he/she will have to move from Jerrabomberra into the Territory to get onto our grid.

Brian Bell, Isabella Plains

ALBERT HALL PARKING

There are signs at Albert Hall indicating that parking there is allowed for up to two hours. But bollards prevent entry to the car park. ACT Parking Operations should either remove the signs or arrange for the bollards to be lowered, unless there is a function at the Albert Hall.

Ken Wells, Turner

CHARLIE CHAPLIN

Good point on the efficacy of humour in countering tyranny, Bob Gardiner (Letters, August 22), but I think you meant to link Charlie Chaplin to

The Great Dictator and not The Producers.

Bill Deane, Chapman

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