I commend The Canberra Times for the solemnity, dignity and restraint in the coverage of the centenary of Anzacs.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Conversely, I deplore some media outlets' exuberance to inject forms of catchy entertainment, turning what is a commemorative and reflective moment into an Anzac "mosh-pit".
From last year to now, we have been saturated with Anzac news, colour pieces and comments telling us all about Anzac Day, as if it had never occurred before. Even Woolworths got into the act, sinking to new lows to grab a part of the Anzac market share.
Having attended most Anzac services over half a century, the media and commercial bombardment caused the loss of the innermost resonance of what Anzac Day means to me.
Luckily, that resonance and spirit was revived in a small country town's Anzac Day service. No cameras, no lights or "blonde-haired" journos climbing all over the event.
At this service, I saw a whole town quietly and with dignity move down to the main street to view the parade and engage in the civility and humanity of the Anzac Day ceremony. Away from the tawdry media facade, I found the sad reverence for sacrifice and loss, the gratitude of living and the communion of sharing in that grief and gratefulness.
To the community of Bungendore, I thank you.
Bruce Clarke, Bungendore, NSW
Respect goes two ways
A group of Indigenous Australians attempted to join in Saturday's Anzac Day march, with the intention of laying a wreath to commemorate those first Australians who fell in the frontier wars defending their country. This is a period of Australian history that should be acknowledged and I know of few people who would argue that fact.
However, they were stopped by police and this should come as no surprise to them, as at the time they were shouting "shame". If they had shown some respect to those serving and past servicemen and women who have put their lives on the line to keep this country free, they would have been welcomed. Instead, they chose to desecrate their memory. Reconciliation is a two-way street and they should expect no respect until they are prepared to show some.
Michael C. Stevenson, Narrabundah
Traffic shambolic
Thank-you for writing about bus access to the inspiring Anzac Day dawn service ("Canberra commuters left stranded due to lack of buses for dawn service", canberratimes.com.au, April 26). I used the bus to get from Belconnen to the service and back. I found the drivers to be courteous and the crowds well-mannered and patient, although it is true we had to wait too long and the buses were crowded. However, the problem was not the bus service but traffic control generally. I watched buses pull away from the war memorial and then remain stationary for 15 minutes, while they tried in vain to manoeuvre through incredible streams of cars.
The number of buses would have been adequate if they had been able to quickly turn around and come back for more passengers, but the authorities were trying to maintain order in a situation that was unsuitable for automotive traffic. It would have been far better to restrict parking near the memorial and then run small shuttle buses in the vicinity to collect infirm people and take them to and from the service.
A light rail service, allowing people to get within walking distance of the memorial, would have solved the problem brilliantly.
John Mason, Latham
We, like many others, arrived before 4am, choosing to park our car and catch the shuttle buses to the war memorial.
An exercise to reduce traffic congestion and contribute to the smooth running operation of the event was nothing short of an embarrassment. We, like many others, arrived at the service well after 5am. No marshalls at parking areas to assist or inform crowds from the onset was again repeated for departures, complete lack of buses supplied to cope with the crowds, no dedicated lanes for the buses to travel along, resulting in an immensely poor operation.
We assume ACTION had considerable time to plan and consider the expected crowds and, as Canberra residents, we felt truly ashamed for those who waited patiently (aged, standing with canes, holding small children, perhaps visiting our capital for the first time) in the cold and all thinking the same thing.
G. Hunter, Theodore
A load of tosh
Jack Waterford ("Best we forget the RSL during peacetime", Forum, April 25, p1) has described the Anzac Day remembrance as "one of the great festivals of Australian tosh". This is an insult to all those families who have lost loved ones not only at Gallipoli, who we remember on Anzac Day, but in all war theatres in which Australians have been involved over the past 100 years and where some are still serving in harm's way. With record crowds attending services around the country, including an estimated 120,000 in Canberra, it tends to make his somewhat idiotic ramblings seem a whole load of tosh. The RSL does enormous work in assisting the families of returned servicemen, as well as the service personnel themselves, and to denigrate that institution is petty in the extreme, especially coming, one presumes, from one of the 80per cent who have never worn a uniform.
N. Bailey, Nicholls
Hospital plan flawed
The ACT government and the University of Canberra announce a new public hospital is to be built. A development application is published that only details the actual building. No detail is provided for the necessary parking and access roads for this important facility. In fact, what little information is provided shows that the "possible" roads will not even allow for public transport to service the hospital. Furthermore, the main entry to the hospital, from the unfinished, single-lane Aikman Drive, includes two right-angle bends in the first 100 metres.
The traffic assessment document in the DA is based on "a full-time staff of 150", when the DA states there will be a staff of 568, and other documents show a requirement for 712 parking spaces, which "does not allow for the future 30-bed extension" or for "Faculty of Health" staff? And now we learn ("Concerns over UC hospital capacity", April 24, p1) that it is not to be built to the original capacity proposed. Perhaps the hospital should be located elsewhere? It is hard to believe that in the 21st century the ACT Environmental and Planning Directorate can get it so wrong.
Murray Upton, Belconnen
Australian-made rule no longer conceivable
There was a requirement for an 85 per cent Australian-made content in the construction of Parliament House. The building could not be built under those conditions again. I was involved with preparing details and other documentation for just doors and hardware for the project. I suspect the story is similar for: furniture, sanitaryware, soft furnishings, light fittings, tapware, plumbing, carpets, security equipment etc.
The majority of door and hardware manufacturers whose catalogues and data sheets were held in the library of Mitchell/Giurgola and Thorp Architects have ceased trading, ceased manufacturing or are importing goods previously made in Australia.
Howard Styles, Kingston
Suited to diplomacy
Mike Reddy (Letters, April 25) is incorrect when he states that recent former politicians are being appointed to plum diplomatic postings on little merit. They are not all queue jumpers, as most taxpayers would agree with having a former federal Labor leader like Kim Beazley stay as ambassador to the United States. His credentials are impeccable, he was recently reappointed by the Abbott administration and follows in the footsteps of a famous parliamentarian like Dick Casey.
Australians of all political persuasions can be proud of former political party leaders like S.M. Bruce (London) and John Latham (Japan). The public purse is well served by retired politicians who know far more about the machinations of political power, the vested lobbying interest and big business perfidy than some well-meaning, long-term posted diplomat who resides overseas.
Whilst I agree with his sentiments about massive diplomatic salaries and free accommodation, that now occurs whether it is for hundreds of former public servants or a handful of former parliamentarians.
Julian Fitzgerald, Farrer
Indonesia isn't too worried about being on our good side
It is no secret that the Indonesian government, at the executive level, is not returning calls from our Prime Minister or Foreign Minister.
The fiction that we have good relations with Indonesia is rudely exposed by serial snubs. More than this, we need to face the fact that Indonesia is vastly different culturally and politically, and – under Joko Widodo – is not as gripped with staying on our good side as we may have believed. The Indonesian administration knows well enough how deeply offensive firing squads are to Australian sensibilities, and they don't much care.
Very soon, it seems, our newspapers, television and radio will be referring to Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran only as minor historical figures in an eventually humiliating clash of cultures.
All this may be a salutary experience that quickens us to the reality that Indonesia can – and probably will – turn away from Australian concerns when there is serious political skin in the game, and so that reassuring fiction of closeness must necessarily end here.
Ross Kelly, Monash
Tax system working well
Mark Kenny ("Labor sets sights on negative gearing", April 23, p1) describes negative gearing as a tax concession. Negative gearing is not a concession but the result of the normal working of our income tax system, under which you include all your income and deduct all expenses you incurred in earning it.
A rental property produces two gains – the rent from letting the property and the capital gain from selling it. The interest on money borrowed to buy the property is wholly deducted against the rent and not delayed to reduce the future capital gain. That, plus the fact that only half the capital gain is ever taxed, produces the negative gearing problem.
But the way the interest is treated was never the conscious decision of any Australian government and so cannot fairly be called a concession. It is instead the result of our courts' interpretation of general provisions in the tax law.
Correcting the inappropriate consequences of that interpretation by apportioning the interest deduction between the rent and the capital gain would address the negative gearing problem without the greater complexity of having a special regime for rental properties, let alone the troubling equity consequences of Labor's grandfathering proposal.
Greg Pinder, Charnwood
There is no compelling reason to unduly restrict a couple from using negative gearing for one or two properties to assist their children to get a start or to provide for some future retirement fund. Indeed, the use of negative gearing for these modest purposes could be justified on social policy grounds and as a means of reducing future costs of an ageing population. Such uses presently account for a relatively small percentage of the total cost of the tax benefits accruing to negative gearing.
In defence of negative gearing, I hear claims that its reduction or abolition would lead to increased rents and house prices. I am indebted to the Grattan Institute for showing these claims to have little or no merit. As for the argument that the reduction or abolition represents a new tax and therefore not to be supported, may I humbly suggest that argument is specious and self-serving while overlooking the increase in revenue it would provide.
I hope the debate on negative gearing continues to attract attention because it is a very significant drain on the federal budget in its current form.
Bob Budd, Curtin
Detention report ignored
It is more than 10 weeks since the tabling of the Human Rights Commission report The Forgotten Children. Recommendation 1 in the report is that all children and their families in immigration detention in Australia and on Nauru be released within four weeks of the tabling of the report. The recommendation has quite obviously been ignored and children and families still in detention in Australia and on Nauru are approaching the second anniversary of their incarceration under the ALP and Liberal Party policies of indefinite and mandatory detention.
The government has dismissed the report and been quite clear in declaring that it does not accept the recommendations.
The ALP has been silent. Too afraid to say anything, despite ironically or more probably because Recommendation 1, and indeed almost all other recommendations in the report reflect and are consistent with the thrust of the ALP's National Platform.
In the introduction to the National Platform, ALP National Secretary George Wright describes its provisions, including in relation to asylum seekers as " a clear statement of Labor's beliefs, values and program for government".
I really do think it is time for Bill Shorten, Tanya Plibersek or in fact anyone in the Labor caucus with a smidgin of integrity or moral courage, to tell the rest of us exactly which part of "Labor's beliefs and values" is engaged in the locking up of innocent children, without exception and indefinitely.
Jon Stanhope, Bruce
Emotive terms won't wash
(Dr) William Maley (Letters, April 27) should Google "abuse factories" as I mentioned in my originating letter and which the editor removed for some reason. There is no mention of Maley's "abuse factory" term in relation to refugees, nor is the term used in the reports he refers to in his letter. I, on the other hand, made no claim that there was not abuse at the detention centres, nor did I refer to the treatment of specific refugees in those centres or try to define "abuse".
My comment related solely to the need for someone who obviously wants to stress his academic credentials, to colour his letter with manufactured emotive terms rather than let his arguments stand on their own merit.
Ric Hingee, Duffy
TO THE POINT
HONOURING THE ANZACS
One-hundred-and-twenty thousand people and the sound of a cockatoo's wings flapping could be heard above as we waited for the commemoration. Suitable solemnity.
Hugh Watson, Hall
I am sure I speak for most of Australia when I quote Shakespeare by saying "give me excess of it, that surfeiting, the appetite may sicken and so die". Objective achieved in spades.
Rhys Stanley, via Hall, NSW
Make way, Team Australia. We now have Team Anzac. May all those who dare to utter an intelligent, sensible criticism against the overwrought pagentry be crucified upon a cross made of cheap imitation medallions, Anazac biscuits and "Digger", the teddy bear.
Joyce Wu, Lyneham
PROVOCATIVE WRITING
Jack Waterford's article on RSL and Anzac Day ("Best we forget the RSL during peacetime", Forum, April 25, p1) embodies the qualities I have appreciated in his journalism over the years. It was informed by historical perspective, the writing was vigorous and clear and was informed by a clear moral perspective. Thanks, Jack, for making an outstanding contribution to public life in Canberra.
Doug Hynd, Stirling
AWARD A JOKE
Amazing as it may seem, the Nishi building has won an international project of the year award ("Nishi building wins international award", April 15, p3 ). One can only assume all other competing projects must have been appalling. How very appropriate the award was presented to the winner by comedian David Williams.
Mario Stivala, Spence
WORTHY OF PITY
Stephen O'Neill (Letters, April 24) made me very angry for a few seconds, then I was moved to pity him for his sentiments. I cannot imagine being unable to understand that to the family a newborn child is indeed a cause for celebration. I'll pray for you, Stephen. Congratulations, Giulia.
P. M. Simmons, Kambah
OUR CARBON TAX
Under its "direct action" plan, the Abbott government is now spending our tax revenue to buy carbon emission reductions or offsets. We, therefore, have a carbon tax: we pay tax, which is paid to carbon polluters. With the original carbon tax, polluters paid the tax, and we received the proceeds to offset any price increase. This was fair and efficient. The new carbon tax is unfair and inefficient, because it relies on bureaucrats funding things that may well have happened anyway. What a farce.
Paul Pollard, O'Connor
Email: letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au. Send from the message field, not as an attached file. Fax: 6280 2282. Mail: Letters to the Editor, The Canberra Times, PO Box 7155, Canberra Mail Centre, ACT 2610.
Keep your letter to 250 words or less. References to Canberra Times reports should include date and page number. Letters may be edited. Provide phone number and full home address (suburb only published).