I have just spent five weeks house-sitting in Crace. After visiting Belconnen Mall I couldn't help but compare its bright and vibrant decor to our Southside shopping centres ("Woden small businesses demand revamp", May 3, p3).
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Woden Plaza looks neglected and unloved, Tuggeranong Hyperdome is even worse and Kambah Village Centre is a disgrace.
Time for a Southside makeover!
Judy Bailey, Kambah
Hidden agenda
While it would be easy to dismiss Richard Tulloch's article "Luxury is the Point" about a high-end resort in the Tasmanian World Heritage area (Relax Magazine, May 3, p12) as yet another advertorial puff piece, it has more serious intent than merely promoting another tourist establishment in the guise of serious journalism. It is in fact a deliberate effort to make more acceptable the commercial development plans the Tasmanian government has for the wilderness area.
We learn from Mr Tulloch that it is elitist to lock wilderness areas up for the use of those who can carry a 50-kilogram pack. (In 40 years bushwalking I have never come across a bushwalker who would carry anywhere near this weight). The reality is that the very few wilderness areas in Australia were declared to act as a refuge where natural values can continue to evolve without major human interference.
Mr Tulloch's article is written in support of the Tasmanian government's stated aims of resuming logging and increasing tourism in ecologically sensitive areas. He should have been honest enough to admit that.
Timothy Walsh, Garran
Double standards
Hockey and Abbott are hypocrites in opposing "corporate welfare" and "government handouts", while continuing to subsidise (and refusing to tax) multi-national mining corporations, defending coal and fossil fuel power and rent-seekers like Cadbury's ("Life's a peach with a little support", May 3, p21).
Consumer-postulated reaction to frozen berries, all tests of which have since proven inconclusive for contamination, was public, dramatic and briefly alarming.
The Anti-Dumping Commission's power to identify dumped tomatoes raises questions as to why it might limit its purview to canned foods, when Australian orangeries and orchards are being destroyed by cheap imports.
Unfortunately this commission's authority may well be eliminated by Andrew Robb, as a trade-off, in Abbott's rush to sign the Trans Pacific Partnership, complete with its International Dispute Settlement clauses.
Consumers should be cognisant of product labelling, not only on fruit, but on clothing (Rana Plaza, Bangladesh), electronics (Foxconn, China) and all big brands, whose labour has been off-shored to dirt-poor countries, where workers, living in poverty and obscurity, provide Western consumers with cheap products, and global corporations with obscene profits.
Meanwhile Australia's balance of payments gap grows and unemployment queues grow apace.
Albert M.White, Queanbeyan
Judgment lacking
What possesses Magistrate Karen Fryar when she bails a demonstrably violent man on the grounds that he's been behaving recently ( "Man receives bail on death threat charges", May 3, p3)?
As an advocate for reducing domestic violence, she advances the most tenuous reasoning for allowing the defendant in question to come no closer than two suburbs from the woman he has threatened to kill.
Patrick Jones, Griffith
Who pays next?
The Sunday Canberra Times editorial ("Potential airport light rail link needs public input", May 3, p18) correctly says, "It's time to bring the community into the discussion" in respect of a light rail link to the airport. What gall the Canberra Airport manager has in calling for this link. After devastating much of Canberra's commercial viability, airport management now apparently expects Canberra taxpayers to pay for a link to the airport.
How much of the probable $500 million would airport management be prepared to pay for the 4.5 kilometres of track from Russell, let alone the cost from Alinga Street? But it's high time the community was also brought "into the discussion" on the basic proposal for the Gungahlin-City fiasco. Contrary to what it says in public (Mr Rattenbury at the Assembly, April 28), the government has been far from transparent on the real costs of Stage 1. It keeps saying the capital cost is only $783 million and never reveals the 30-year cost of over $2,000 million.
M.Silex, Erindale
Without wishing to hurt anyone's feelings, your article ("Light rail to airport", May 3, p1) on light rail to our airport reminded me of Shakespeare's lines: "A tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and in the end signifying nothing".
Those of us who have used our airport at the time of the last late flights would have an appreciation of how many people are waiting for public transport. The answer is few. Canberra simply has not the need for an expensive light rail to the airport.
The most rudimentary maths would show that the cost of passage by light rail to and from Civic would be at least six times that of doing it by bus. The cost of light rail from Gungahlin to Civic would be at least four times that of our bus service.
We have too much to do and little money to do it with to waste our money on light rail. We must let our ACT Auditor do an assessment of the relative costs of bus against that of light rail before signing.
Howard Carew, Isaacs
Funds not required
An article in The Canberra Times on April 26 this year titled "ACT government refuses to release submissions to review of concessions" highlights a rich topic with an interesting comment from Chief Minister Barr. "This is not an exercise in funnelling money to people who do not need it". In this context, Jon Stanhope, then chief minister, put on his website a report that ACTION bus service was wasting $30million dollars a year. The following year, Alan Hawke estimated ACTION waste as closer to $50million dollars a year.
This means that by 2016, ACTION will have wasted between $480million (Stanhope estimate) and $800million (Hawke estimate). It is clear from Jon Stanhope and Alan Hawkes's report Mr Barr is funnelling money to people who don't need it. So why don't you sort out massive waste before going to the less advantaged in our community?
This is not directed at ACTION staff who would probably like to work in a progressive business.
Glen Torr, Fraser
Who missed forecast?
I refer to my letter printed on April 1 this year, about the Namadgi hazard reduction burn. Then to the article by Ben Westcott ("Controlled burn escapes lines in national park" May 3, p10). It seems that the ACT Parks and Gardens did not have a clue as to why the fire escaped containment lines. As mentioned in my letter, the ACT fire danger forecast was "high". Tsk tsk.
Ken Wood, Holt
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