There is nothing irrational about wanting to enforce the Territory Plan. The Giants and Grocon want to grab land that is zoned PRZ1 Urban Open Space and PRZ2 Restricted Access Recreation.

But the Territory Plan states that Urban Open Space land is for "parks and open spaces", and Restricted Access Recreation land is for "facilities that will meet the recreational needs and demands of the community", not for 1000 apartments, 10,000 square metres of commercial and 10,000 square metres of retail.

There's nothing irrational about wanting to enforce the objects of the Heritage Act, which include establishing a system for the recognition, registration and conservation of places and objects that have heritage significance.

The massive proposal would eliminate almost all of the heritage-registered open spaces within Manuka Circle (including the entire cricket practice area and a large part of the Manuka Pool compound), the surrounding setting of mature landscaping, and most of the trees that define the circular space of the sports ground. The Giants and Grocon may find that more than "two or three people" care about protecting Urban Open Space land, Restricted Access Recreation land and heritage-registered assets.

G. Fitzgerald, Griffith

Proponents of the Manuka Green proposal have called on the "club faithful" to speak up in support of their plan. I am a foundation member of GWS and a regular attendee at Manuka games so I feel qualified to respond to this invite.

I agree, Manuka oval is in need of further development, especially much greater capacity for blockbuster games like yesterday's and the cricket fixtures we could secure with that extra capacity. The proposal as I read it does not offer this.

Of greater concern is the gifting of valuable land for an unsolicited offer without a competitive process. Put it to tender and see if $100 million of benefits to the community stack up in a competitive process.

Frank Fletcher, Calwell

The arrogance of Greater Western Sydney Giants "officials" confirms the worst fears many in Canberra have about the proposed redevelopment of Manuka Oval, including the processes involved.

Redevelopment has the potential to be innovative and exciting but needs to be carefully and sensitively handled.

It is obvious that many questions will be asked and concerns expressed but dismissing these as nimbyism is at best naive and at worst contemptible and hardly conducive to winning over the local residents and Canberra community. The ACT government has been irresponsible in blithely accepting the unsolicited proposal and becoming hostage to the bulldozing GWS/Grocon consortium.

It is not too late to start again with a considered master plan and development conditions supported by the community and a tender process to ensure a real competitive process.

Local Canberra developers/consortiums also need to be given the opportunity to bid for this important project.

Warwick Williams, Nicholls

I'm amused by the spray from Greater Western Sydney Giants management criticising the temerity of the irrational citizens of substandard Manuka in opposing the building of 1000 apartments and a 160-room hotel in one of Canberra's much-loved and iconic heritage precincts.

They point to Adelaide Oval as an example of what can be achieved.

That effort, of course, turned a much loved, iconic heritage facility into something more suited to – well – the western suburbs of Sydney, and I'm sure I'm not alone in seeing the irony of someone from the western suburbs lecturing the citizens of Manuka about urban design.

Dallas Stow, O'Connor

For all those who live in Forrest and surrounding suburbs, it is time to realise that the redevelopment of the ageing Manuka Oval is a good thing. At the weekend we saw a sellout crowd for the GWS game; this brings people to the Manuka/Kingston area and in turn they support our businesses. The redevelopment plans will for sure bring a multitude of life to our vibrant and historic suburbs. People believe that the new development will create anarchy and destroy our "heritage" but this development will bring increased values to our properties and help bring Manuka and the dying Kingston shops into the 21st century.

I live within one kilometre of the proposed redevelopment and I am 100 per cent for it because it will better our Manuka.

John-Paul Romano, Forrest

Given that there is still life in the bus/light rail debate, may I suggest a possible compromise?

I was recently in Eugene, Oregon. One bus line there runs between the centre of Eugene and Springfield, via the University of Oregon. The system has distinctive "stations" (sometimes in the centre of dual carriageway roads) with ticket machines and sheltered seating; there are electronic arrival boards at many of the stops.

There is a mix between dedicated bus lanes, and the use of regular roads. The intervals between stations are somewhat longer than is usual for buses, and in the less populated areas between the two towns there can be a considerable distance between them. The service is speedy. It seemed to work very well, and to offer a good compromise between light rail and a bus service – and would also have the advantage that the buses could, in principle, be used on other routes, too. The character of travel between Civic and other major centres in Canberra (and, indeed, between Civic and the airport), looks to me very similar to that over which the Eugene route runs.

Jeremy Shearmur, Wamboin, NSW

ACT planning rules have recently facilitated a dual occupancy on the main access road for Oxley. It includes a clothes line next to the footpath and a double metal open carport, which is out of character with surrounding homes in the area. There is no local shop, so RZ 2 is unlikely to apply. A taste of things to come with some Fluffy blocks?

D. Kimmorley, Monash

Tony Shepherd, Australia's self-appointed chief economist, says we cannot afford social services, and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said he does not intend to fund public hospitals or public schools (while promising to continue funding private schools).

One of the world's wealthiest countries and we cannot afford social services, hospitals and public schools? A country that spends literally billions of dollars financing detention centres to stop a few young people from coming here, a country that spends literally billions of dollars subsidising the fossil-fuel industry, a country that spends more onarmaments than any comparable country?

We have billions of dollars for Japanese submarines, but no money for hospitals or public schools?

As the Treasurer has said, we don't have an income problem, we have a spending problem. And all the while large companies and wealthy individuals pay no tax.

Peter M. Hill, Broulee, NSW

While successive Coalition federal governments have waged war on trade union wrongdoing, they have done little about the corporate theft of tens of billions of dollars taken from our commonweal. Here is a budget crisis.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has ruled out any form of Commonwealth corruption commission. Little is proposed to rein in the vast scale of tax shifting by multinationals. Yet the Centre for Independent Studies still trots out articles claiming the biggest task for government is to cut so-called red tape.

It is the drastic reduction in government regulation since Hawke-Keating that has fostered the vast Australian industry in tax evasion. Successive British governments have done little to curb the huge industry in hiding money through shell companies and the like in the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the British Virgin islands. We need urgent international action to stop profit-shifting tax evasion, such as that by Mossack Fonseca and Unaoil. How about it, Prime Minister?

Rod Olsen, Flynn

At the recent meeting in Washington to discuss nuclear safety ("Xi at top of Obama's dance card", April 2, p11), President Barack Obama stressed the danger of nuclear materials falling into the hands of terrorists, who would have no compunction in making adirty bomb that would kill thousands and make a great city uninhabitable long term.

Long ago, before Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea became nuclear powers, the Quaker scientist Kathleen Lonsdale wrote about this problem, that remains contemporary.

In Is Peace Possible?, she explained the problem, and offered the only solution. "Ifamad-dog aggressor arises in a world of the future that is still armed, and armed with nuclear weapons, he can destroy that world and his own nation with it, and nothing can stop him except a miracle. God help us all if it happens. It could not happen in an unarmed world. An armed world breeds 'mad dogs'."

Harry Davis, Campbell

In our Australian democracy, we are fortunate to be able to let off critical steam towards the government without fear of punishment by the authorities. In his splendid swashbuckling letter, "We're responsible for reef destruction" (April 1), Julian Cribb courageously trails his cloak.

Our Nero-esque government fiddles while theworld's greatest living organsim, the Great Barrier Reef, burns, and the plundering of the Carmichael basin site for unwanted polluting coal can only be attributable to placing vested interests and scientific illiteracy above the future ofour planet.

Although virtually all climate scientists agree that climate disruption is already happening, and likely to escalate in the Pacific, our government, led by a former Rhodes scholar, has the impudence to set up yet another inquiry about whether global warming is real. If there is a heaven, may it help us!

Bryan Furnass, Hughes

I was amazed at the Grattan Institute's findings reported on Monday ("Money to burn on roads to power", April 4, p1). Your readers need to know that the New England Highway is an important strategic route to Queensland and Brisbane from Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, as well as an important regional access route for heavy vehicles. It should have money spent on it. It is an alternative to the Newell Highway connecting Adelaide and Melbourne to Brisbane, and all the agricultural producers in between. If the Newell is cut at Goondiwindi (a river crossing), and the Pacific Highway is cut north of Newcastle, it provides the only reasonable access to Queensland from the south.

The two other access highways to Queensland from the south add hundreds of kilometres to the Brisbane route, and can be cut by flooding of Darling tributaries longer than Goondiwindi. Australia has few enough good regional roads and strategic routes. We cannot afford to let what we have degrade.

Does the Grattan Institute realise that the Great Divide has already been crossed?

Rosemary De Bear, Higgins

The Grattan Institute's latest report, Roads to riches: better transport spending, criticises government infrastructure investment ("Governments shouldn't play politics with infrastructure funding", canberratimes.com.au, April4).

The report notes that "Australian governments have spent unprecedented sums on transport infrastructure in thepast decade, and while important projects have been built, the overall investment has been poorly directed".

It then adds, "Canberra's light rail, now being built, is likely to provide no more benefits than bus rapid transit, but cost more than twice as much."

Of course, the elephant inthe room is our annual permanent immigration intake of over 200,000 people, being three times the historic 20th-century average of 70,000.

Isn't it time to think better, not bigger?

John Haydon, Lyneham

The Victorian readers of Charles Dickens' 1864-5 Our Mutual Friend found nothing unusual in a letter posted in London for a penny being delivered across town within hours. A century and a half later, I posted a letter at Tuggeranong Post Office on March 21, and another at Curtin's PO on March 22, both addressed to Parkes.

Making allowance for the four-day Easter holiday, they still each took four days to travel 20 kilometres and seven kilometres, representing (with 6pm pick-up and 11am delivery) average speeds of 250 and 75 metres an hour respectively, tardier than even Shakespeare's whining schoolboy, and yet the postage is now 120-fold that of Dickens' day.

There would be Barnaby Rudge-level rioting if we had not improved education and sanitation since the days of Wackford Squeers and Silas Wegg. So why does Ahmed Fahour get almost $5 million a year to run a Circumlocution (sorry, Post) Office that refuses to meet even Dickensian levels of service? Post haste? Post mortem more like! Bah, Humbug!

Brendan Whyte, Phillip

How disappointing that the Queensland government has signed off on Adani's mining leases for the Galilee Basin Project. A Labor government too. Former federal Labor climate change minister Greg Combet now works as an economic consultant for AGL and Santos, so it should come as no surprise.

Integrity is not a word that comes to mind when thinking of most Australian politicians.

Felicity Chivas, Scullin

Peter Hartcher's insightful article, "Tony Abbot's harmful legacy lives on in climate silence" (canberratimes.com.au, April 5), is essential reading.

Let's hope that Malcolm Turnbull doesn't come to deserve a similar epitaph.

David Teather, Reid

WORLD WITHOUT ELLIS

It comes as no surprise that Bob Ellis has died from cancer. It has long been suspected that cancer can be the result of negative thoughts and behaviour. Given that the primary motivation of the Left is hate, then it's a natural fate for people like Ellis to develop the disease. And Australia is certainly a better place for his having left it.

T. Leslie, Hughes

LEAVE CSIRO ALONE

An excellent article by Will Steffen ("Research cuts hurt all of us", Times2, April 4, p1) on the cuts to the public good research conducted by CSIRO. I do hope decision makers in CSIRO and government act to redress them accordingly.

James Walcott, Mawson

GIANT LACK OF PARKING

I was absolutely disgusted at the lack of parking for the Giants v Cats game on Sunday. After driving around for nearly half an hour we parked in an area where there were no no-parking signs displayed only to return after the game to find we were one of many who had received parking fines.

If my daughter didn't live in Canberra I don't think I would return.

Alison Lee, Coila, NSW

The GWS Giants and their property developer partner should engage with the Canberra community about the redevelopment of the Manuka oval precinct and not denigrate those who hold a contrary view. Information and consultation – not bombastic blather and denigration – should be their mantra; and I am a GWS Giants member.

Graeme Rankin, Holder

WELCOME BACK WINDIES

Welcome back, West Indies ("Samuels flays England, then Warne", Sport, April 5, p18). Cricket has missed you for so long.

Terry Lovett, Kambah

MORRISON ON MUTE

I hear you K.L. Calvert (Letters, April 4). In our household the Treasurer is known as Machine Gun Morrison, spraying his words with such ferocity that we have to mute him to get away from the noise. Like the school bully, when questioned he thinks the best form of defence is attack.

Carol Brown, Rivett

I agree with K.L. Calvert's comment on Scott Morrison's machine-gun reply to Lee Sales on 7.30 Report last week and how it turned him off, as it did me. Morrison is not the only one, there is a cohort of politicians who also think that verbal machine-gunning will get their message across.

Sandra von Sneidern, Mongarlowe, NSW

A letter by Eric Hodge published on April 4 incorrectly asserted that Justice Richard Refshauge was presiding over a long-running commercial lease dispute being heard in the ACT Supreme Court. Justice Refshauge has been involved in an aspect of the case, but he is not the presiding judge.

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).