Those minor-party senators frustrating every move to relieve Australia's public debt should copy the man who led a small poor corrupt country to one of the most successful – Lee Kuan Yew [of Singapore]. Regarded as a master strategist, he said he wasn't bothered how he would be remembered, but in life he always aimed to be correct – not politically correct!

Do-nothing federal parliamentarians and lotus-land voters will find his perspective on governance particularly penetrating. He said a successful democratic society requires two things : a constantly interested and vigilant electorate and the ablest, toughest and most dedicated of leaders. Currently, we don't qualify on either account.

Colliss Parrett, Barton

In favour of higher density

Karina Morris (Letters, February 1) thinks only people "with vested economic links to the property market" are "pro-growth and pro-density". Not so; people interested in minimising the tax they pay, and the government that represents them, also favour greater inner-suburban and city-centre residential density and growth over more expensive and uneconomic green-fields development stretching towards Cooma and Yass/Goulburn.

Incidentally, Ms Morris mentions six "respected independent academics" she thinks are not "anti-change nimbies". I can recall statements by two of them which I think most people would describe as "nimbyism".

R. S. Gilbert, Braddon

Seeking asylum not illegal

I don't know where Caroline Fitzwarryne (Letters, January 28) gets her info. Asylum seeking is not illegal. Whether they can speak English or not, the push pressures that would induce someone to get on a dodgy boat would have to be considerable – threat of torture, persecution, or death, for example. Over 90per cent of the asylum seekers arriving by boat (a tiny proportion of our total intake) are given refugee status.

This means that the threat of death, torture, or persecution which has induced them to flee has been established and considered legitimate by the Australian authorities; ie, they are "real" refugees. Certainly, we should "assist the stabilising ... of fragile states". However, we also have responsibilities under the Refugee Convention to help those seeking asylum. Unfortunately, (Bob Salmond, Letters, January 28), our treatment of asylum seekers not only lacks basic compassion and decency – it also violates articles of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Australia is a signatory.

The Australian Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights has found Australia's offshore processing legislation contravenes our human rights obligations. Both the Australian Human Rights Commission and United Nations have found indefinite mandatory detention to be cruel, inhuman or degrading.

We need to grow up and gracefully accept our responsibilities and not turn them into a really ugly spurious political capital-spinner.

Michael Stenning, O'Connor

Parking fees a burden

The introduction of paid parking in the Parliamentary Triangle was long justified by the National Capital Authority on the basis that it was needed to free up parking places for visitors to the national institutions. It is glaringly obvious that the real reasons are quite different and just blatant revenue raising. Visitors to these institutions have to incur substantial parking costs to visit them.

There is no short-term free parking. Many visitors like to spend time relaxing in the cafes at these places after they have completed their tours. The parking costs make for very expensive coffees and gift purchases indeed. The small businesses also suffer as a result, because the parking costs deter some potential customers, probably a lot.

Only last week, a friend informed me she was reluctant to visit the Triangle during business hours because of the parking costs. Many people would have the same attitude.

Even if someone just wants to go for a walk along the lakeside, they must pay for parking. Low-paid service workers are also heavily impacted. The daily cost should be reduced substantially and limited-time free parking introduced at national institutions.

Colin Lyons, Weetangera

Ideal work-for-dole plan

Although I oppose the tram project, I think it might just be possible to construct the tram line at a cost that won't unduly burden ACT taxpayers for decades to come. If the ACT government can persuade the Commonwealth to accept the project as a major "work for the dole" scheme, it should be possible to recruit a sizeable workforce from the vast pool of unemployed ACT and federal public servants.

Unemployed CSIRO boffins could rejig the plans so that the tram line can be constructed by "people power", which would avoid the usual waste of taxpayers' funds on hire fees for underutilised earthmoving equipment. There would also be a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, which should appease the Greens. The soon-to-be-knighted former Queensland premier, who was an army engineer in a previous life, would make the perfect construction boss to ensure the ex-public servants put in enough physical labour each day to warrant their dole payments.

It would even be possible to run the line through every suburb for substantially less than the government is proposing to pay the public-private partnership for constructing a line from Gungahlin to City.

Bruce Taggart, Aranda

Time for new captain

Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg ("Prime ministership not like pass the parcel, reality TV show: Abbott government ministers", canberratimes.com. au, February 2) dismisses calls for the replacement of Tony Abbott as Prime Minister as an exercise only the ALP would contemplate. I think another analogy is more apt. If a captain's poor judgment led to the death of many of his crew and repeatedly put his ship in peril, then he must be replaced. The rest of the officers would need to get together and put the old man in irons before he could do more harm.

The Abbott government is not incompetent: it has had successes in trade, foreign policy and border protection, mainly due to the competence of some on its frontbench.

Its worst blunders have come because of the "captain's picks" of Tony Abbott. No one else would have chosen the manifestly unsuitable Bronwyn Bishop as Speaker of the House of Representatives. No one else would have reintroduced knighthoods without consulting his party room. No one else would have devised a gold-plated paid parental leave scheme during the time of a "budget crisis" and clung to it for so long. Not many would have offered a plum diplomatic post in Singapore to an old university buddy. And only Tony Abbott would have chosen Prince Philip for a knighthood and announced it four days before a state election.

The electorate is prepared to forgive a prime minister for the occasional dud decision, but it is unlikely to re-elect a government led by a person whose judgment it no longer trusts or respects.

If the Liberal Party room does not depose Tony Abbott, many of its members will discover that, just as a rising tide floats all boats, an ebbing tide of popularity leaves many boats grounded. Many of Campbell Newman's colleagues learnt that on Saturday night.

Mike Reddy, Lyons

Another political low

Australian politics reached a watershed two years ago when pundits agreed that given the unconvincing hacks put up by the Coalition and the Labor Party for election federally, it would take a generation to get the system back on track to deliver the level of political outcomes expected by the Australian people.

It has now reached a newer and lower turning point that can only move downwards under the lacklustre leadership of both parties.

The Abbott frontbench is bereft of ideas and is sailing into the wind with a very wet sail.

It is distressing that this situation has arisen and the Labor Party is unable to show that it is competent, under its leadership, to run the country.

Les Brennan, Sunshine Bay, NSW

Shorten must step up

The federal ALP can take heart from Annastacia Palaszczuk's stunning victory in the Queensland state election. But, Bill Shorten must now start acting like the alternate prime minister. The federal ALP risks blowing its chances by sitting back, doing and saying nothing, waiting to win by default. "Government of the people, by the people, for the people" is the key message for the incoming ALP-led federal government. End the secrecy. Inform and consult the electorate. Lead public opinion instead of kowtowing to "shock jock" rants. Queenslanders have dramatically demonstrated that governments must focus on the voters, not on pandering to insatiably greedy boardrooms, billionaires, and tax-dodging foreign corporations.

Rod Olsen, Flynn

Voters more impatient

Overwhelming voter disapproval for the Newman Liberal government in Queensland confirms the trend indicated with the defeat of the first-term Napthine government in Victoria.

A new standard of electorate expectation has now been set where it is clear voters demand a quick-fix, first-term solution to the problems inherited from the previous government.

There is more than a hint of instant voter gratification in this new trend, saying we want everything from you pollies in power right now, or you are out. Whether this mindset will apply in four years' time to a new Labor Premier in Victoria who has scrapped the East West Link and a new Labor Premier in Queensland who on the eve of the election did not know the rate of the GST remains to be seen.

It is not a cheery prospect to contemplate.

John Bell, Heidelberg Heights, Vic

Abbott not elected PM

Tony Abbott is trying to give the impression he is learning from his mistakes. However, he has obviously not taken on board people's dissatisfaction with him telling lies. He is now trying to tell us that the people of Australia elected him to the position of Prime Minister.

What actually happened was that the majority of voters in his electorate voted for him to become their MP – the majority of his parliamentary colleagues voted him federal leader of the party, and this made him Prime Minister.

Almost all electors had no direct say in whether or not Tony Abbott became Prime Minister, and to say that the Australian people voted him Prime Minister is grossly misleading. Tony Abbott's latest pronouncement is another example of what he says cannot be trusted.

Gordon Fyfe, Kambah

A lesson from history

Ian Mortimer's The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England describes how wealthy landowners evicted tenants and enclosed shared grazing land, reducing farmers to beggars and destroying one-sixth of English villages between 1450 and 1600.

Now private companies are "enclosing" sections of the public service, throwing some out of work and paying others less. The secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership process enriches powerful companies by reducing our rights and environmental protection while sending prices of medicines up.

The farmers in the days of Elizabeth I were defenceless. Has anyone learnt from history? Yes, the powerful have learnt what they can get away with and are repeating the process.

Rosemary Walters, Palmerston

Names can hurt

Bruce A. Peterson (Letters, January 21) quotes the old schoolyard chant: "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me." But this is simply defiance and self-reassurance, not fact.

Of course names can hurt you, not physically but emotionally. And emotional pain is just as bad for you as physical pain; more so, because it is more common. This is a feature of our culture that needs cleaning up.

Michael McCarthy, Deakin

Enjoyment of soccer unifies fraught world

Whilst the Australian Socceroos and South Korea are to be commended for providing such a sublime Asian Cup final match, accolades also need to be bestowed upon the organising committee. The fact a competitive physical tournament between 16 different Buddhist, Shinto, Islamic, atheist and Christian nations was conducted Down Under without incident or overt animosity is reason for thanksgiving, and testimony to this country's enviable relative peace.

Perhaps it is being too starry-eyed to do so, but in a world climate of fear and agitation, we should celebrate the sensory solidarity that the pure enjoyment of sport has brought to so many thousands of fans and casual viewers across the globe.

Peter Waterhouse, Craigieburn, Vic

Mercifully, we didn't have a penalty shoot-out.

Tom Middlemiss, Deakin

Sympathy misplaced

Why are all the do-gooders so keen on saving those two young men on death row in a Bali prison?

They seem to have no sympathy for the thousands who could have ended up with brain damage or worse from the drugs the Bali Nine were trying to import.

What if one of their families were harmed as a consequence? Would they still feel sympathetic?

The anti-drug laws that Indonesia has legislated are very well documented and publicised, and if anyone is stupid enough to ignore them, then so be it!

Edith Jensen, Chifley

TO THE POINT

The Canberra Times wants to hear from you in short bursts. Email views in 50 words or fewer to letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au.

LOOK CLOSER TO HOME

It's great that journalist Peter Greste has being released from an Egyptian prison, but Egyptian prisons hold thousands of other political prisoners.

Australia, too, has prisons, on Manus and Nauru, where thousands of captives get no justice or compassion. The man responsible for keeping them there, Tony Abbott, is a disgrace to his faith and Australia.

Graham Macafee, Latham

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION

In a vibrant democracy, political leaders can rise like a rocket and drop like a stone through the electoral process.

Queensland ex-premier Campbell Newman and his political party would have acquired a proper appreciation of this after their decisive defeat in the recent elections a short three years after their landslide win at the polls.

That is as should be to ensure politicians do not take the people for guaranteed, or for suckers.

Rajend Naidu, Glenfield, NSW

Campbell Newman has gone from can-do to undo in one term. Watch out, Captain, for what it's worth.

Linus Cole, Palmerston

A CORRUPT FORMULA

Treasury and government strategists might find merit in the formula: Public Assets + Sales - Lease Back = Political Corruption. There has to be a better way.

Richard Barnett, Hallidays Point, NSW

IGNORING THE OBVIOUS

Will Tony Abbott be the climate change Chamberlain to Turnbull's Churchill? "No climate change in our time" may not be his words, but they are clearly Abbott's actions and he's clearly wrong.

Eric Pozza, Red Hill

A KNIGHTHOOD, TONY?

Tony Abbott has been an outstanding opposition leader and an abysmal prime minister, who needs to be replaced. As knifing a first-term prime minister in the back is never a good move, my preferred option would be to persuade him to stand down gracefully – by offering him the post of high commissioner to London; and if that does not do the job, offer him a knighthood as well. That should do it!

Mario Stivala, Spence

EDITORIAL A COP-OUT

The gist of your editorial ("The danger of constant change", Forum, January 31, p8) seemed to be that it's bad for everyone if politicians pander to popular opinion. But it's OK for the press to mirror the views of its audience. Pray tell, what's the difference? Isn't the article just a great big finger-pointing cop-out?

S. W. Davey, Torrens

Email: letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au

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