As brainiacs (eight students topped 99 per cent tertiary score) mingled with tradespeople-to-be (some still intheir work gear) and former refugees (the college embraces 50 nationalities), the evening was a triumph for the once-doomed college and its free, secular education. So much for John Howard's slur that private schools are the go-to location for "choice" and "values".

It is way past time that the ACT Labor government, its then education minister and, by implication, the ACT Treasury, apologised to the community for their devious 2006 proposal to close Dickson, always the only government college in the inner north. The people could see straight off that this was so wrong. Why couldn't you?

It's only through the dedicated efforts of a band of great educationists that the college has bounced back, but the standard of its facilities still falls far short of its rich private cousins. I mourn the new Australian normal, where about one-third of our state-national education kitty is earmarked for private (Christian) schools with uncapped fees, an arrangement unprecedented among advanced or OECD nations.

Any Australian politician who seeks to boost our flagging OECD school performance and equity rankings and skirts this anomaly is a liar.

Speaking of which, it is a matter of regret that the Federal Education Minister, egged on by almost every vice-chancellor, is still trying to extend the same counterproductive system to the Australian universities. Yep, the rich will pay top fees to send their specially groomed kids to the top universities, with that old Tory chestnut of "scholarships for the deserving poor".

Stephen Saunders, O'Connor

It is galling that Christopher Pyne blames Labor for the loss of jobs in the education and research sectors ("Research onhold after Abbott government stalls education bill", December 16, p4).

When a government proposes bad legislation, it has to accept full responsibility for it. The Coalition can't continue to blame the opposition for all its failings as a government.

What Pyne should do is accept the fact that Labor is upholding the values of the nation, while thegovernment is attempting atevery turn to rewrite them tomatch its own corporatist ideology.

W. Book, Hackett

As a member of the Dargues Reef Community Consultative Committee and one of the six community representatives shown around the Henty Gold Mine by Unity Mining on Wednesday, I came away assured that processing of the concentrate onsite at Dargues Gold Mine, near Majors Creek, would not pose any greater risk to the surrounding communities thantrucking it elsewhere.

We will have to wait for the Environmental Assessment for the fine print of the proposal and its environmental implications. However, the proposal has a number of positives:

■ the impressive safety record of Unity at Henty;

■ the proposed additional measures to protect against the accidental release of cyanide;

■ the significantly higher design standards already applying to the tailings storage facility at Dargues, compared with Henty; and

■ the improved road safety andreduced carbon footprint associated with more than 2000 fewer loaded trucks a year moving through Braidwood enroute to Parkes.

I congratulate Unity for its openness in relation to the Hentyoperation, and for giving the community and media representatives such an opportunity to assess the possible implications of cyanide processing on site at Dargues.

David Lever, Araluen, NSW

Margaret Owens (Letters, December 17) believes that jail should be a last resort for criminals. Perhaps Ms Owens has been protected all her life from the consequences of crime, especially that committed by repeat offenders.

Even if prison is not a deterrent to the criminal, at least it keeps the rest of the population safe. Ms Owens should stop and think about the consequences of releasing the criminal who caused the death ofthe hostages in Sydney on Tuesday morning, and think about all the women who have been killed by violent partners, released on bail.

Prison for criminals is essential to keep victims and thegeneral population safe.

Rae Harvey, Griffith

No-one is doubting that the death of Paula Conlon was tragic. However, to sentence a person in an emotive manner, as indicated by Russell Walters' comments (Letters, November 20), is not what will benefit our society. Thesentencing process is very complicated and often difficult.

It is not clever or helpful for Mr Walters to blame the lawyers involved in the case and to write emotionally charged letters to the editor, when clearly he is not apprised of all the facts of the case or of what is required by lawto be weighed up in the sentencing process. Thankfully, Mr Walters is not a judge and I hope that he is never on a jury.

Peter Woodhouse, Canberra City

D.J. Powell's understanding ofhis own Commonwealth Superannuation Scheme (Letters, December 17) is appalling. He is the beneficiary of an extremely generous pension, guaranteed for as long as he lives and indexed every year. If he has a spouse who survives him, his spouse will also continue to receive a generous, indexed pension for life.

His superannuation is paid for by the Commonwealth and, on average, cost about 20 per cent of his salary. Compare that with the 9 per cent most employers contributed in the private sector. His accumulated contributions would have been repaid to him on retirement as a lump sum oran additional pension.

The tax D.J. is complaining about results from the fact that, unlike the rest of us, he never paid contributions tax while he worked, as the Commonwealth never contributed to his fund. His pension is paid from Commonwealth funds, as needed, for as long as needed.

I am sure the taxpayers of Australia would give their eye teeth to be members of such a munificent pension, as they fund for him. Perhaps he should count his blessings.

Fred Barnes, Bruce

Many commentators on the Sydney siege have posed questions about the response by governments and agencies. One important question is whether the police have been educated to handle extremist Muslims.

The idea that such people can be dealt with by negotiation is out of date.

That the NSW police waited 17hours before acting against the gunman raises serious questions about their strategy in handling the obsessive views of someone who had recently become a Sunni.

Once identified, this chap should have been shot as soon as a gap became available.

Serious questions must also be answered by NSW Attorney-General Brad Hazzard as to why a person with a long criminal/extremist record was allowed to remain out of jail. Other similarly unbalanced criminals are being kept in jail indefinitely and policy must be changed to allow this with people such as the obvious terrorist. Questions also arise regarding federal and state policies.

There is an urgent need for federal Attorney-General George Brandis to meet with his state counterparts and develop a much tighter policy inhandling religious and other extremists.

Immigration policies on admission of refugees must also be reviewed.

Des Moore, South Yarra, Vic

Among the tropes quickly trotted out by the media following the recent siege situation – "loss of innocence", whatever that may mean, appeared in the Canberra Times next day – was that the event was made possible because the hostage-taker had "fallen between the cracks".

Tragic as the whole thing was, thank God our intelligence and legal systems do still have such cracks, otherwise we would need to build prisons for several hundred thousand more inmates and be enduring a level of surveillance and police and intelligence agency powers that would make the former East Germany's intelligence agency's 70-odd kilometres of files look like a newsagent's box of cheap remainders.

And all with no guarantee some deluded individual will not be able to do his duty to his version of the

Almighty by trying to meet Him along with as many innocent people as possible.

Bill Deane, Chapman

Bruce Haigh ("We owe a duty of care to our refugees to combat PTS", Times2, December 18, p5) has disgracefully used the events at the Lindt Cafe as a grubby, political points scoring exercise. The lack of intellectual rigour and political bias he has displayed in writing this poorly segued diatribe makes me wonder how he was ever found fit to represent Australia as a diplomat.

The suggestion that Scott Morrison is responsible or potentially

responsible for this and any future similar incidents committed by people accepted by Australia as refugees is just offensive.

Normally I find bleatings such as these amusing. This piece of extremist, apologist, ultra-left-wing rubbish made me experience white, incandescent rage. How dare you use this incident to push your extremist views Mr Haigh?

T.J. Farquahar, Ainslie

I generally find myself agreeing with most arguments put forward by the Australian Defence Association's Neil James. However, his attempt to justify the atrocities of the CIA (Letters, December 15) was pathetic.

His put-down of David Hicks also indicates a complete misunderstanding of the facts, and regardless, still does not justify the absolute dehumanising behaviour by the CIA. If animals were treated the same way imagine the outcry!

And what of James' claim that the "US military actually has a very good IHL compliance record"? The treatment in Iraq and other places where we learnt of the abuse meted out by US soldiers are only the ones we heard about. Who knows what happened that is still under wraps?

Geoff Barker, Flynn

I wonder if readers would agree with me that there could be no better light that Jewish people could bring to the world than to tell the leaders of the Jewish state that if peace is what they desire, then they must give the Palestinian people freedom to run their own affairs within secure borders.

To quote Deborah Maccoby of Jews for Justice for Palestinians: "It is a terrible irony that, as Jews commemorate the Maccabean Revolt – the victory of a small people against imperial domination – the state of Israel dominates, occupies, besieges and attacks the Palestinian people."

What have they learnt since the year 160 BCE. Once the oppressed, now the hated oppressor.

Selwyn Baines, Charnwood

Greg Pinder's letter (December 16) concerning High Court appointments fails to recognise that criteria for appointment should properly

reflect capacity to contribute to the court as an institution. So, for example, if at the time a vacancy arises the other six members of the court all have backgrounds in, say, commercial and constitutional law, the criteria for filling that particular vacancy would properly include specialist

expertise in other areas of the law, such as criminal law.

Similarly, since, as Kim Rubenstein ("Injustice of new High Court justice pondered", Times2, December 12, p5) correctly explains, life experience and personal background

undoubtedly affect the values a judge brings to resolution of matters before the court, it is important that the diversity in our community is reflected in the composition of the Court.

Professor Rubenstein draws to attention that there are women judges in Victoria with outstanding qualifications and brilliant careers, Supreme Court Prize winners, Rhodes Scholars and Law Review editors. If Pinder is seriously implying these women judges are "of inferior legal ability" that is an unwarranted slur.

Ernst Willheim, Forrest

On Monday night I switched on SBS, which was screening the program Housos. Is SBS really serious and so desperate for ratings that they have to inflict such garbage on their viewers?

SBS has, in my opinion, the best TV news service and also some really great programs. Why, then, does it stoop to such infantile rubbish. It's not funny, and the constant use of the F-word is unnecessary!

I watched the program once before and there was a segment where we were told that one of the characters was taking a new girl out for the night. It turned out the 'girl' was a statue of the Virgin Mary. This was not only offensive to Catholics but also blasphemous. Come on, SBS lift your sights!

Peter J. Adams, Watson

Acknowledge the club It may interest readers of The Canberra Times to know that Brad Haddin, the inspirational stand-in captain of the Australian cricket team in their win over India on Saturday, has played first-grade with only one club in the ACT Cricket competition.

In 1993, a then 15-year-old played in the Australian National University Cricket Club first XI. Brad went on to play 55 first-grade matches with ANU where he scored 1358 runs at an average of 32.8, including 11 fifties and two centuries. He also took 84 catches and affected 15 stumpings. Importantly, Brad played in the 1997-98 first-grade premiership against Queanbeyan where his fine 70 runs and two catches played a pivotal part in the victory.

It was during these years at ANU that Brad was chosen to captain the Australian under-19 team in Pakistan in 1996-97 and played for the Canberra Comets.

It would have been nice if Chris Dutton ("Lyon has arrived as strike force: Jones", Sport, December 15, p24) had acknowledged Brad's critical development as a cricketer and leader at the ANU Cricket Club.

Murray Radcliffe, Aranda

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

It is reported that the gunman in the Sydney siege event was a refugee whohad accumulated a string of criminal offences since arriving in Australia. At what point should authorities say to refugees who abuse Australia's hospitality and compassion that enough is enough, and theirrefugee status or citizenship should be revoked and they should be deported?

Roger Dace, Reid

What is the point of our security organisations spending time, effort and money spying on the digital footprints of Australian citizens when Man Haron Monis had a public track record as long as your arm – that screamed security risk – and he went unnoticed?

S. Gerrard, Dunlop

POWER PLAY

Martin Place, positive proof that ASIO does not need any extra powers. They don't know how to use the ones they have. A bunch of amateurs playing double naught spies.

Roger Brown, Rivett

FUEL PRICE MILEAGE

Dear Mr Coles (and Woolworths) Could you kindly tell me why on Sunday/Monday the price of a litre of diesel was $1.329 at Temora and $1.589 at Charnwood (ACT)?

I note that the distance from Sydney to Temora is 423km while Sydney to Canberra is 286km.

P. Gibbons, Flynn

BUDGET BOOSTERS

I have just found $8billion each year that would assist Joe Hockey's budget problems. Simply restore the carbon tax which I understand provided revenue of some $7.6billion per year and add to it that amount allocated for Direct Action (reportedly $2.5billion over four years). This would not only assist Mr Hockey's budget outlook but also have a more productive environmental outcome. So easy!

Fyfe Bygrave, Aranda

WORD ON ENVIRONMENT

Graham Brady (Letters, December 17) claimed that our indigenous Australians lived in harmony with the landscape and native fauna for 40,000 years. I refer your readers to Tim Flannery's mind-opening masterwork The Future Eaters for a different take on the first Australians' environmental record.

Greg Pinder, Charnwood

SHIP TO SHORE

At first I thought it was a beached live-sheep carrier, but it turned out to be a block of flats on top of two supermarkets' street-front loading docks ("Dickson car park to become supermarkets and apartments", December 18, p3).

Jack Kershaw, Kambah

Email: letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au

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).