This information will allow all Canberrans to come to their own conclusion on whether they think it is reasonable or too much for just 12 kilometres of light rail. Simon Corbell says if he disclosed this, it would give tenderers an unfair advantage.

While this argument is dubious, Canberrans are entitled to know how much of our money the government commits before they sign the contract. The TCC believes it will be about $100 million. Where is this money coming from? Ratepayers?

Mr Corbell, when are you going to make this information available to all Canberrans?

Eric Traise, president, Tuggeranong Community Council

I'm all for optimism, but if the most cheerfully optimistic estimate of costs is $750 million and the best, most wildly optimistic guess at some very fluffy benefits of no real value to a majority of voters and ratepayers is only $1 billion, why do it?

John Trueman, Downer

The release of the light rail business plan naturally raises questions about the plan's assumptions. I don't believe the massive value placed on travel time savings. ACTION now has Route 202, an express peak-hour service from Gungahlin to Civic, departing every 10 minutes, with a scheduled travel time of only 20 minutes, five minutes less than the best estimate for the light rail. The business plan seems to assume that people would choose to change over to travel on the slower light rail.

Capital Metro could argue that this bus will get caught up in the congestion on Northbourne Ave. Yet this would be easily fixed by making the existing left lane a bus lane. At peak-hour cars already avoid the left lane because of buses, and off-peak the two remaining lanes are adequate. It already works on Flemington Road, Mitchell.

Chris Emery, Reid

Ross Buckley's article on the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (''Australia must not miss boat on China banks'', Times2, October 30, p5) obscures as much as it illuminates.

AIIB's creation is certainly a challenge to the existing order, but one that proponents of that order should welcome rather than resist. It offers the prospect of a real competitive challenge to institutions that have become high-cost, cumbersome and slow to change. Smart people within those institutions recognise that, if they are to prosper, reform needs to be continuous and driven by market pressures.

AIIB will build on China's considerable experience and growing competitive advantage in providing standard development infrastructure. This, along with rapid financial market development, offers countries the prospect of new and cheaper financing options to accelerate growth. It also offers existing players an opportunity and a challenge to rethink products, prices and business models [and] to work out what they can provide that AIIB cannot.

The advantage to Australia in joining AIIB is to participate and influence the institution, but the lure of consultancies and contracts is a mercantilist illusion.

The big game is the contribution it will make directly and indirectly to regional growth and development.

Buckley concludes by welcoming the policy challenge AIIB throws down. I concur, but the Washington consensus is an old straw man, best retired from undergraduate courses. East Asia is enjoying its seventh decade of unprecedented growth because it has embraced markets as its principal economic organising mechanism.

China is the greatest exemplar. But Buckley is wrong that its record is better than that of the banks. From 1949 to 1976 that record tells us what not to do.

It was Deng Xiaoping's embrace of markets that was the single greatest poverty-reducing intervention in history, validating the consistent advice of the existing institutions.

Richard Moore, Griffith

One of the main ways financial insult will be added to Mr Fluffy victims' injury is the government requiring that all victim families vacate their old houses, compensation cheques in hand, during 2015.

They'll have been paid at October 2014 prices, but be forced to start frantically fighting each other over the limited supply of available houses through 2015, a period before homes being built on ex-Mr Fluffy blocks can be completed. House prices will surge, requiring victims to meet many tens of thousands of dollars in extra, government-induced replacement costs, or slip backwards.

To avoid this, the ACT Land Development Authority must sharply boost land releases right here, right now. And Mr Fluffy victims should be forced out, not over less than one year, but over say three years, as more new homes are progressively completed on ex-Fluffy subdivided and new-release blocks.

Vacate homes with fibres in living areas first. Give them all a fair go.

Michael Jordan, Gowrie

What a relief to see common sense prevail with the defeat in the Legislative Assembly of a motion to arm all front-line police with tasers (''Hanson bid for more tasers fails in Assembly'', October 30, p3) . The serious risk of giving open slather to any police officer to wield a taser cannot be sugar coated. In the short history of tasers in this territory, we have already seen a number of cases of inappropriate use by police. There is simply no sense in leading us further down the path towards a repeat of the taser tragedy of Brazilian student Roberto Curti.

Adrian McKenna, Canberra City

Richard Branson's leading-edge team for space tourism would be well advised to review the Nazi's World War II experience with Hitler's amazing Messerschmitt 262 (one in Australian War Memorial), the world's first rocket-powered fighter aircraft. Fuel mixes were so volatile that stocks of each chemical were kept on separate sides of the airfield; planes were refuelled from intakes on different sides at different times - and despite this one in three aircraft exploded before or during takeoff. Test pilots, including a woman, suffered high attrition rates. Fascinating history learnt during my AWM Voluntary Guide days!

Frank Duggan, Chisholm

Minister for the Environment Greg Hunt assures us Australia has stringent environmental standards and processes. The question is will he use them in giving the final nod to the dredging and dumping required to develop the Abbot Point coal port.

Earlier last week, the department stated that assessment would involve ''preliminary documentation'' only, but days later the minister's spokesperson said it would be a full environmental impact assessment using ''stringent'' environmental protection laws (sourced from Murdoch press website). Abbot Point presents everything Prime Minister Tony Abbott stands for on the coal industry and the debate on fossil fuels/climate change.

One could become misty-eyed at the thought of the Abbot Point development as Prime Minister Abbott's signature legacy for Australia and the world. Would Minister Hunt stop Abbott's Abbot Point if the assessment (be it ''preliminary'' or ''full'') found dredging and dumping would accelerate degradation of the Great Barrier Reef, thus ending its world heritage status with the UN?

Need we worry? Many more cashed-up tourists would flock to Queensland to see the Galilee Basin coalmines and Abbot Point in action than come now to see the reef. After all, the people of Morwell have strong feelings about the Hazelwood mine.

Rod Olsen, Flynn

The latest IPCC report stated: ''We have little time before the window of opportunity to stay within 2C of warming closes. To keep a good chance of staying below 2C, and at manageable costs, our emissions should drop by 40 to 70 per cent globally between 2010 and 2050, falling to zero or below by 2100.''

While the Abbott government pussyfoots around with its Direct Action policy, trying to reduce the RET below its agreed value to a minimum by 2020, ''Earth is now on a trajectory for at least 4C warming by 2100 over pre-industrial times - a recipe for worsening drought, flood, rising seas and species extinctions'' the report asserts, according to Sky News.

What a legacy. And our position does not go unnoticed. And our ''isolationist position'' with regard to the Ebola crisis in Africa is not going unnoticed either. On the BBC on Saturday night, a panel of commentators discussing this crisis singled out Australia for criticism not just because of its refusal to help alleviate the suffering, but also because of its stated intention to refuse entry to Australia of anyone from west Africa. I am fast losing my pride in being Australian.

Margaret Lee, Hawker

Jack Waterford (''Tagging along at heels of our big US mate'', Forum, November 1, pB1) underestimates Australia's capacity to play a significant international role.

He refers to Evatt in passing, but does not mention Evatt's leading part in shaping the United Nations. Evatt's successor, Spender, brought into being the Colombo Plan and ANZUS. In the early 1990s, Evans successfully negotiated the Cambodian peace settlement. A bit later, and closer to home, Downer was central to bringing peace to Bougainville.

One could cite other examples of how, through focused, active diplomacy based on a strong international reputation, Australia can and has contributed constructively to world affairs.

S. Henningham, Curtin

What an informative article by Jack Waterford (''Tagging along at heels of our big US mate'', Forum, November 1, pB1) , in which he questions why our leaders invariably stand alongside the US in foreign policy issues - while receiving hardly any acknowledgement in return.

As every US foreign policy decision is aimed at benefiting its people -and rightly so - then it is not unreasonable for our leaders to adopt the same approach, and place the Australians at the top of the list of beneficiaries.

Therefore, the lessons learnt from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars should make our leaders give a great deal more thought to our involvement in the war aimed at wiping out the Islamic State supporters from Iraq and Syria.

Sam Nona, Burradoo, NSW

The doyen of political and social commentary, Ray Hadley, believes that the Melbourne Cup encapsulates Australian society. For once, Ray may be on to something. Come Tuesday afternoon, many will be greeted to scenes of binge-drinking men and women publicly vomiting and urinating while in various states of undress.

Sadly, some of these revellers will get involved in fights and some may even die as a result. Some will gamble what that they cannot afford to lose before home going to families who can't afford to eat.

Yes Mr Hadley, it does encapsulate Australian society but not the one of 30 years ago that deluded people such as yourself still believe exists. So at 5pm on Tuesday, why don't we take a collective selfie. It won't be pretty for many.

T. Robb, Weetangera

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has stated that metadata will only keep the customer's IP address allocated by the ISP - that is, the customer's access point to the internet - and is no different to the records the ISP uses for billing purposes. This is what you see on the usage reports produced by the ISP where the accumulated number of bytes downloaded to the customer's IP address is matched against the customer's download plan. The billing information does not need to record the IP address of the internet site sending the download and everything is anonymous.

The statement by Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin that metadata could be used to track illegal downloads, piracy and cybercrime suggests that the metadata would include the source IP address of the sending site to determine if the download is legal or not. This appears to be an extension of the data currently saved by the ISP and beyond the ISP's billing requirements.

Mike Antrobus, Banks

Chris Sheedy's article (Australians only too keen to answer call'', Forum, November 1, p4) rightly makes the point that both Australia and New Zealand had an existential stake in World War I. A major war aim of Imperial Germany was the destruction of the British Empire, which was at that time the focus of our loyalty. I am sure Sheedy appreciates this but he fails to mention it in his article. As British settler communities located in the South Pacific we were firstly under direct threat from the Imperial German Navy based as it was in the German treaty port of Tsingtao on the Shandong Peninsula in northern China.

This force, know as the East Asia Squadron, had been assigned the task, in the event of a war with Britain, to interdict our merchant shipping and disable our undefended ports. Detailed plans for these operations have been found in the German Naval Archives by Australian and German historians. Coaling stations for this operation were located in the German colonies in Samoa, New Guinea and the Micronesian, Marshall and Palau group of islands. So the Pacific dominions were under direct threat.

In the longer term, had the Royal Navy been destroyed at the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 1916, which the Germans came close to achieving, the Pacific Dominions would have been at the mercy of a small squadron of German battleships which could easily have dictated peace terms. Any idea that the Great War was not any concern of Australia's long-term interests is frankly an illusion.

John A. Moses, Barton

''Robbie's Garden'' (''Robbie's special place helps heal broken soldiers,'' November 3, p1) is a far better memorial than all of the tawdry statues and triumphalist parades that will be inflicted upon us during the centenary of Anzac.

David Stephens, Bruce

MONEY TO BURN

When it came to office, the government had so little need of the revenue that it was able to abolish a tax on polluters (and another tax on big mining companies). Now the government has so much available revenue that it is able to pay billions to the big polluters. Isn't it comforting to know that there is no budget emergency.

Ernst Willheim, Forrest

A QUESTION OF HUE

The Hindustani term khaki describes yellow/green tones within the colour spectrum. I suggest the Greens could change their name to the Khakis, to better reflect a relationship with the environment. However, I fear in no time the ''Khakis'' will be blamed for any threats to conservative viewpoints.

Matt Ford, Greenway

STUBBING OUT SMOKING

I wish to thank the ACT assembly for being courageous enough to ban smoking in the ACT. I often tell smokers their smoke pollution is hazardous, but now they have to stop. However, I am unsure whether I contact the police or EPA to report an offence.

Martyn Allen, Spence

GRAMMATICAL OFFENCE

The word ''helm'' is not a verb (''Thawley to helm PM&C as Watt goes'', October 31, p1). I loathe the tendency to make nouns do the job that belongs to verbs. Sadly, it's a King Canute job. I'm a former school principal, English, languages and history teacher, so I get double the aggravation.

Gerald Bennett, Queanbeyan, NSW

FLUFF BAGS MARKED JH

The unsurprising answer to Elizabeth Thurbon's query (Letters, November 1) as to who manufactured Mr Fluffy asbestos is found in the report by the Asbestos Response Taskforce. It reproduces a 1968 letter from an ACT health officer who saw the fluff being taken out of bags marked JH, which he concluded referred to James Hardie. He recommended a ban on the use of loose fluff insulation - even then, it was an obvious health risk.

G. Burgess Kaleen

CAUGHT IN QUANDARY

I wonder how many other home owners are in my position. My home has never contained loose-fill asbestos (it was insulated with cellulose) but a ''trace'' of amosite (amount never quantified) was found in the roof over an extension. For this, I am to lose my home of more than 50 years? It seems my deep cynicism at this whole saga (starting back in the mid-1980s) is shared with your correspondents whose letters were published on November 1.

Kathleen Read, Watson

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