Whilst I fully support sensible railway construction and infrastructure upgrades, this latest fancy is just a nonsense.

A key proponent, Mr Mitchell, is quoted as saying that commuters will make up the bulk of the line’s use for the trip to the coast and to commute to work into Canberra.

The population catchment for the total area is tiny and there is no evidence to suggest that the population would increase sufficiently to make a new railway line to Eden remotely cost effective. To claim that a $3 billion investment is predicated on some belief thousands of Canberrans will trade the amenity and services of a large city for the rural life is quite a leap, especially when they can already settle in established rural service centres such as Goulburn and Yass with plenty of existing and satisfactory amenities.

I doubt anyone would be commuting from Eden to Canberra every day.

Just as incredulous is the claim Canberrans would use this new railway line to go to the beach and visit Eden.

I agree, Eden is a nice place but a tourist mecca it will never be of the scale required to make this railway line pay its way.

Similarly, the industry along the route and surrounding areas is very limited.

This Canberra to Eden rail proposal is a dangerous distraction from the main game: an effective and efficient fast train from Canberra to Sydney. If there is to be any new funding for rail in the ACT and NSW, let’s get the priorities right and focus on the best value and the greatest usage for the costs.

Brad Hinton, Garran

As Bill Deane is so enthused by the living conditions of detainees on the ‘tropical paradise’ of Nauru and Manus (Letters, February 25) what about doing a house swap?

A suitably altruistic family of detainees could no doubt be persuaded to forgo said tropical paradise for a month or so and suffer the privations of staying in Bill’s pad at Chapman.

This would give Bill a low cost, nice break on Nauru or Manus with a chance to walk local streets and mix with the locals.

Judith Erskine, Belconnen

Just how different is it here? In "The gene factor" (February 23, pp26,27), we read, "China is using DNA to track its minorities".

We’ve got My Health Record. Of course, it is voluntary. We are not a totalitarian regime. Then there’s the bowel screening campaign. It is voluntary too.

That’s on top of the computerised public hospital records, on-line pathology reports, compo claims and what-have-you.

However the government doesn’t need our permission to access our medical records. It only needs our authorisation to overtly use them legally. I guess that’s the difference.

Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor

Today’s electrical power generation, whether it is unreliable solar/wind, fossil or nuclear will likely to be redundant by 2100.

Nobody in the year 1900 dreamt of nuclear electricity generation, in fact, electricity was very much in its infancy.

I contend that by the year 2100 that fusion power will be the global first choice for electricity generation. The government bullied by the socialist green environmentalist mad hatter tea party fringe dwellers would never accept their folly on solar/wind, and those laughing to banks will not be lawyers, but those promoting this rubbish saved the world.

Robert S Buick, Mountain Creek, Qld

There is more than a sporting chance that a new sport – break dancing – will be introduced into the 2024 Paris Olympics. Sport is now differently defined from how I understand it.

A number of sports have been recently introduced into the Olympic list, including tennis which is clearly recognised as a sport.

Some sports shouldn’t be in the Olympics, especially boxing as it is not a positive sport. Some have been removed for obvious reasons including live, yes live, pigeon shooting which was in the 1900Paris Games.

Some just didn’t seem logical such as solo synchronized swimming, which was in the Games from 1984 to 1992.

People watch the Olympics with great interest because they could play those that are considered real Olympic sports even if they didn’t do it as well.

Pretty much everyone has ran the 100m, tossed the shot put, had a swim in a pool or rode a horse at some time.

Not as many however have been break-dancers and the "sport" seems to have faded from its high point in the 1980s.

Let’s return to the original ideals of being the best you can and having a go at a sport that we all know.

Dennis Fitzgerald, Melbourne, Vic

Things are not all bad on the home front, especially around Lake Ginninderra and John Knight Park. On Sunday as my wife and I were on our daily walk around the lake and through the park and with numerous yachts sailing peacefully on the lake, we came across a group of young Canberrans and others cleaning up the foreshore and around the park.

To our surprise one was our local MLA Tara Cheyne and the group was Trash Mob Canberra.

Also they were offering a free sausage sizzle to anyone interested.

The foreshore looked clean and tidy and the park itself free of all the rubbish left by those to lazy to use the bins provided – shame on those people.

Tara Cheyne may only be a backbencher in our assembly, (and Labor to boot) but Mr Barr and his frontbench cronies should look upon her as a example of community spirit and come down from their ivy tower and get their hands dirty now and again on behalf of the community.

Parks and Gardens need to be reminded that the community’s high rates help pay their salaries.

They should be doing a lot of what these volunteers are doing instead of hoping that if you ignore the mess long enough it will go away.

Errol Good, Macgregor

I have heard (ABC, of course) that there were at least two other companies which would have been pleased to tender for the "Paladin" contract, and have said they could have provided everything which opened and shut for a fraction of what Paladin is getting; less than one sixth, apparently.

S W Davey, Torrens

As Jim, the retiree referred to in Fairfax reports over the the past 48 hours regarding a video criticising Labor’s retiree tax, my Liberal Party background is irrelevant to the issue.

I retired as a ministerial staffer 2 years ago. I am entitled to voice my opposition to bad policy.

I am very concerned about Labor’ policy to remove imputation credit refunds on shares held by those retirees with self-managed superannuation funds (SMSF), some of whom are pensioners – and what is worse, the plan is retrospective.

The Shorten strategy is to penalise any retiree who had an SMSF and became a pensioner after the end of March last year.

Denying retirees tax refunds on franking credits is double taxation. Companies have paid tax on their shares already, so it is unfair to stop tax refunds to shareholders.

Under a Labor government, ordinary retirees would no longer receive 30¢ back from the Commonwealth for every 70¢ worth of franked dividends they receive.

Retirees structured their finances for retirement in good faith. Labor has admitted that its policy will affect 14,000 full pensioners and 200,000 part-pensioners across Australia.

More than 80 per cent of those affected have incomes of less than $37,000 a year.

Labor’s $55 million tax grab would lead to more retirees becoming part-pensioners because of reduced incomes from loss of refunds on franking credits. As a resident of the South Coast, the retirement mecca for many South Australians (and we have the oldest population of any state), I will take any opportunity to highlight the unfairness of what Labor has proposed.

Jim Bonner, Victor Harbor, SA

Re: "Builders face test as government gets ‘serious’ about building quality" (canberratimes.com.au, February 23). The increased testing is necessary, but not sufficient.

There is little evidence that the quality failures are caused by lack of well trained or knowledgable builders, and plenty to show that it is money, lack of business nous, and lack of consequences for delivering shoddy work that drives the poor outcomes.

Post-construction inspections or remedies are also necessary but not sufficient.

What is necessary is a compliance program that uses random audit sampling and tiered responses from initial commencement of work until certificate of occupancy is issued and for a few years after to see how the performance of the completed building. This would see a suitable audit program faced by all, an increased inspection rate for poor quality builders whose work is deficient, starting with education and advice, then moving rapidly to inspections of every job for a period, then loss of licence as a final penalty.

The penalties need to include individuals in development companies and certifiers too – else the poor subbies at the base lose and the incentives to continue poor practice continues.

The inspection regime needs to be independent and have integrity and be largely immune from the profit motive, which means delivered by government – paid for based on value of construction and increasing based on unfavourable assessments.

Quality builders would have small costs, those needing skills improvement and willing to change pay a little more, but lift their game.

"Dodgy Bros" pay most or get out.

Steve Blume, Chapman

Representatives of the ACT government and the National Capital Authority are now sprouting a new angle to their West Basin spin. The line is that although there were several plans for the lake they choose to follow the Griffin plan.

It must be clearly noted the 1963 NCDC plan of the lake and lake shores was the only one built and its reshaping from the Griffin plan was to create a beautiful, feasible and practical lake system.

In the successful lake system we have kept the Griffin three-basin composition and established the lakeshore parklands as proposed by Griffin but deleted walling and causeways that made East and West Basins circular and that if built, would have obstructed boat and yacht movement.

The proposed West Basin development is slicing off 2.8 hectares of our lake waters and obliterating several hectares of lake parkland to enable a 2000-apartment construction to benefit the developers and ACT government, while justifying the desecration of our heritage as following a segment the 1918 Griffin arc.

The spin-laden proposal damages the urban form of Lake Burley Griffin by diminishing West Basin to half the size of East Basin, as well as destroying vistas, obliterating trees, and destroying a much valued and needed green recreation space that was always part of the Griffins’ vision for the lake.

Once West Basin waters and parklands are converted to apartments with their associated infrastructure what other rapacious development proposals will follow to take our nationally important lake for real estate?

Juliet Ramsay, Burra

A series of articles in the Medical Journal of Australia (February 18) attest to the health consequences of electronic cigarettes and the unethical manner in which they are promoted.

The marketing of e-cigarettes as a safe alternative to regular tobacco is a furphy.

E-cigarettes are bad news.

Don’t be taken in by all the hype.

Dr Alan Shroot, president, Canberra ASH, Forrest

PREFERRED DICTATORS

How come Trump is so full of condemnation for Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro but waxes lyrical about the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un?

Aren’t the vast majority of the North Korean people suffering at the hands of their dictator – including the denial of all democratic freedoms?

Rajend Naidu, Glenfield, NSW

TAKING COAL TO DALIAN

Hopefully for Australia, taking coal to Dalian won’t turn out to translate to taking coal to Newcastle.

M. F. Horton, Adelaide, SA

MARKETING MISS

Scott Morrison only made one mistake when adopting his marketing persona on the 7.30 report on Monday. He forgot to mention the free steak knives.

Jeff Bradley, Isaacs

ENTITLED COALITION

It’s good to see Coalition members enjoying the spoils of office before the next election sends them to the penurious desert of Opposition.

N. Ellis, Belconnen

BROKEN ENGLISH

There are calls for greater focus on learning second languages but literacy in English is now often seriously inadequate.

Linda Vij, Chipping Norton, NSW

STYLE BEFORE SUBSTANCE

Julie Bishop: big on style, small on substance.

Robin Brown, Aranda

SCOMO SCEPTIC

Yesterday it was CoalMo, now its ScoMo-Climate Warrior. Why is it I’m just a teeny bit sceptical?

T. Puckett, Ashgrove, Qld

LIVE BY THE SWORD ...

We keep hearing about poor old Malcolm being knifed. No mention made of his involvement of Abbot’s demise.

Live by the sword, die by it.

Alex Wallensky, Broulee

DOWNER’S MERIT

...and Georgina Downer represents "merit" for Liberal women? I think not!

E.R Moffat, Weston

PREPOSTEROUS TAX

Labor is proposing to differentially tax sections of the community on the basis of who manages their money. It’s a preposterous proposition.

Geoff Nickols, Griffith

NEW ISSUES, OLD MINDSET

Citizens are presenting 21st-century issues to the government. The government is listening with a 20th-century mindset and providing 19th-century solutions.

Luca Biason, Latham

COUNTER-INTUITIVE

My heart goes out to all the NAB customer service staff affected by this week’s restructure. Since when did putting the customers first involve slashing counter staff? Same old, same old.

M. Moore, Bonython

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 or fewer words. 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).