Both take a significant toll on the participating animals. Unlike greyhound racing, horse racing also involves the whipping of animals, and causes injuries to riders such as former Melbourne Cup winner Michelle Payne.

People with modest incomes can race greyhounds.

Horse racing is so expensive that it is known as "the sport of kings". A government survey showed that people with incomes under $50,000 endorsed the government's "subsidies" to greyhound racing. So did Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

Wealthy white people did not endorse those "subsidies". The Canberra Greyhound Racing Club says that the ACT government's "subsidies" came entirely from gambling revenue, and said on radio that the "subsidies" went entirely to animal welfare.

Last year the ACT government withdrew its "subsidies" for greyhound racing. This year it will ban greyhound racing in the ACT. Presumably it plans to continue to continue to permit horse racing, and to continue to "subsidise" it.

Is the government being hypocritical?

Leon Arundell, Downer

The 100 megawatt lithium battery built in South Australia by Elon Musk's company can synchronise to the power grid in only 0.14 seconds, compared to the five to 10 minutes needed by the fastest of the "fast-start" (presumably gas-fired) power stations.

The battery has also demonstrated an 80 per cent "round-trip" efficiency (the ratio of energy dispatched to energy required to recharge it).

Bruce Mountain of Carbon and Energy Markets has said that batteries can also be useful in taking up excess energy (from slow-reacting coal or gas-fired generators) by using it to recharge themselves.

He also said that the energy industry and the regulators are dominated by major energy operators, including AGL, Energy Australia and Origin Energy, and have the regulators firmly on-side.

Mountain also estimated that the Snowy Hydro 2.0 scheme would need 1.8 megawatts-hours (in pumping) to store each megawatt-hour, and that its cost could balloon out to $8billion.

It looks to me that the future for the storage in batteries of solar and wind energy is looking very rosy already.

Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin

I agree completely with Anna Clark ("Women who fish", Letters, January 6) when she writes that to be out in the natural world is, "a form of mindfulness – watching the tide come in, or the wind change, or the sun set. And that urge for quiet solitude and contemplation isn't restricted to one half of the population."

But how does that serenity fit with the essential act of recreational fishing, the violent killing of innocent animals for the sheer, bloody enjoyment of it.

The latest science leaves very little doubt that fish have the neural equipment to feel pain and stress and have been shown to do so in laboratory tests.

The animals who are killed by recreational fishers, and those who aren't immediately killed but thrown back (often mortally injured) do suffer.

In 2013, the American Veterinary Medical Association said: "Suggestions that finfish [all fish other than shellfish] responses to pain merely represent simple reflexes have been refuted ... the preponderance of accumulated evidence supports the position that finfish should be accorded the same considerations as terrestrial vertebrates in regard to relief from pain."

No one would propose a pastime that involved the same deliberate infliction of pain and death on an animal species other than fish. It would be completely unacceptable.

So why is fishing still allowed?

Mike O'Shaughnessy, Spence

Nicholas Stuart ("Climate change and big data: our great moral challenges risk being lost amid political din", January 10, p16) alerts us to a surveillance program in Beijing's Tiantin Park to monitor and prevent overuse of toilet paper.

This may not be as absurd as it seems at first sight. At some moment in time in the not too recent past there were 1billion people in the People's Republic of China. There are precisely 1billion milligrams in a metric ton.

Therefore, if each person in China used in some way one milligram of paper then the total amount of paper used would have been one ton.

Now, the weight of one sheet of government-issue toilet paper is 235 milligrams.

If each of the fictitious population used 10 sheets of toilet paper then the total yearly consumption would be 857,750 tons.

A very productive pine forest can produce, on average, the equivalent of four tons of paper per hectare per year.

Therefore, in order to produce toilet paper at an appropriate sustained rate to meet the aforesaid demand, the area of pine forest devoted to this purpose would need to be 214,438 hectares, or, an area of land approximately 46.3 kilometres square.

Peter Snowdon, Aranda

Malcolm Turnbull and CT letter writers talking about the Republic, are wilfully avoiding the great unfinished emptiness of modern Australia.

That is, of course, Aborigines.

I'm not talking about an easy apology (even if that was very hard to do); and I'm not talking about an easy, meaningless, ceremonial mention in a crappy document (even if that is proving very hard to do).

I'm talking full-blown Truth and Reconciliation, where Aborigines are raised up and honoured; where the books of Henry Reynolds are part of the curriculum in every school in the land.

Most importantly, I'm talking about a proper treaty signed between the Australian government, and duly constituted Aboriginal State; a treaty with provision for proper monetary compensation, proper compensation and transfer of land titles and proper political power in the form an Aboriginal State representation in the Senate, the equal of Tasmania's.

Kenneth Griffiths, O'Connor

Nothing good, long-lasting or efficient in human history has ever been successfully built on a platform of fines and penalties alone yet that is all drivers have ever known.

We need to build positive relationships between the police, authorities and support services by rewarding good driving behaviour, which will be the balance to the fines and penalties. This will create value and fairness that drivers will recognise then driver safety, driver awareness that currently are very inefficient will become relevant.

Andrew Killick, Runaway Bay, Qld

We are just about to enter the hottest few days this summer in Canberra and I note that in and around Canberra there is almost knee-high grass on verges, on roundabouts, and other public spaces such as sides of paths around the lake.

On some roundabouts it is almost impossible to see oncoming traffic due to the very high grass on the roundabout obscuring drivers' views, which is exceedingly dangerous.

A few weeks before the Christmas break contractors on ride-on mowers were doing the job of keeping grass down, safe from fires.

However since then – several weeks later – I have not seen a single mower trimming the tinder dry grass and overgrown shrubs in public places, and I am appalled and very irritated as a rate payer, especially given the tragic fires that occurred some years ago in Canberra. Hasn't the ACT government learnt anything?

This is obviously a cost-cutting exercise but a dangerous one given the risks involved, including snake bites around the lake and other public footpaths such as Red Hill. I strongly suggest that the minister for roads/transport gets back from his vacation now and gets contractors on the job before there is a disaster.

I might point out that when Canberra came under the federal government there was never this problem.

Judy Diamond, Narrabundah

Hear, hear I say in response to letters by Mary Robbie and N. Bailey (January 8).

I wrote to our Chief Minister, Andrew Barr, at least two years ago about the tattiness of our city. It is sad when visitors to our once beautiful city comment about about its now very untidy state.

As residents of Canberra we have a right to have our city kept clean.

People going to the tips with uncovered loads have a lot to answer for as well. Canberra as our capital city should be a showcase to the rest of our country and to our many visitors.

It certainly has not been neat and tidy for a very long time. Please do something about it MrBarr.

Neredah Crane, Monash

During the fifth Ashes cricket Test between Australia and England, a former English Test cricketer allegedly labelled as "absolutely disgraceful" a decision by the third umpire to give Australian batsman Usman Khawaja not out leg before wicket.

The basis for this decision was apparently the bowler's overstepping the popping crease during the delivery of the ball, and hence bowling a "no ball".

The Laws of Cricket state (amongst other things) that for a delivery to be fair, the bowler's front foot must land with some part of the foot, whether grounded or raised, behind the popping crease.

My recollection of the situation, as shown by the television replay, was that the call was "close, very close" but that the correct decision had been made.

The situation also calls into question the plethora of undetected no balls that may well be slipping through the net during the game. With many of today's bowlers tending to take fairly long strides during the delivery action to gain more pace or impart more spin from the ball, there is always the possibility of a bowler overstepping the crease.

This implies a commitment to a greater involvement by the third umpire to scrutinise each and every ball bowled throughout the match.

This could be reinforced by allowing officiating on-field umpires to stand directly over the stumps, not two to three metres behind them.

Andrew Rowe, Florey

Harry Stutchbury's recent claims "the Liberal Party is terrified of taking serious steps to tackle housing affordability" might have been an attempt to wake up the party (of which he is president of the youth wing), but it was only half the story.

He needed also to remind his party that one of the main reasons young people can't get a mortgage is due to the relentless downward pressures exerted by his party in recent years to eliminate full-time, permanent employment and reduce the pay scales of entry level jobs.

You don't have much chance of getting a mortgage unless you have a well-paying full-time job with some certainty of permanency. Once again, the cruelty of right-wing economic theory is exposed.

John Walker, Queanbeyan, NSW

May I congratulate Libraries ACT for its compassionate approach to the homeless in Canberra. ("How Canberra libraries are helping the city's homeless", canberratimes.com.au, January 6). During the 1970s I was the Belconnen librarian, a time when there were fewer homeless people in Canberra.

I wish Libraries ACT all the best with their new policies and Ifeel sure the homeless will appreciate the care and compassion.

Robyn Lewis, Raglan

Despite having served in a police force and the army in Australia, I have never drunk beer. Don't like it. Never have.

But I have been a publican and owned and operated bars and Ican say this: Anyone who believes that "beer is beer, is beer" should definitely not belong to any organisation advising government or the public on alcohol-related issues.

Any beer drinker will tell you that tap beer is streets ahead of its bottled counterpart in taste.

Any publican will also tell you that the cost that is saved on purchasing keg beer is well and truly offset by the infrastructure that has to be installed and maintained to produce a glass of tap beer.

Any attempt by government to raise the tax on tapped beer will only see an increase in the sales of bottled beer and a decrease in the much higher quality tap product.

Gil Miller, Barton

Donald Trump said about the book Fire and Fury "You can't say things that are false, knowingly false, and smile as money pours into your bank account." Yet Trump says things that are knowingly false every day. The sycophantic Republicans say nothing, world leaders say nothing but Robert De Niro called it as it is.

Rory McElligott, Nicholls

JUST NOT CRICKET

Cricket is the only game that, so far as I am aware, does not permit the full substitution of a player who, through injury or sickness, is unable to continue playing or whose health would be threatened if they did. In today's game this is untenable. Not only is it stupid, it is unfair. It is time players associations and the media took up the cause, and it is time the ICC fixed it.

G R Ryan, Queensland

PUBLIC SERVICE BIAS

It was interesting to see that the photo accompanying the article "Public service bosses to be schooled in IT" (canberratimes.com.au, January 11) was of a female. What does this say about gender bias?

S. Campbell, Chifley

CLIMATE OF CONFUSION

In the 1970s media pundits said planet earth was turning into an ice block. Then the climate alarmists decided we wouldn't freeze to death, but instead would be incinerated due to global warming. But climate change sounded even better, it encompassed global warming and flooding. Now with record cold in the northern hemisphere, Will Steffen has introduced "climate disruption". That should cover just about everything.

Owen Reid, Dunlop

PM'S CONTRADICTION

Is the Malcolm Turnbull who directly contradicted the economic modelling on negative gearing during the last election campaign the same Malcolm Turnbull who was so furious about Labor's "Mediscare" campaign?

Tony Judge, Woolgoolga

UNI STUDENT STRESS

Universities profess to be about solving problems not creating them. Wouldn't it be more appropriate for Canberra's institutions to undertake some introspection to identify precisely which of their practices augment student stress?

That said, the Times editorial (January 11) identifying a discrepancy between PETA's credibility and its resourcing is commendable.

Peter McCullagh, Bungendore

SO, WHAT IS NEW?

A Current Affair recently had an item about amazing future innovations where cars would be able to "Bring the shop to your house". In the early 1900s Fletcher Jones used to do that with his hawkers van when he visited my grandmother's farm.

Been there, done that.

Dennis Fitzgerald, Box Hill, Vic

LEVELS OF INCOMPETENCE

Jeff Bradley (Letters, January 10) is rightly concerned about incompetent leaders. Unfortunately, Trump and Turnbull are examples of the Peter Principle; people rise to the level of their incompetence and don't get sacked because that requires the people who promoted them to admit they were wrong, i.e. also incompetent.

John F. Simmons, Kambah

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