Canberra Times Letters to the Editor: Barr must act now

This is a shocking indictment against the government. However, relief is apparently at hand as the Construction Occupations Registrar, Craig Simmons, who is aware of the above instances, now tells us that the industry is "working effectively enough for us but there are tweaks to the system that will improve things". He must be joking! The industry needs more than a "tweak" if building standards are to be improved in the ACT.

I suggest that the government looks closely at the recommendations that arose from the 2010 Building Quality Forum and act upon them immediately, as they promised they would at the time, and not wait a further 10 years.

Murray Upton, Belconnen

Every resident should be concerned about the waste of public funds proposed to be spent on the extension of light rail to Woden.

The funds would be better used to improve community services. Such services would include increasing the frequency of buses throughout Canberra to increase their competitiveness with cars in meeting the community's diverse work and non-work trips.

Unfortunately the Barr-Rattenbury government will not acknowledge its light rail irresponsibility, compared to which the stadia fiasco in Sydney is insignificant given the size of the ACT and NSW economies.

As an act of contrition, the Labor and Green Assembly members and senior executives should forgo their recently announced increase in pay, an increase that cannot be based on performance given the demonstrated incompetence in relation to light rail and other urban development issues.

I won't be holding my breath.

Mike Quirk, Garran

Isn't it amazing that one cricket captain makes a stupid decision while playing a game and the whole nation reels in horror, yet a Ms Maginnity can stress out for years and incur $30,000 in costs trying to resolve a problem she probably had no part in (CT, March 25, p1), while at the same time a panel responsible for advising on such things had not met for several years (CT, March 28, p8) and almost nothing happens!

All Canberra people should have been up in arms in the knowledge that, but for the grace of God, they might have been in Ms Maginnity's shoes — or a similar pair of shoes.

Is it really so hard to design a system that actually works? Why wasn't an "action officer" sent to check Ms Maginnity's claim, form a judgment in a day or so and then on what seemed to be the facts of the case, make an interim judgment? This would put the initial cost and burden on the seeming "wrong-doer" until such time as other processes decided otherwise.

There may be a better method but nothing could be worse than what we have.

At least this is one way that the initial cost and pain would fall on the likely guilty party instead of the accidental, and likely weakest, party involved.

Trevor McPherson, Aranda

In reply to Jack Kershaw, Kambah, there was a crossing called Lennox Crossing in that area before the lake was built.

It was a low-level bridge over the Molonglo River going from the back of Albert Hall to the original Canberra Hospital.

Janet Pearson, Narrabundah

The Bah-Bah government fooled once again. Does it think the manufacturers of the so-called self-driving cars (Sunday Canberra Times, April 1, p3) will not spend any of their funds on testing these cars?

Why waste our money?

Ken Wood, Holt

The planned Snowy 2.0 hydro power project may not provide the solution the Prime Minister would like.

It bears a resemblance to the exploits of the Grand old Duke of York who, according to the celebrated nursery rhyme, marched 1000 men to the top of a hill and marched them down again. Pumped hydro is exactly like that. You pump the water up and generate energy by letting it run down.

It's OK if there's a favourable energy differential between the two, but if you use the power generated when the water flows down to pump it back up again, the best you might do is to come out even. To get an advantage, you would have to generate the power somewhere else using gas, or even renewable sources, and transport it.

This takes intelligent planning. The Prime Minister has the benefit of the Coalition's "Monash group" who surely have the perfect solution. You build a new coal-fired power station to provide the power that's needed to extract the gas to drive the turbines to pump the water up the hill. Then you sit down and let the power flow.

At least it would generate growth – and about 10,000 new jobs.

Philip Telford, Tarago, NSW

An old saying goes: "You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time". But you can go close – look at climate change or global warming. This argument is accepted by most of the world's politicians, which is fair enough, but blaming the known changes on our emissions without any verified evidence is fooling people into making very expensive commitments which have no truthful scientific foundation.

Half-truths are not evidence but fake news.

Robert Brooks, Geraldton, WA

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