Canberra Times Letters to the Editor: It's time to have another look at laws regarding vehicle licensing

Every day on Canberra's roads I see instances of discourteous or dangerous driving. The average size of vehicles being driven seems to have increased, with many more SUVs, 4x4s and in particular, twin-cab trucks. Whereas I understand why building contractors might need the latter, they are often seen driving at well over the speed limit (80km/h) along William Hovell Drive or the GDE (90 km/h) after working hours.

I can almost guarantee that if my car is overtaken at excess speed it will be by such a vehicle carrying only one person. Otherwise, the driver will be a younger woman in a 4x4.

What I propose is a licensing and registration scheme based on the British one. An applicant would sit a test specific to the vehicle they own or intend to drive.

If they replace a sedan with an SUV, 4x4 or twin-cab large ute, they resit the driving test after learning the handling capabilities of the vehicle. From press photos of fatal accidents, there appear to be a great number of larger vehicles involved in fatalities.

Licences would always be issued according to the currently owned vehicle. Registration would be cheaper for the owners of smaller vehicles or for cars with efficient emission controls.

It seems to be a status symbol to own a large vehicle, restrictions such as those outlined may help to reduce the number of fatalities involving motor vehicles.

Vee Saunders, Weetangera

We have lived in Canberra for over 40 years. Some first-time visitors asked if we could show them around before they flew home. No problem.

We started in our local area, Gungahlin. Our guests remarked on the tatty and unkempt condition of the long grass and litter on the verges and median strips and we agreed with them.

Everyone realised that it is a major holiday period but with grass about one metre high this will constitute a severe fire danger as the summer heat builds up.

However the public areas, verges and median strips an absolute disgrace. Roadworks do not enhance the area but the overall presentation of the territory at present is far from a good advertisement for the Bush Capital.

N. Bailey, Gungahlin

Malcolm Turnbull has foreshadowed a postal survey or plebiscite ("Turnbull open to republic vote", canberratimes.com.au, January 2) to see if Australians would support an Australian republic.

He seems to think that the way to go is simply amend the constitution to replace the Queen/Governor-General with a president, with the only issue how the president would be elected – directly by the people, or by the Parliament.

But there is an equally important – if not more important – issue, and that is the powers that the president would wield.

Under the Turnbull model, the Queen's so-called "reserve powers" – including the power to dismiss a government – would translate to the president.

Such an approach would effectively politicise the position, and could result in the president and prime minister "competing" with each other. Would Australians want that? I doubt it.

The better model would be one where the president is above politics and has a largely ceremonial role – as is the case in the Republic of Ireland (where the president is directly elected). That model would require more extensive changes to the constitution, but better to get it right than do a half-baked job.

It seems to me that if a postal survey or plebiscite were to be held, Australians should not be just asked do you support an Australian republic, but also asked, do you want a president with a largely ceremonial role, and do you want a directly elected president?

They could all be asked as separate questions in any postal survey or plebiscite.

Don Sephton, Greenway

I agree with Neil James (Letters, January 3) about the merits of monarchies.

Even though being born to rule offends the very idea of equality, strangely, constitutional monarchies are over-represented among the nations which have achieved the highest levels of equality. The Nordic monarchies do better than Australia on this and are at least as successful in other measures.

Clearly monarchies don't necessarily hold back social progress and should not be rejected just because they are anachronistic.

However, Australia's monarchical system is problematical.

Sharing a head of state with another power has obvious difficulties. The Norwegians fixed that in 1905 when they ceased sharing a monarch with Sweden and recruited one from Denmark.

But of greater concern is that, if we found ourselves with a rogue PM (and in these days of Trumps and Hansons it is not inconceivable) our monarch might be of little use.

Our vice-monarch, the GG, effectively holds office at the pleasure of the PM. The monarch pretty well must appoint or dismiss a GG on the advice of the PM. Now if we changed our constitution so that we popularly elected the GG we'd have a system much like that of the French, as our constitution is very similar to theirs.

To have a relatively apolitical head of state we need appointment by a super majority of the two houses of Parliament.

The people might not cop that, but they might go for appointment by a super majority of a popularly elected electoral college.

Robin M. G. Brown, Yarralumla

Is it necessary for a republic – the public affairs of the people – to have a president?

Does Australia need a governor-general?

The current system has shown that a governor-general in fact can exercise more power than the Queen would: the Queen would not sack a government, John Kerr did.

An elected government, albeit one headed for electoral defeat even if he didn't intervene to sack it.

Monarchy is a tradition reduced to public relations that still says people of title are higher than other citizens; one wonders if Princess Michael of Kent was demonstrating her sense of superiority over Meghan Markle recently by stupidly wearing a certain piece of racial jewellery.

I suggest the first thing Australia must do is borrow from the US Declaration of Independence and write into Australia's constitution that "all men [and women] are created equal".

The head of a republic could be the prime minister, complete with the power to form and dissolve a government.

John Dobinson, Herston, Qld

One can only ask how much longer it will be before the ACT Legislative Assembly wakes up to the rapidly increasing decay of the city caused by the ACT government's refusal to establish a properly constituted, independent planning authority.

Emeritus professor Patrick Troy of the ANU (Letters, December 26) must be congratulated for once again bringing the assembly's attention to the complete absence of any proper planning in the nation's capital.

In May 2017 Tony Powell, a former commissioner of the National Capital Development Commission, commented that "the ACT government is incapable of improving the dishevelled state of the city and doesn't know how to develop a plan for a town centre".

He felt then that the city we knew and loved may have gone forever.

Although this matter has been raised regularly since by numerous correspondents all bitterly disappointed at the steady decline of the city's liveability and mounting chaos, there is no sign that the assembly recognises the problem. Planning in the ACT government is a total and utter shambles, with no single minister in control.

An inquiry to a minister in May last year brought the response: "Our office has just been clarifying the ministerial responsibility of this issue".

No minister ever responded.

Murray Upton, Belconnen

Peter Dutton's assertion, unsupported by a shred of evidence, that Victorians are frightened to go to restaurants because they may be followed home and assaulted by gangs of African youths appears to be garbage.

If there is a problem with African youths, it is in general that they or their parents have been traumatised by events in refugee camps, Australian immigration detention centres or by being refused job training, job interviews or social interaction because of their skin colour.

Once an individual (and let us remember that many young people of African descent were born in Australia and have as much right to be here as Peter Dutton) has been accepted into Australia, it is incumbent on Australian society to provide the social support, education and training that s/he requires to become a fully functioning member of society.

This requires not just state action, but federal leadership and funding for specific programs, implemented as far as possible by people intimately familiar with the incomers' experience.

It is true that many people fear walking the streets at night. The experience of the late Jillian Meagher shows that fear may be justified and there are parts of central Melbourne in which people are at risk in the early hours of the morning.

The assailants in these cases are generally as white as Peter Dutton. He needs to stop trying to vilify a tiny minority and get on with leading the integration of the majority of immigrants and refugees into a diverse and tolerant Australian society that would be enriched by this.

Dr Juliet Flesch, Kew, Victoria

Were Canberra to "make decisions for the benefit of the entire community" Sunday penalty rates would not be cut and rent-seeking, tax-evading, job-destroying, free-loading, non-domiciled multinationals would pay tax ("Corporations aiming to get public on side", January 4, p22). Corporations "invest" where they feel free to exploit.

Taxation is irrelevant.

Albert M. White, Queanbeyan, NSW

The thought of resettling Rohingya Muslims ("For humanity's sake", Letters, January 1) might unsettle locals. Australia could take in an equal number of Christian Copts who are being persecuted in Egypt.

Kenneth Griffiths, O'Connor

There are numerous high rise developments in the pipeline from Weston to Gungahlin which has two if not more 18-storey developments scheduled to commence.

In November 2015, the ACT government announced the new 23-metre building height limit for the Gungahlin town centre.

This was just two weeks after Geocon's 70-metre tall Infinity project was approved.

I would like to know, as would most residents of Gungahlin, just how a developer is able to squeeze 18 floors into 23 metres.

Peter Toscan, Amaroo

John McKerral (Letters, January 4) refuses to acknowledge the indisputable fact that burning coal and dispersing the by-products creates significant negative costs which aren't reflected in the price of any electricity produced in the process.

Imagine if there were two firms competing for the contract to remove loose-fill asbestos from contaminated homes, the first of which proposed to vacuum up the fibres and pump them into a meticulously sealed tank on a nearby truck for subsequent safe disposal.

And the second, significantly cheaper option, which proposed to vacuum up the fibres and instead using industrial blowers and the prevailing wind to disperse them into the atmosphere with scant regard for the consequences.

In order to save a buck or two Mr McKerral would have to choose the second option, and for this reason his opinions can and should be safely ignored.

James Allan, Narrabundah

I agree to a degree with Bob Salmond's statement "The most dangerous factor in road safety is impatience."

This can be expressed as lane-switching to gain one or two places in the "queue".

Some years ago, I was almost a casualty of the latter practice. I was driving east along the Tuggeranong Parkway and about to exit to the left into the Glenloch Interchange when a car sped past me, then swerved in front of me.

The woman driving the car was then confronted by a line-up of stationary cars and was forced to brake heavily.

There would have been a nasty rear-end collision, through no fault of my own, if I hadn't reacted quickly and braked as hard as possible.

I stopped with only about a metre to spare, thankful that my car had very good brakes and all-wheel drive.

Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin

RUBBISH PRIORITIES

I find it very sad our (the taxpayers') money has gone to the light rail instead of the essential services needed to keep Canberra beautiful, as fitting for the national capital. Long grass, graffiti, and rubbish everywhere. Is there any reason why we can't use selected inmates from the Alexander Maconochie Centre (this works well in other countries) to carry out some of these essential services? Or is this government afraid of upsetting their partners, the unions?

Mary Robbie, Aranda

TRUMP ... OR HOMER?

The more I hear Donald Trump speak, the more he sounds like Homer Simpson. My apologies to Mr Simpson, no insult intended.

Tony Pelling, Nicholls

POSTAL ON REPUBLIC

Despite Neil James' claims supporting a permanent foreign monarch for Australia (Letters, January 3), direct election of an Australian head of state is at the heart of the republic question. Malcolm Turnbull's postal survey would clarify and settle that crucial issue.

Bryan Lobascher, Chifley

PET PROBLEM

People in Australia spend about $12billion a year on their pets,which seems a bit excessive when many humans globally live on $2 a day.

Rod Matthews, Fairfield, Vic

RISE OF THE RIGHT

Senator Jim Molan will no doubt have a fan in the lower house with Peter Dutton fawning on everything this right wing warrior utters. Fortunately the likes of Dutton and Molan are in the minority, however with Malcolm Turnbull grasping at straws, he might just think fear will give him the lift he desperately needs.

D. J. Fraser, Currumbin

FLASHERS WANTED

I am intrigued by the recent spate of correspondence from readers critiquing the behaviour of Canberra's motorists. I suggest that one of the reasons ACT drivers are so reluctant to leave the right hand lane is that the poor pets have never been told what an indicator is meant to be used for.

M. Moore, Bonython

CHURCH AND STATE

Given that the Queen is the head of the Anglican Church, if there is a postal plebiscite on Australia becoming a republic, will the Anglican Synod of Sydney again toss one million dollars into the hat to support the No vote?

Dallas Stow, O'Connor

MONARCHY OF OZ

If Neil James (Letters, January 3) is so convinced of the superiority of constitutional monarchies, he should start a campaign for a uniquely Australian monarchy. One to which all patriotic Australian citizens, present and future, can be loyal.

John F. Simmons, Kambah

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