LRT not up to speed

Infrastructure Partners chief executive Brendan Lyons referred to the "rule of law" ("Canberrans to pay $375m upfront as light rail contract signed", May 18, p1) but of course there is no legal reason why the Coalition cannot cancel the LRT contract. The issue is one of sovereign risk, that is that the finance houses that provide loans to the government will increase interest rates to mitigate against the risk in future.

However, no doubt the banks have already factored in the risk associated with a dubious project which costs so much.

No doubt they will be relieved when the Coalition cancels the contract and will restore the lower interest rates governments usually enjoy. So much for sovereign risk.

The bigger issue is how the successful LRT consortium will now behave. Will they seek to minimise the public exposure for compensation and just seek what is justly due to them? The eyes of all Canberra are on you now, Mr Lyons.

R.J. Nairn, Hawker

Capital Metro Minister Simon Corbell signed a huge contract for stage 1 of light rail when the contractor (Canberra Metro) stated that it still has six months of design work to complete ("Canberrans to pay $375m upfront as light rail contract signed" May 18, p1).

Reason: to retain the confidence of the mainstay of this minority government, Greens MLA Shane Rattenbury, until the coming election, and at the same time be able to run a scare campaign about the fallout from the Liberals invoking the termination for convenience clause.

Then in pure spin Corbell described the so-far-revealed $1.6billion total cost of the project as "less than 1per cent of the ACT government expenditure over 20 years". Yet if the Gungahlin-Civic light rail line were to make any sense at all it would only be in the context of the proposed Canberra-wide network.

That has 10 times the track length and quite likely more than 10 times the cost as it crosses the lake – so not 1per cent but 10 per cent of government expenditure over 20 years!

Corbell continues to predict "on-road travel times of almost an hour by 2031 if no action is taken" without saying how the capacity of the trams will be increased to transport a growing population and what the average journey time for all commuters (road and rail) would be.

Anyone who believes that this streetcar design will solve the commuting problems of a widespread growing city should seek a second opinion.

A. Smith, Farrer

Theft, I thought, is taking something that isn't yours and keeping it. But my teachers – now dead – were bad or I was a poor learner.

I'll let readers decide with these three local law firm examples: 1. Lucky strike: a client with no criminal record charged with a serious offence. Extract more than $300,000 from him. I costed the work and I couldn't get above half that, even being way too generous. Acceptable because there's a cost agreement signed by a scared client with no clue about what is value in the legal market.

2. A fortnightly oversight over two-plus years, forget to pay the employer super contributions for your staff to the tune of more than $130K. But the payslips falsely show contributions made. Punishment of $7K and a reprimand in the dead of night out the back of nowhere.

3. We must deter others – caught taking $7K with no entitlement. Owned up to taking another $40K. Struck off.

Remember that late 1980s film Rosalie goes shopping? To paraphrase good advice that Rosalie followed to turn theft into success: "When you've lifted a bit, it's your problem. But when you've lifted a lot, it's not."

Hugh Selby, Lyneham

Instead of following the same dull, shortsighted routine of chopping up and selling good farmland to foreign investors, which inevitably brings more traffic, pollution and mouths to feed to the Territory (as we have seen in the new developments of Canberra), why doesn't the government designate the CSIRO's Belconnen paddocks as the region's new food bowl?

The infrastructure is already there, the locally grown and organic produce would suit the government's emissions agenda and the venture could create dozens of jobs.

Ultimately, "the world's coolest little capital" won't be "cool" for very long into the future if we can't feed ourselves!

Pat Bacon, Carwoola, NSW

I thank R.S. Gilbert (Letters, May 23) for replying to me, and apologise for not making it clear as to what "leaves me puzzled". Since he first explained it I have understood the case for either leaving current arrangements as is or going back to the previous arrangements.

What puzzles me is why anyone would invest in residential property if these arrangements only help such investors keep pace with inflation. So to my questions.

What are the advantages of investing in residential property? Among other things, is there an income or tax level at which it changes from being a good investment to a bad investment?

John F. Simmons, Kambah

Pauline Westwood (Letters, May 23) pretty well sums up the the Conservative philosophy. One could add, of course, a shamble of an internet, decrease in arts support, legislation against civil liberties, wrecking ball through the car industry, climate change denial and lack of support for renewables but I wont get petty.

It's puzzling that 50 per cent of voters will still support the Conservatives even when it is against their own interests.

Could it be the same mentality that even if your footy team is hopeless and the coach has been sacked you still continue to stick to them?

Robert Bruce, Fadden

If ever a story demonstrated why both major parties fight so hard, and almost the only thing they agree on, not to allow for the creation of a federal Independent Commission Against Corruption, and why one is so desperately needed, this is it ("Gangland lawyer cultivated top Libs", May 23, p1).

The fact that both parties will accept "donations" (aka bribes) from seemingly all comers, but sadly also from known criminal elements of society, so starkly demonstrates that politicians cannot be trusted, and some very severe measures need to be in place to force them to act honourably and with at least a modicum of integrity.

The need for the urgent creation of a federal ICAC would seem to be amplified by the article by Anthea McCarthy-Jones ("Drug cartels a new danger", Times2, May 23, p1), which poses yet another avenue for a different set of criminals to tempt our politicians to lose their moral compass in thepursuit of yet more "donations".

With an election pending, there is no better time for voters to impress on their elected representatives that we will not stand for this sort of behaviour. It is below contempt and is damaging the very fabric of our democracy.

John Dunn, Gowrie

No, Scott Rashleigh (Letters, May 21), the Senate was not "enshrined in our constitution as a 'house of review' to ensure balanced government"; it was established as a "states' house" to protect the less-populous states from domination by NSW and Victoria.

And as for it being "a very sad day if the role of the Senate were to be reduced to a mere rubber-stamp for the party-of-the-day that controlled the lower house", such sad days have, of course, occurred in recent decades when both the Fraser and Howard governments had Senate majorities.

Frank Marris, Forrest

Scott Rashleigh initially proposed a vote for Turnbull in the House as the better economic manager but for Labor in the Senate so it could block the proposed superannuation changes (ie, choose someone to make hard economic decisions but ensure they can't be implemented). Mr Rashleigh is now seeking to justify that illogical position by changing the subject.

If he genuinely wanted review, he might, for instance, have suggested voting for independents in the Senate, or perhaps he might have suggested the Senate review the proposed legislation and then vote on its merits. But no, Mr Rashleigh specifically wants Labor to block (not review) that one piece of legislation that he obviously finds unpalatable. Clearly, his self-interest overrides any philosophical support for the Senate as a house of review.

Mr Rashleigh highlights Queensland as an example of the failings of a jurisdiction without an upper house, but doesn't seem to have concerns about our own much closer single-chamber government, or New Zealand, which seems to be doing very well with just the one house.

Kym MacMillan, O'Malley

It doesn't matter who leaked details of the schemozzle that NBN became. What matters is who turned the NBN into a multi-billion-dollar schemozzle. Not the Labor government that opted for a fibre-optic cable to the home.

To save money, the Abbott government opted for copper wires from telephone exchanges. But copper wires (from exchange to home) lose speed. For each kilometre (to a home) the slower the speed gets. Our home is five kilometres from the Scullin Exchange. On leaving the exchange we get a speed of 24mbps. On arrival at our home, we get a speed of 3 mbps. Labor's scheme would be 24mbps at both ends.

The Liberals gave us a slow-coach schemozzle. It could cost them government.

Graham Macafee, Latham

Oh, cut the crap, Amanda Vanstone ("Easy for the Greens to promise compassion", Times2, May 23, p5)! Your beloved Coalition has politicised the refugee issue ever since Howard stole Pauline Hanson's thunder back in the '90s. And sure enough they've pulled it out again in this campaign as the polls are turning south.

How I long for a day where our "leaders" appeal to the better side of the Australian psyche rather than rolling out the old, tired scare campaign. Go compassion.

Sarah Stoove, Farrer

Amanda Vanstone seems to be arguing that the bigotry of Australia's population is so great that a refugee intake of 50,000 a year might cause civil unrest. But there's a huge difference between trying to make that argument and uttering gratuitously inflammatory comments which pander to that same bigotry. Our current Minister for Keeping Wogs Out appears to have been doing the latter rather than the former.

David Wilson, Braddon

Having followed Kenneth Griffiths' web links (Letters, May 23), it is patently obvious that neither Albert Einstein nor Steven Pinker opposed either Israel or Zionism.

The letter Einstein co-signed doesn't mention Zionism but narrowly targets its criticism at the undeniably abhorrent behaviour of a fringe and non-representative Jewish terrorist group whose actions were also vehemently denounced by Israel's leadership, which the letter acknowledges. Tellingly, after his death in 1955, Einstein's will bequeathed his personal papers to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Pinker says he admires "many things about the country" and merely explains that he is a Jewish atheist and therefore his support for Israel is not based on "a mystical connection between a people and a territory." Significantly, he says he "object[s] to the myopic denunciations and illiberal persecution of Israel and its citizens."

In fact, in February 2016, Pinker scorned individuals like Mr G, saying "why no boycotts against ... China, India, Russia, or Pakistan ... which have also been embroiled in occupations and violent conflicts, and which, unlike Israel, face no existential threat or enemies with genocidal statements in their charters?".

Mark Kessel, Caulfield North, Vic

Natasha Boddy's article, "Public to help shape arboretum future" (May 23, p2) was a jolt. I wonder how many of us have walked through a beautiful park or botanic gardens and thought, "There is just one thing missing – a convention centre with hotel to accommodate big, important gatherings such as the Commonwealth heads of government meetings"!

No, not really you say? There is currently a thought bubble floating around that says the Arboretum is a whole three years old so we need to build a large brick and mortar structure there or the tourists will get bored.

Is there anywhere in Canberra that is off-limits to developers, that is to be kept intact for future generations to enjoy?

L. Kelly, O'Connor

Rex Williams (Letters, May 23) questions the logic of the class action against the Russian Federation and President Vladimir Putin by those who lost family members when MH17 was shot down over Ukraine.

Mr Williams claims that thegreat bulk of world opinionis that Ukraine was responsible.

Where is this opinion documented?

Where was Mr Williams when, immediately after the plane was shot down, Russian-armed terrorists in Eastern Ukraine went on the internet boasting about shooting down a Ukrainian jet?

They quickly retracted their post, however, when luggage and bodies began falling to the ground.

However, I do agree with Mr Williams in that the class action will go nowhere.

Putin and his Federation will ignore the action just like he has ignored the western world's protest over the Russian invasion of Georgia, Crimea, Eastern Ukraine and the murder of thousands who have resisted these Russian invasions.

L. Christie, Canberra City

NICE LITTLE EARNER

Could I also please get $273 per day from the public purse for living in my own home in Canberra and also enjoy tax deductibility for doing so? Maybe I'm just a goose and not a gander.

Peter Dahler, Calwell

HEALTH AT RISK

As remnant loose-fill asbestos fibre is considered so dangerous, why does Worksafe not require workers to at least use face masks while "defitting" Mr Fluffy houses?

Meg McFarlane, Lyons

REFUGEE FACTS, PLEASE?

I cannot agree illiterate refugees take Australian jobs. However, are many with large families unemployed and live on various benefits paid for by the taxpayer or is this an urban myth?

Greg Cornwell, Yarralumla

CFLs AND MERCURY

Jamie Geysen and David Williams (Letters, May 20) provide information that should have been stressed when Fieldforce replaced our incandescent globes nine years ago, particularly in relation to the mercury content of CFLs. Another Mr Fluffy brewing?

Ken McPhan, Spence

JONES ON THE OUTER

Eric Hunter (Letters, May 23) re-quotes Bob Hawke, when asked by Barry Jones why he was not in the inner ministry, as saying that "there isn't enough room for two intellectuals in cabinet". Perhaps Bob was thinking of Paul Keating as being the intellectual already there ... and perhaps pigs can fly but we've been too preoccupied to notice.

Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin

DRIVING HIM CRAZY

Ross Gittins' opinion piece (BusinessDay, May 23, p12) headed "Politicians not trying hard enough". Actually, I'm finding them very trying at present.

Peter Baskett, Murrumbateman, NSW

MIND BOGGLING

If it took nine men with a truck and a cherry picker to "do a bit of trimming" to a gum tree beside the bicycle path in Bruce last week, how many men will be needed to fell 700 trees in Northbourne Avenue?

Kerin Cox, Bruce

TRAM FIASCO

Capital Metro are now saying peak-hour services from Gungahlin will be every five minutes instead of every six. Perhaps this is because someone has worked out that the current bus passenger capacity from Gungahlin is higher than the proposed light rail capacity (in another two years' time). Presumably two more trams are about to be ordered to achieve this.

Chris Emery, Reid

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