Post-graduate means that I will have spent a minimum of seven years at university studying, accruing a HECS debt of, on average, of $100,000, depending on the undergraduate degree.

A recent study published in the Medical Journal of Australia has shown that full fee paying medical students that have no government assistance in paying for their medical degree (around $250,000) are more likely to eschew general practice and going rural, in favour of high paying specialties in major cities.

What happens when the government deregulates medical fees and all students are paying more money for their degrees?

Australia already has a GP shortage in rural areas, as well as many areas within our major cities. It is madness for the current government to target patients visiting GPs in cost cutting measures. GPs are integral in saving the government money via primary and secondary prevention. Consulting medical professionals and future GPs is important to determine where the efficiencies and improvements can be identified within Medicare.

We need to increase the incentive for medical students to become GPs, rather than taking the incentive away, as the proposed Medicare changes will do.

Considering the push for all Australian medical degrees to become post-graduate, for fees to be deregulated, as well as the current government policies changing the face of general practice, it is unsurprising that many medical students do not see a career in general practice in their future.

Jazmin Hawes, Braddon

A drug smuggler or peddler is a person willing to spread misery and death to hundreds of their fellow citizens for the sake of some financial gain. There can scarcely be a lower or more despicable form of human life.

The Indonesian judicial system, exemplified by Kerobokan Prison, has succeeded spectacularly in rehabilitating two young men from these depths of utter depravity into two model caring conscientious citizens in just 10 years. The rate of recidivism for our local jail is appallingly high. Perhaps the management of our Alexander Maconochie Centre should visit Indonesia to find out the recipe for success.

Roger Quarterman, Campbell

As the countdown towards the judicial killing of two evidently reformed Australians continues, it is worth remembering how they were apprehended. The AFP knew that Chan and Sukumaran planned to carry drugs back to Australia and they knew that Indonesia applies a death penalty for drug trafficking.

The Indonesian authorities only became aware of the plan because the AFP advised them.

I can think of no reason within the philosophy of the Australian judicial system why these people were not simply apprehended when they arrived back in Australia thus avoiding potential execution.

The death penalty for any human is the ultimate denial of their human rights: a violation of their right to life that leads to their premeditated killing by the state.

It is no credit to Indonesia and a tragedy for the normally highly professional and competent AFP if this execution goes ahead: both will have blood on their hands.

Given that Indonesia had no information about Chan and Sukumaran prior to advice from the AFP, it should be a negotiable point for the current Australian government to use in seeking their release into the Australian justice system.

I am very disappointed at the state of our city.

All areas throughout Canberra are now looking dreadful with long grass, weeds growing in cracks between road surfaces and gutters, and cracked footpaths to name just a few areas of concern.

I just checked the mowing schedules for the Belconnen area and the dry grass section for main roads was last listed for mowing on November 25. It is very embarrassing when visitors to our city comment on the shabbiness and decline of public areas. After all, aren't we supposed to be the national capital trying to attract tourism to this city?

I realise that there has been some rain which has encouraged growth over the past month or so but surely our elected leaders can do better for us than the situation as it stands at the moment.

C. Foley, Melba

Australia is facing a crisis of confidence in Prime Minister Tony Abbott not seen since the 1975 constitutional crisis involving the sacking of the Whitlam government ("Liberals weigh up leadership options as Prime Minister Tony Abbott faces criticism", January 29).

In both cases, these two crises are linked in that they point to major shifts in the evolution of this nation from its imperialistic beginnings as a British penal colony, to becoming one of the world's leading multicultural and egalitarian democracies in modern history.

Abbott's awarding of a knighthood to the husband of the British monarch completely overturns all that this nation stands for and aspires to become in the future.

It opens up the old wounds of our colonialist past, whereupon our forebears had the temerity to declare that white settlement extinguished all traces of prior Aboriginal history to the constitutional point of becoming terra nullius.

It also raises the ugly spectre of insinuating that those who are of white, Christian and British origin are to be held in the highest esteem, and thus continue to be deemed superior to all other races and religions.

This is a crisis of confidence, not merely in Abbott's prime ministership, but in what it truly means to be called an Australian.

Reverend Dr Vincent Zankin, Rivett

Is it not rather hypocritical of those Liberal MPs who have suddenly turned on Tony Abbott's chief of staff, Peta Credlin, implying that she should take the flak for their leader's recent cock-up ("Get rid of Credlin, Abbott told" Jan 29, p1)?

Don't they realise that the PM's office must be run smoothly and efficiently, and for which a person of strong personality and high ability isessential?

Clearly, the response of these MPs is merely an attempt to rescue their leader, along with their party. For if Peta Credlin were not the right person to manage the Prime Minister's office, why wait till this moment to voice your concern?

Frankly, hypocritical is too gentle a term to describe such attitude.

Sam Nona, Burradoo, NSW

All Mr Fluffy home owners are deserving of sympathy, but nevertheless the $3million buyback of a house in Forrest seems excessive, however accurate the valuations. All the more so when it has just been reported that the ACT public housing list has increased by 900 over the past four years. As with Tony Abbott's paid parental leave scheme, the Fluffy buyback might be good in principle, but raises questions of fairness at the highest income levels.

Meanwhile a Kambah resident is advertising that his house contains asbestos 'courtesy of the federal government and ACT government' ('Kambah residents in a Fluffy street nightmare', CT Jan 28, p4). I would have thought that Dirk Jansen and James Hardie were the ones to blame.

G. Burgess, Kaleen

When I transferred to Canberra in 1992 I was an Oil Company employee. The freight differential for fuel was 1.8¢ a litre to transport by road or rail from Sydney. A rise or fall in the Crude Oil pricing of $1 a barrel translated to a 1¢ a litre move in the bowser price. Today there are roughly one third the number of service stations in Canberra and a high percentage of those are operated by Coles or Woolworths.

With the advent of Costco operating a members-only site at parity with Sydney prices and crude oil prices falling, Coles and Woolworths sites elsewhere around Canberra are enjoying hefty margins at the expense of ACT motorists.

The traffic congestion at Majura Park sites is an accident waiting to happen. I have a solution that will benefit the entire ACT, ease traffic congestion and profit the ACT community. The ACT Government could build and operate one site in each town centre. They could then:

• Employ staff from the ranks of the long term unemployed;

• Gain the reseller margin on the fuel sold in addition to their share of statutory taxes levied;

• Source the convenience store stock items from ALDI;

• Start a reciprocal shopper docket scheme with ALDI to match the Coles/Woolworths offer;

• Set the retail price of fuel in Canberra at Sydney pricing plus freight differential only;

• Introduce real competitive forces in the pricing of fuel that the ACCC has never been able to resolve.

I believe the nett profitability will be sufficient to enable a contribution towards reducing the current ACT budget deficit and be a welcome distraction from reliance on land sales as our only enterprise for income, other than rates.

If they need me to become a senior ACT public servant to manage the programme, make me an offer.

Michael Kirby, Chisholm

GIVE HIM A KNIGHTHOOD

Tony, if you want Rupert to shut up, give him a knighthood.

Heino Lepp, Macquarie

SINKING SHIP

Regarding the "captain's call". Could someone please tell Mr Abbott that we are not on the "Costa Concordia".

Michael Thomas, Braddon

LESSON TO LEARN

Were I a parent with a child at Canberra Grammar, I would be approaching the school board regarding the propriety of the principal making a purely political pronouncement to the press while representing the school ("Grammar principal describes knighthood as 'inappropriate' ", January 29, p4).

Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor

A DOG'S LIFE

I dispute the inference of correspondents such as Christopher Smith (Letters January 30) that poodles are, like politicians, intellectually challenged. Most poodles are smarter than the average politician and probably at least on a par with the few outstanding ones (there must be some, surely).

Ed Highley, Kambah

UTTER CONTEMPT

Chris Williams (Letters, January 29) suggests that Menzies holds, or more appropriately held, ordinary Australians in utter contempt. If Sir Robert held ordinary Australians (and he was one of them) in utter contempt, was it just an accident that he was voted into office seven times?

Steven Hurren, Macquarie

WHEN CREDIT'S DUE

Why is it that ActewAGL (and ACTEW Water) can send out their accounts within days of reading meters when money is due to them but cannot send out invoices for electricity services when homeowners are due for a credit?

Ian Willis, Rivett

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