Questions about deals

K. Davis, Pearce

Light rail speculation

I don't understand how Shane Rattenbury, or anyone else, can predict the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the introduction of a light rail system when nobody has satisfactorily explained why it will result in a greatly increased patronage of public transport. It surely depends on many things which have been enunciated by many commentators. One thing is certain; it can only be successful if a comprehensive, much-improved bus service to connect with it is also introduced.

Wouldn't it be more logical to start with improvements to the whole bus network – routes, timetables, transfers, comfort – and so, over time, encourage more travellers to accept public transport as a realistic option? At the same time, the traffic flow in Northbourne Avenue would be greatly improved by the introduction of dedicated bus lanes which work really well to Woden and Belconnen and further enhanced by shifting the bike lanes to the median strip as has been done in St Georges Road in Melbourne. Shane Rattenbury should be very happy not to have to cut down hundreds of trees!

Kathleen Marshall, Turner

Secrecy still applies

I suggest to Chris Liberi (Letters, May 27) that shooting the messenger is an age old means of avoiding the underlying issue.

Ross Hamilton, the ex-ABS staff member who raised the issue of privacy concerns, has a name. Making him anonymous does not disempower him, nor make his concern regarding the ABS protection of the privacy of Census information less worthy of consideration.

The powerful protection of personal information afforded by the secrecy provision of the Census and Statistics Act applies for life to ABS officers, whether they be still employed by the ABS or otherwise engaged.

It is therefore of little surprise that Ross holds this view on the protection of Census information. The secrecy provision still applies, Chris. Perhaps you might revisit your understanding of your obligations in relation to the protection of the information of Australians.

Bronwyn Driscoll, ex-ABS, Rivett

Mixed blessing bins

The proposed garden "waste" bin collection is a mixed blessing ("Garden waste bins at last", May 28, p1). Good for the disabled or those without a garden, to contribute to a public compost service for profit, but economically wasteful for the true gardener with a square metre of ground to spare. Grass cuttings, leaves and clippings, enriched by organic fertilizer, occasional watering and contained by wooden planks or wire netting are quickly converted into compost. This makes an excellent mulch and fertilizer for soil enrichment and is good for the mental and physical health of the occasional home gardener who is familiar with the benefits of re-cycling and self-containment, without any community expense.

Bryan Furnass, Hughes

Wasted opportunity

At last, garden waste bins are to be introduced to Canberra. While this is a small step in the right direction, the pilot program doesn't go far enough. We must also have the ability to recycle food waste. With so many Canberrans now living in apartments, not everyone has access to their own composting facilities at home and the majority of waste going to landfill is food waste that can be recycled. In other areas of Australia, councils have introduced a "city to soil" program which has been successful for many years.

It has the benefit of reducing the amount of compostable waste going to landfill while increasing the organic matter that can be returned to the soil through the sale of the compost.

I urge the ACT Government to introduce a city to soil program in conjunction with the pilot. After all, the pilot is due to start next year so they have plenty of time to instigate the same city to soil program that is already available in other parts of the country.

Barbara Godfrey, Lyneham

Misleading claims

In his recent article ("Manuka Oval ambit claim shows disdain for community", Forum, May 21, p7), Clive Hamilton raises doubts about my dealings with Greater Western Sydney/Grocon on the Manuka Green project. Clive never bothered to raise these concerns with me before rushing into print.

Mr Hamilton has seriously misled your readers with the claim that I was the only community representative invited to attend the official announcement of the revised bid.

In fact I was not invited to, and did not attend, this event. Mr Hamilton also claims that I was holding "a series of private meetings with the property developers". In fact I was nominated by the Inner South Canberra Community Council to be a single point of contact for GWS/Grocon with the residents groups. I meet with scores of people every week in my role as ISCCC chairman, and it would be odd if I did not speak to GWS which already has an impact on the inner south through its major stake in Manuka Oval.

To the best of my recollection I have met Mr Griffiths on six occasions, two of which occurred in the presence of the president of the Kingston-Barton Residents Group. I had three meetings with Mr Griffiths in a coffee shop, scarcely a "secret meeting". The sixth meeting occurred at the public display of the revised plans, which was also attended by a number of other ISCCC committee members.

For the record, at every opportunity I conveyed strongly to Mr Griffiths the staunch opposition of inner south residents. Specifically, I explained that residents wanted a proper master plan for the Manuka Oval precinct before consideration of any proposed development and that the ACT Government should reject the unsolicited bid for this reason. This was the view, confirmed by a recent public meeting of 400 local residents, I put to the Chief Minister in my meeting with him earlier last week.

Gary Kent, chairman, Inner South Canberra Community Council

Sad to learn that Australia is today regarded as one of the "weasel" nations, those not possessing nuclear weapons themselves but who regard them as "central to security" (Australia among 'weasels' in opposition to banning bomb, May 27, p9). Australia has not always been so weaselly. In 1995, prime minister Paul Keating convened what was to become known as the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. The commission was made up of notables, such as Robert McNamara, former US Defence Secretary, and presented an analysis of practical ways to transition to a nuclear-free world to the 1997 UN Conference on Disarmament.

Part of their analysis included the following: If the peoples of the world fully understood the inherent dangers of nuclear weapons and the consequences of their use, they would reject them and not permit their continued possession by or acquisition of by governments, even for an alleged need for self-defence.

This is so clear an analysis of the danger to the world by the possession of armed, ready-to-launch nuclear weapons by a few nuclear-armed nations, that one wonders how the situation has been allowed to endure for so long.

Harry Davis, Campbell

On the bias

The voice of innocence: "Daddy, why did that stockbroker Mr Aitken lose his job ("The rant that sank a master of the universe", BusinessDay, May 27, p9)?" "Well, darling, his professional views about many men were often unkind but when he wrote unkindly about a woman he got into trouble." "Why, Daddy?" "Well, a bank executive said there was 'an unconscious bias' about his writing. The journalist reporting it agreed." "But Daddy, if his articles about men were acceptable, isn't there a bias if he can't say the same about a woman?" "Hush, darling, go straight upstairs to bed and stop trying to be a little miss smarty-pants!"

Bill Deane, Chapman

The sheer size of organised and serious crime in Australia is reason enough to take seriously John Dunn's plea (Letters, May 25) for a Federal Independent Commission Against Corruption. The Australian Crime Commission estimates that this crime is costing Australia $36 billion, the size of the Commonwealth budget. Of this at least $500 million is thought to be spent on "enablers, such as money laundering, corruption and violence [which] assist almost all serious and organised crimes".

Organised crime supports policies like drug prohibition from which the kingpins profit. Johann Hari's study of that evil trade showed that the controller of the drug market buys himself "a place above and beyond the law. At first ... freedom from being prosecuted for the crimes involved in running [the] drug business. And then it spread from there, buying him immunity for the laws surrounding theft and extortion and murder." Hari likens this in Mexico to an oil slick that slowly covers the whole society.

The head of our crime commission has noted that "organised criminals can achieve profit mark-ups of more than 6100 per cent compared with the wholesale cocaine price in Mexico, which is the source country for much of the cocaine in Australia".

No wonder Mexican drug cartels are beginning to move into Australia ("Drug cartels a new danger", Times, May 23, p1).

Bill Bush, vice-president, Families & Friends for Drug Law Reform

Political climate

A report in the Guardian entitled "Australia scrubbed from UN climate change report after government intervention" (May 27) asserts that the Coalition government persuaded UNESCO to delete the Australian component of its report "World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate" which focused on the risks of climate change to iconic tourist destinations such as the Great Barrier Reef.

This brings to mind the words of the pious lady in Victorian England, who, on hearing of Charles Darwin's then recently published "On the Origin of Species" remarked "Let us hope that it is not true, or if it is true, that it not become widely known."

Ross Mitchell, Weetangera

Rental cynicism

Bill Blair (Letters, May 26) refers to the court martial of a RAAF officer for using his rental allowance to buy a house while posted to the US, although politicians had appropriated the right to justify themselves doing the same. The political cynicism was even more mammoth than Bill recalls. This case was, in fact, prosecuted in the ACT Magistrate Court. In order for the case to proceed, the then Minister for Foreign Affairs had to approve the prosecution. This he did while mindful of an identical practice (rort) being available to his political colleagues and despite his own legal credentials.

Patrick Robertson, Rivet

Extradition question

It is not, as John Rodriguez (Letters, May 28) claims, "disgraceful that the Swedish justice system still maintains the order of arrest against Julian Assange." It is the responsibility of a nation's judicial system to pursue justice on behalf of its citizens, however long it takes and however difficult.

But, if the Swedish justice system is truly looking after the rights of its citizens, then despite any extradition treaty it has signed with another nation, it must have the flexibility to provide a guarantee that, innocent or guilty, Mr Assange will not be extradited to a third party country. Otherwise it suggests that this may all be just a sham, that Mr Assange is guilty of no crimes against Swedish citizens and that Sweden and its judicial system are but lickspittles of the USA.

P. Johnston, O'Connor

Benefit defined

The article "Shorten's glimmer of hope for pensioners" (May 27, p1) quotes a spokeswoman for the Social Services Minister saying, in relation to the

10 per cent cap for Centrelink income calculations "the rules were changed to inject greater fairness, to ensure that people receiving incomes from defined benefits schemes did not enjoy an advantage over people receiving incomes from other sources such as superannuation." The Liberal government doesn't seem to understand that "defined benefit" is actually superannuation.

Philip Pellatt, Scullin

Shorten populism

Nothing speaks more of the vacuousness of Labor's foreign policy than the desperate stabs at a perceived populism which its leaders have made in recent election campaigns.

In 2013, Kevin Rudd made Tony Abbott look like a statesman, when he said the Syrian situation was as black and white as a Ronald Reagan B grade Western. Predictably consistent with Anglo-American policy, his simple anti-Assad stance mirrored the anti-Saddam Hussein events a decade earlier and only helped create and foster ISIS.

Not to be outdone, an equally desperate Bill Shorten has now seen fit to challenge Howard's 2007 "Obama a boon for terrorism" crown for most inappropriate foray into US domestic politics, with his derivative and clueless comments on Donald Trump ("Working with Trump 'difficult': Shorten" May 18, p7), consistent with the views of the US political-military complex and what he perceives will click with Aussies.

Like 2007 for Howard and 2013 for Rudd, 2016 looks like being a bad year for Shorten.

Alex Mattea, Kingston

Thanks for nothing

Paul McGeough's article on the inevitable battle for the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which has been under the Islamic State control since 2014 ("Fallujah battle will show who's boss", May 28, p10), brought to mind what the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently said during an interview on CNN.

When asked about the justification for the Iraq war, Blair admitted that those involved were mistaken in their understanding of what would happen once the Saddam regime was removed.

If this were a form of apology by Blair, then I doubt it very much if the families of the estimated 500,000 people who have lost their lives as a direct result of the Iraq invasion in 2003, would thank Blair for his belated admission.

Sam Nona, Burradoo, NSW

WE'RE ALREADY BORED

In one of the endless promos/advertisements for ABC/iView, 7.30 Report compere Leigh Sales stated "how do politicians stop the people from being bored". Too late, we've been bored for a month – and this will continue for yet another month.

Alan McNeil, Weetangera

THE GREAT DIVIDE

During this odious election campaign involving the usual suspects suffering from societal tunnel vision and ethical deprivation – a pox on all their houses, negatively geared or otherwise – there's the usual dissimulation in the discourse about who's rich and who's poor.

The distinction is generally easy: poor people need more; rich people want more ... and more.

Ed Highley, Kambah

GREEN WASTE DILEMMA

Bins for green waste ("Garden waste bins at last", May 28, p1): Great.

Now we can dispose of all the shrubs that die from lack of water as a result of the price of water dictated to us by Icon!

Dr Kristine Klugman, Fisher

POORLY WORDED

Can you please not use the word "execution" when referring to a murder ("Fatal five seconds: CCTV reveals swift, brutal execution of Walid Ahmad in Bankstown", canberratimes.com.au, Mary 27). An execution is the result of a sentence from a judicial system, not a death because of a dispute between criminals.

Kenneth Beaton, Murrumbateman, NSW

ZIONIST STANCE

Sir Isaac Issacs' stance on Zionism (Letters, May 27) was a minority view then — and represents an insignificant one today in the wake of the Holocaust, and the reality that Israel has been in existence for nearly seven decades.

Probably the best known Australian Jew of Sir Isaacs' period was Sir John Monash – who headed the Australian Zionist Federation. His views ultimately won out.

Mark Kessel, Caulfield North, Vic

NEW VISION FOR NBN

Thanks, Crispin Hull ("Why the NBN is leaking", Forum, May 28, p2). Now, as I listen to Malcolm Turnbull – the man who compromised the NBN – talk about how he can best manage our innovative technological future, I can have a good old laugh. It's the best medicine.

But seriously, it would seem that Stephen Conroy would be a better leader for the future. At least his vision for the future didn't involve slicing it in half and grafting it back onto yesterday, at much greater expense.

S.W. Davey, Torrens

Email: letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au. Send from the message field, not as an attached file. Fax: 6280 2282. Mail: Letters to the Editor, The Canberra Times, PO Box 7155, Canberra Mail Centre, ACT 2610.

Keep your letter to 250 words or less. References to Canberra Times reports should include date and page number. Letters may be edited. Provide phone number and full home address (suburb only published).