LAKE SITE FOR AIRPORT
David Edmunds says the need for a second airport for Canberra is strong and growing (''Second airfield for Canberra is no flight of fancy'', February 14, p13). After all, the proposed substantially increased use of the one we have is constraining Queanbeyan's development and raising quality-of-life problems under flight paths.
Besides, Canberra's Labor government is always keen to annoy the Snows. What better way than by facilitating an alternative airport.
Luckily a solution is at hand. If it's half as big and happening as the carbon-taxing federal government insists, global warming will prevent currently-empty Lake George from ever filling again. We can safely put our climate change money where Julia Gillard's mouth is, do the deal with NSW, and build Collector Airport on the wide, flat area formerly known as Lake George.
Veronica Giles, Chifley
NOT CLEVER, TONY
So Whitney Houston's death has prompted Tony Bennett to call for the legalisation of drugs.
That is as clever as saying that shooting deaths would be reduced if every school kid was given a Glock 9mm and told to take them outside to play. Giving addicts even more readily accessible drugs will not save one person.
The fact is an addict will snort, smoke, swallow or shoot up anything that will get them high, so letting them buy drugs at Woolworths is not going to save them. Bennett should stick to singing and leave the social engineering to someone better qualified.
Stuart Kennedy, Corunna, NSW
SOFT TARGETS PRIORITY
Jack Waterford (''Stumblings on embassy security'', Forum, February 11, p16) is correct about the hyperbole around the non-existent riot on Australia Day and also right to question embassy security. The problem with ASIO or the AFP doing anything at all is that they are too busy finding Tamil babies are a risk to national security and that 13-year-old mentally disabled Indonesian children are really adult ''people smugglers'', even though under international law helping refugees has zero to do with people smuggling.
Marilyn Shepherd, Angaston, SA
HOWARD HAD BUFFER
Ian Fairchild (Letters, February 11) claims that the 1998 election was a referendum on the GST that John Howard won comfortably. It's more complicated than that.
In the 1996 election Howard committed to there ''never, ever'' being a GST. In 1997 he reversed his position. This showed political courage but by then he had some big advantages: a huge majority in the lower house (built on ''no GST''), and the ability to spend taxpayers' money on promoting a partisan proposal.
He won the 1998 election with a much reduced majority of 12. However, he clearly lost the popular vote, getting a lower primary vote than Labor, and losing the two-party preferred vote 49-51. He won against the popular vote essentially because he had such a large majority from 1996, and a change in the tide always leaves a few survivors. Despite having no popular mandate from the election, he proceeded with the GST.
The Senate then had to agree. The Democrats had no position on the GST until only two weeks before the 1998 election, when they agreed to a GST except on food. They then quietly advertised this under the slogan ''no GST on food'' rather than the more honest ''GST on everything but food''. Many Democrat voters were therefore astonished when most Democrat senators subsequently passed the GST (food removed) in exchange for some spending commitments.
By agreeing to a modified GST which excluded food, Howard broke his full election commitment, but he had to face the reality of parliamentary numbers. People have now adjusted to the GST, and ''an old tax is a good tax''.
Overall, Howard injected massive EU bureaucratic complexity into the tax system, for modest net benefit, through opportunistically changing positions, and using taxpayers' money to promote his proposal before the 1998 election.
Paul Pollard, O'Connor
ENCOURAGING SIGN
For two millennia the church has been reluctant to consider the new interpretations of our world revealed to and by scientists. It is encouraging to see that the writings of Charles Darwin may now be included in the liturgy (''An all-embracing view of the world'', February 1, p3).
This is just a beginning. In Darwin's time species were considered to be immutable but he drew attention to the importance of variation within species and how this could lead to the evolution of new species. With the escalation of our knowledge since Darwin it has become increasingly difficult to define the concept of species.
It is accepted by many that the notion is important for discussion and communication of ideas but in reality a ''species'' is a statistical concept based on fuzzy logic. If we cannot precisely define the species Homo sapiens how much more difficult must it be to cope with the concept of God?
Peter Snowdon, Aranda
SUPER NO HANDOUT
Dave Roberts (Letters, February 14), writes about the ''handouts'' that citizens receive if they have been judicious enough to save for their retirement. Where does Roberts think the funds in personal superannuation accounts (Self-Managed Super Funds) come from? Inheritance, lottery win? Usually it's by regular contributions over many years.
Is Roberts aware of the costs involved in running a SMSF, and the market risks that each member takes?
If more people took financial responsibility for themselves, such as saving 10per cent of gross income towards retirement in a SMSF, this would enable the ''rule of 72'; the power of compound interest and fully franked dividends to come into play, in a tax-sheltered environment.
Obviously, governments have calculated that it is financially prudent to encourage citizens to look after themselves, and offer the ''incentives'' that Roberts sneers at.
Biruta Jaugietis, Garran
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