STRATA DEMOCRACY
John Warhurst (''Get set for strata democracy'', January 26, p23) hit upon an interesting theme in describing strata-title politics as the growing focus of grass-roots democracy. With the ACT Labor Government having deliberately created a housing market in which young families are priced out of detached homes in order to force them, kicking and screaming, into flats along public transport routes, his observations are indeed timely.
He noted a few of the strata system's manifest deficiencies, missing others.
Take, for example, the tyranny of absentee landlords. If the business model of the landlord owning most of a block's units has him prefer to invest elsewhere, all maintenance and improvement stops dead.
Because real estate agencies managing body corporates value rich landlords' business much more than that of the diverse, minority owners/tenants, they'll obfuscate and allow such landlords to cut back and fall behind on payments just as much as they desire.
It is a microcosm of democracy; dysfunctional: replete with manipulation by big special interests, incompetence and corruption.
Just like on the big democratic stage.
Michael Jordan, Gowrie
INTELLIGENT DESIGN
Jim Pearson (Letters, January 25) does well to reject Richard Dawkins' reality magic. Reality magic contradicts itself: the former relating to intelligence and the latter to the absence of intelligence - but we may still be entertained by it.
Unfortunately, Pearson's preferred intelligent design lacks the dynamic nature of reality. How can something be designed that over 13 billion years or more never repeats itself from one moment to the next? Might then we look at the concept of potential?
I can't think of anything - past, present or future, that before its happening - before it existed - wouldn't have had the potential to happen. An onlooker going back to the big bang and comparing it with what followed, what is present now and what might be expected in the future, would have to say that the original bang had a lot of potential - unlimited probably.
Then we could view reality, not as something designed and constructed, but as an unfolding of potential over time: like a rose - starting as a seed with its DNA potential, then germinating and becoming a plant and producing buds which grow into flowers - a process of unfolding, not construction, all of which in principle is traceable back to the original big bang.
But, the ultimate truth and mystery of reality - existence - remains. As Tennyson's mythical Ulysses muses: ''Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' glimmers that untravelled world, whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move.''
Ralph Sedgley, O'Connor
It's Jim Pearson's right to believe in intelligent design, but until he can explain where the designer came from, his argument for it doesn't stack up as being credible. Saying that the world, and universe, is so complex that something must have created (or designed) it, doesn't answer where that something came from.
Presumably the designer is fairly complex too, so where did it come from? So, if a god created everything, then who created the god? Religion serves many purposes but it doesn't fulfil the role of rationally explaining our existence.
Peter Marshall, Captains Flat, NSW
NOT ACCEPTABLE
Neil James (Letters, January 27) shows himself as the ultimate defence force apologist. He mentions Bruce Kafer consulting the civil and military police. What humbug! The cadets concerned would have been immediately turfed out by any responsible institution for completely unacceptable and illegal behaviour.
That they were not, reflects a mindset in the Australian Defence Force Academy that in turn is completely unacceptable.
I find in James' letter not a word of sympathy for the girl concerned. She has been publicly humiliated and her prospects in the defence force compromised. I think the sympathies of most would lie with her and not the commandant.
Howard Carew, Isaacs
MEMORIAL LOCATION
The letters of Doug Hynd and David Groube (January 25) exhibit a compassion that must be admired. Alas, they also overlook some uncomfortable facts in relation to the SIEV X and its memorial.
The victims of this undeniably tragic accident were not Australian citizens. The vessel in which they were sailing was not Australian-owned, registered or crewed. They had not departed from an Australian port and were not in, nor had they passed through, Australian waters.
In this overcrowded and strife-torn world many people die every day in tragic circumstances, but we do not erect memorials to all and sundry. A memorial should have been erected at the Indonesian port of departure of the vessel. It would have served as a warning to subsequent adventurers of the risks of their voyage and a reminder of the responsibilities of Indonesian authorities in allowing overcrowded and unseaworthy vessels to leave.
Roger Quarterman, Campbell
ACTIVE SCHOOL TRAVEL
While the ACT Government looks at the survey findings of the physical activity or physical inactivity of the Year 6 students, (''One-quarter of Year 6 kids in the ACT overweight'', January 26, p7), it should also look at the decisions it made and did not make in 2006 during that Schools Renewal process.
One of the major findings of the survey has shown that there has been a considerable drop in the number of children walking and cycling to school. In three years, there was a 6per cent drop from already low figures in 2006 of 30.6per cent down to 24.3per cent in 2009. I would expect that the trend will continue to be downward in 2012.
The ACT Government has also failed to invest in infrastructure and policies that support walking and cycling to school. It is up to all parents to get their children to be more active but the Government could do considerably more.
Martin Miller, Chifley
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