Howard is responsible for unfair treatment of David Hicks
It is disturbing to read that severe agoraphobia and panic attacks are among the ravages of the mistreatment of David Hicks.
Early this year John Howard was reported as saying he could have had Hicks repatriated at any time. Howard played politics with Hicks. He abandoned his fellow Australian citizen to the utterly discredited process of the United States military commissions at Guantanamo hearsay evidence, testimony obtained by coercion, and retrospective legislation all being involved.
Howard hid behind this Bush Administration's travesty of justice, lacking the courage to attempt to have retrospective legislation passed in Australia Hicks's alleged activities were not against Australian law as it then stood and have Hicks repatriated to face trial.
As Howard enjoyed his Christmas Day with his family, I doubt there was any thought of the Hicks family, whose son has been broken by the excesses of the unaccountable might of the Bush Administration and his self-serving acceptance of those excesses. Howard should be brought to book.
Dennis Hale, Beecroft, NSW
WorkChoices lingers
I enjoyed Pryor's cartoon with its headstone remembering WorkChoices and with memorial flowers from John Howard (December 22, pB6).Unfortunately, the sentiment is wrong.
The Rudd Government is keeping much of WorkChoices. Existing AWAs continue till December 31, 2012. New AWAs can be introduced until Labor's first stage IR laws are passed probably May or later in 2008. Individual Transitional Employment Arrangements, AWAs in disguise, will be available for the next two years. Common law contracts are AWAs under another name. Bans on union rights of entry and secondary boycotts will remain. Simplifying awards will strip workers' conditions in the name of efficiency. The Australian Building and Construction Commission moves to Fair Work Australia in 2010. Putting the attack dog in a new kennel isn't abolition.
Unfair dismissal laws and the 10 safety net standards (which do not appear to cover overtime or penalty rates) will not take effect until 2010. Employers can unfairly sack workers till then.
John Passant, Kambah
UAIs don't add up
Philip Rasmus (Letters, December 26) again seeks to blame The Canberra Times for grave problems with ACT University Admissions Index scores that Rasmus, as a long-standing Board of Senior Secondary Studies member, is largely responsible for.
As a senior mathematics teacher, Rasmus has no excuse for failing to see that the ACT UAI calculation process is a complete farce. A competent mathematician should recognise the low and sometimes negative correlations between the ACT Scaling Test and subject scores prove every year that the scaling process for ACT UAIs is nonsensical producing a complete lottery for most children in most colleges in most years.
If the Australian National University reduced its minimum UAI cut-off from 75 to about 65, and if the ANU and University of Canberra significantly expanded programs like the excellent UC-Start program (which sensibly avoids crossword-like entry tests and other petty tripwires), then Rasmus might have a sounder basis for his claim that the ANU and UC offer alternative pathways to ensure nobody unfairly misses out on funded uni places. Current ANU and UC admissions policies don't go close to overcoming the damage done by grossly incompetent ACT UAI calculation processes, on which Rasmus and others on the BSSS (including ANU and UC representatives) have approved over many years.
Mark Drummond, Kaleen
When are people going to stop getting excited about fluctuations in petrol prices?
The latest example is criticism by NRMA president Alan Evans, and the ACCC, of increases in prices just before Christmas and the holiday season ("Petrol prices may sneak up", December 23, p4) Evans saying there's "no logical or reasonable explanation" for it; and the ACCC asking the oil companies to explain discrepancies between "Australian retail prices and the international [price]".
Don't they realise that an increase in demand for a product automatically results in an increase in its price?
That's the normal economic forces of supply and demand at work, and it applies to petrol just as much as any other product. And there's no doubt that the demand for petrol increases during the holiday season.
Evans might call it "greedy", but it's really only human nature for everyone to try to maximise their financial situation.
And, incidentally, in saying the oil companies are being "greedy" (like workers trying to maximise the wages they get, or car buyers shopping around for a good price), Evans should remember that petrol retailers as well as the oil companies determine the price of petrol.
R.S. Gilbert, Turner
R.S. Gilbert (Letters, December 22) has fallen into the trap of only considering one side of a trading relationship with respect to the proposal from the ACCC to introduce FuelWatch.
To have fair markets you need both buyers and sellers to make informed choices and have access to the same information.
At present the trading relationship between buyers of petrol and sellers of petrol is skewed in favour of the sellers because sellers have more information available than buyers and so they can set their prices to maximise returns while the buyers have to work much harder to minimise cost.
Setting a maximum price for the next day but allowing the seller to drop the price but not increase it is one way of redressing the information balance but another, perhaps better, way is to require petrol stations to post any changes in prices 30 minutes before they are made.
Consumers could then subscribe to a service which would text message them the lowest price from their selected set of service stations just before they are about to make a purchase.
This service could be given at no cost to the taxpayer as it would be paid for by the buyer but it does require petrol stations to supply price changes and so requires ACCC intervention.
Kevin Cox, Ngunnawal
Canberra is a city with one of the lowest urban densities in the world.
It is a city designed for the car in the past when peak oil and global warming were unimaginable.
The qualities that we love as residents the bushland, open spaces and garden suburbs are also the barriers to greater utilisation of public transport.
Canberrans will continue to use cars for most travel until vastly increased fuel prices force them to alternatives, and therefore we must consider encouraging the use of cars that cause less environmental damage.
An advantage for cars using less that 5lt/100km could be minimal registration fees.
Very small cars, less than 2.5m long, should have free parking.
There would be a significant impact upon Canberra's greenhouse emissions if there was a large-scale change to smaller and more fuel efficient cars.
Chris Bourke, Aranda