ACT public health sector employees have the right to conscientiously object to participating in any procedure which they find morally or ethically objectionable, particularly on religious grounds.
Dr Andrew Foote's concerns (''Fears of Calvary Hospital exodus'', April 27, p1) in relation to the proposed sale of Calvary Public Hospital are unfounded and possibly alarmist.
Certainly, nurses working within the ACT Public Health sector have, and do, exercise this right.
Foote believes that he won't be forced to perform procedures to which he objects. It is therefore unclear why he is so distressed by the prospect of the proposed sale.
It is also unclear why the sale will lead to the practice of nine-to-five obstetrics and delivery by elective caesarean sections. We are talking about the provision of public maternity services, not the statics reflected in private maternity units.
Jenny Miragaya, secretary, ACT branch of the Australian Nursing Federation
Power fudge
Paul Pollard (''Too many power holes in emissions trading scheme'', April 29, p11) showed why our proposed emissions trading scheme will not transform the elephant in the climate change room: the electricity generation sector.
But he fudged the story.
In listing wonderful new generation technologies that will be insufficiently encouraged by the scheme's expected low costs of carbon, he lists only renewables.
But the electricity generation sector is truly massive.
Gigantic.
And as he notes, it will grow even faster if we want to plug cars in.
Renewables won't come within a bulls roar of meeting burgeoning electricity demand, even at $50/tonne carbon.
Even his proposed Soviet-style national electricity transformation manager could see that.
If honest and pushed hard, his electricity tsar wouldn't try to plaster the whole country in windmills.
He'd start by telling the truth on Australia's considerable advantages in relation to safe nuclear power.
Tom Waring, Ainslie
Water courses
Several readers have recently expressed their annoyance over the perpetual failure of the ACT Government to provide water reliably and cheaply to ACT ratepayers and consumers.
They might be more annoyed if they read page 5 of Actew's 2004 Future Water Options report (actew.com.au/FutureWaterOptions/ documents/assessmentReport.pdf) which states the ACT has enough water to supply more than a million people.
Their annoyance might smoulder further if they look up page 6 of the September 2007 ACT Government report on Next Steps to Ensure Water Security for the ACT Region (www.thinkwater.act.gov.au/morein formation/documents/Water Securityreportweb. pdf) and see the footnote which admits that ACT consumers only use 6 per cent of the total available water resource.
Perhaps readers would also be interested to know that the ACT Government, through its counsel, publicly asserted in the Federal Court on April 7 that the ACT had vested the territory's water resources in itself and that the ACT Government can therefore charge whatever it likes for water, being now effectively the monopoly owner.
Dr Terry Dwyer, Canberra City
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