Ogden Nash once wrote a poem entitled Bankers are just like anybody else, except richer.

In that poem he enunciated the first rule of bankers, that they must never lend money to anybody unless they don't really need it.

Australian bankers obviously know Nash only too well.

Robert Willson,

Deakin

PASSPORT PAINS AGAIN

I can vouch for the passport pain suffered by Andre{aac}e Stephens (''Need a passport? Take your tent'', June 28, p25) and J. Bennett (Letters, July 5).

I fronted a post office at 3.40pm. The queue was long, and I reached the counter at 4.05pm only to be told, quite impersonally, to read the sign on the wall that notes passport applications are not serviced after 4pm. At another post office, I was told my photo showed me smiling: unacceptable.

For my third attempt, I fronted up to yet another post office (because I uttered inappropriate words at the previous two) with a new photograph. This was deemed unacceptable because of the flash reflection on my spectacles.

Another photo, minus spectacles, was rejected yet again because I was told that if you normally wear spectacles you should be photographed with them on.

I went to yet another post office, with the same photo, and it was deemed OK. However, I had used white-out on the application form unacceptable.

In total frustration, I obtained a new form, extracted the relevant section and filled it out again.

Back to the post office. Unacceptable the bar codes on the different sections didn't match! More expletives.

Finally, I re-did the complete form, with matching barcodes, and got through the entire process unscathed at yet another post office.

Greg Jackson,

Kambah

CHILDHOOD OBESITY

While acknowledging that Freda Kemp (Letters, July 9) raised her children according to the best advice available at the time, if her consequent hypothesis on why children are obese is correct, my two children should be enormous.

As babies, both were fed whenever they needed a feed and their requirements varied markedly from day-to-day.

We took both to church as toddlers and, yes, because the service usually coincided with their morning tea time, took them a fruit snack.

Now at the ages of six and four, both have always been a healthy weight and have an excellent attitude to food and eating.

The causes of obesity in childhood are complex.

But I believe that allowing my children as babies to choose when they fed and how much they had in a feed helped them to self-regulate their food intake and was the basis of their current good health.

Alison Jones,

Duffy

INDIGENOUS LEGAL WAYS

The ACT Women Lawyers Association of the ACT fully supports Attorney-General Simon Corbell's efforts to lobby Federal Attorney-General Robert McLelland to restore funding to a legal service for indigenous women in Canberra.

However, it is disappointing that the ACT Government hasn't of itself been able to provide greater support for the Indigenous Women's Law Support project at the Women's Legal Centre.

Indigenous women are the most disadvantaged group in Australia, including legally.

To date, the law support project has been enormously successful. Most indigenous women with legal problems cannot access usual legal aid resources for their most common legal problems.

The Aboriginal Legal Service and Legal Aid services are focused mainly on criminal offenders, who are mostly men.

For this reason, women are often conflicted out of being able to access the same legal providers as the perpetrator. It is common for women to need legal assistance as victims. They are generally unable to access or afford private representation, and up until the introduction of the Indigenous Women's Law Support project, were not comfortable accessing the ACT Women's Legal Centre. That project has gradually introduced indigenous women to the centre, but only with careful liaison and dedicated specialist staff.

Canberrans would want to do the very best for those with least access to justice indigenous women. We should not let the hard work to date come undone.

Leonie Kennedy,

president, Women Lawyers Association ACT Inc

MEGALO AND MUSIC

I agree with Ric Hingee's assertion that governments ''are elected to govern well'' (Letters, July 7). Part of governing well is to have a sound economic policy, including the best use of available resources and judicious expenditure practice.

Neither of these criterion are evident in the proposal that Megalo Print Studio be allowed a permanent home in the old Fitters Workshop (''Fight looms over future of Kingston workshop'' July 4, p5). Both Alison Alder (Letters, July 7) and Patsy Payne (Letters, July 9) demonstrate in their correspondence that all that Megalo Print Studio really needs is a good tin shed with a concrete floor.

Such a facility is readily available at reasonable cost from a couple of firms who regularly advertise on local TV.

But they have sought to use the Fitters Workshop which has been described as having the best acoustics in Australia with money to be spent on internal modifications.

There is a crying need for a venue of such size and characteristics for the music and choral groups of the ACT and surrounding region, and to construct anew such a purpose built facility would cost millions.

To give the Fitters Workshop over to any other use, especially one that requires additional expenditure, is an opportunity foregone and a flagrant breach of sound economic principles; an act for which any government should be roundly condemned.

Paul Legge-Wilkinson,

Campbell

LOSERS ON TOBACCO ROAD

Joe Murphy's justified anxiety to reduce deaths from tobacco consumption leads him to declare: ''let's ban tobacco. Today'' (Letters, July 9).

Not so fast. Custom's latest annual report has it that in 2007-08 authorities seized at the border 287.5tonnes of smuggled tobacco leaf and 106.8m cigarette sticks representing attempted tax evasion of $114 million. Substantial domestic seizures are in addition.

The law of diminishing returns would seem to be at work.

Based on the experience with illicit substances about nine times the amount seized will be getting to the market.

There's a Malay saying that when elephants fight the grass is trampled. The ultimate losers in this conflict are people and their health.

Bill Bush,

Turner

WORDS FAIL HIM

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was seen on TV ''grabs'' (July 9) advising leaders at the G8 forum that their plans for dealing with climate change lacked ''detailed programmatic specificity''.

The comments do not seem to have been picked up by the print media.

Maybe this is because editors are wary of terminological inexactitude.

Peter Baskett,

Murrumbateman, NSW

DOWN RUDD'S CRUSADE

D.G. Frampton (Letters, July 8) wonders why the PM is meeting the Holy Father to promote the cause of Mary McKillop.

Dear naive D.G., he is sucking up to the Catholic vote.

The idea of ''making'' someone a saint is rather odd, isn't it? Primarily, of course, the expression ''saint'' used in the Bible refers to living persons, officially recognised or not.

As a good Proddy, the PM does not believe that Old Red Socks can ''make'' anyone a saint.

Interestingly, the only person ever ''made'' a saint by the Church of England was Charles II, in 1660, he not historically being a particularly saintly person.

Peter Benson,

Kambah

BUSES MIGHT GET THEM

Maree Philip (Letters, July 9) must be one of the very few pedestrians who have the ''approach-with-caution vibe each morning'' while they walk through the Civic bus interchange.

As a regular user of the interchange, I am regularly transfixed at the antics of some of my fellow users.

Many of whom walk through the intersection while texting on their mobiles, listening to their iPods or drinking their morning coffee.

All this, instead of watching out for bus traffic.

After all it is a bus interchange, not a pedestrian mall.

Alan Kennett,

Amaroo