The new Cotter Dam will not diversify Canberra's water supply, it will lead to a range of environmental impacts and, relative to at least one other option, it is very expensive.

Given Canberra already has the most expensive water of any major Australian city and the territory's budget is also under pressure, a re-examination of water supply options is required. But rather than providing confidence that approval of the new dam will be assessed on its merits, the ACT Government has asked ACTPLA to cease work in assessing the development application and comments received from the community (''Call-in powers used for Cotter'', August27, p1).

Actew may not be directly accountable to the people of Canberra but, come election time, the Stanhope Government will be.

Drew Collins

Garran

I am appalled that households will have to pay an additional $100 per year to cover the cost of the $213million budgetary blow-out of the cost estimates for the Cotter Dam expansion (''Bills up to cover Cotter blow-out'', September 3, p1).

Actew is now more profitable than it has ever been, due to the various price increases to water charges to ''protect this precious resource''. Its costs have not increased by anything near the increased charges.

Actew and the ACT Government have strived to convince the rate-paying households that it is in our interests to accept the highest water charges in Australia in order to ensure our water supply into the future.

The Canberra Times article makes no mention of any Actew contribution towards fixing this underestimation and only indicates that we (the ratepayers) will have to find another $100 per year.

This amount does not allow for other increases which Actew will no doubt be seeking on an annual basis.

David Lang

Weetangera

Where will the water come from to fill the enlarged Cotter Dam? How long will the pipelines from the Murrumbidgee River and Tantangara Dam have something to carry?

How can the ACT Government continue to promote the growth of Canberra's population when clearly we do not have enough water for the people we have?

How much more anxiety are we willing inflict on those who cannot and should not be asked to afford the ever-increasing cost of water, this time to finance projects of extremely dubious potential efficacy?

One is forced to the conclusion that we are being ''served'', in a time of enormous crisis, by people who are short on logical thought and community responsibility.

Ed Highley

Kambah

RETURN SALVO

I will not waste a torpedo on Peter Fuller's insults towards those who do not agree with the official version of the loss of HMAS Sydney (''HMAS Sydney: will facts silence the doubters?'', Panorama, August 22, p15) but, having been shown his review of the Hore and Mearns books, he should be advised that Royal Navy Captain Peter Hore produced a decoding of a Kormoran action report that had been decoded decades ago in Australia and my decoded copy from the National Archives is dated 1998, a decade before Hore had to inform the archives that he named the wrong code in his decode sent to the archive in Canberra.

The German dictionary decode by Mearns appears in the volumes of the 1997-99 [Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade] report. Those men were tasked respectively with searching British files and finding the ships (where they were supposed to be anyway), not producing johnny-come-lately battle accounts.

Commissioner Terence Cole decreed it ''inexplicable'' that Captain Joseph Burnett should have come so close. Just a few reasons why are: to send a boarding party to check documentation; to prevent Kormoran scuttling; to secure possible prisoners; to seize documents; and to capture a valuable ship that may have been a supply ship. The [Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade] found a strong case for a covert underwater torpedo tube being fired and Defence Signals Directorate submitted that signals after the action may have been missed by Signals Intelligence.

Cole, exercising ersatz martial law, also was totally wrong in saying no raider had got so close to Australia before.

He missed at least three.

David Kennedy

Newport, NSW

JUDGING THE JUDGES

Bouquets for the Canberra Times, once again by demonstrating that there are always two sides and sometimes more to an argument.

The Chief Justice's displeasure with the Attorney-General going public about his reasoning on the issue of a fifth judge for the ACT needed airing (''Chief Justice's fury at Corbell'', September 2, p1) but then the public's concerns about local courts' practices and output warrant disclosure too.

Victims of assaults, robberies, catastrophic fires and other problems which make courts participants in aftermaths are likely to hold to a collective view that Simon Corbell is on the money through implying that the Chief Justice's domain is delusional, myopic, precious and vacillating.

Whether it's an aggrieved woman who cannot secure justice because a thoroughly drunk male can't form the intention to belt the daylights out of her, or that Nanette Porritt's son stabbed his mum more than 50 times but only about four constituted a ''wound'' in law, or that the killer of Clea Rose could act with impunity and run amok before and after her death due to local bail policies, what we face in the ACT is a situation where our courts need examination by outsiders.

After all, if the courts can dissect the operations of every facet of Australian life via royal commissions and sundry enquiries, stakeholders in our democracy all of whom have had to change the way they do business in the modern age should be allowed to question courts' modus operandi, output and decisions because judges and barristers do not have a mortgage on analysis, synthesis, balance and detachment or, for that matter, integrity.

Patrick Jones

Griffith

WHERE ARE THE REPORTS?

Another review to be undertaken, this time into the public service (''Rudd to revamp public service'', September 4, p1). This must bring the total of new reviews, agencies and committees since the general election to over 100.

Probably these reviews are funded using taxpayers' money.

It therefore seems reasonable to ask that the Government release the reports of all these investigative reviews and committees and advise all Australians, for whom they govern and whose money they so liberally spend, what and when their recommendations, if any, are to be implemented.

N. Bailey

Murrumbateman, NSW

I agree with the Community and Public Sector Union national secretary, Stephen Jones (''Rudd to revamp public service'', September 4, p1).

Kevin Rudd's ''fulsome'' praise of public servants was indeed excessively and insincerely lavish.

Peter Cartwright

Pearce

MORE-DANGEROUS ANIMALS

The headline ''Animal crash risk highest near the ACT'' (August 28, p10) was colourful, but the story was great.

Having been indoctrinated by the ACT Government to believe that there is a kangaroo on every street corner with your number plate on it, some balanced research by Dr Daniel Ramp suggests that only 1 per cent of accidents are recorded as relating to animals, and of those it seems less than half are due to kangaroos and wallabies.

That's my reading of the numbers, anyway.

Ramp also points the finger at driver education and behaviour as the best solution to stop cars hitting animals on the road.

It was interesting to learn that drivers are more vigilant during poorer weather than when road conditions are good.

So, can we now stop demonising kangaroos and focus on the 99.5 per cent of all other causes of road accidents?

Oh, and sensitive town planning that incorporates and retains safe wildlife habitat would be good, too.

Philip Machin

Wamboin, NSW