Power shifts
In an address to the National Press Club on Monday, National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce recommended that regions should replace ''bankrupt'' states and one level of government in Australia should be eliminated ('''Bankrupt' states are finished, Joyce says'', May 12, p5).
Joyce also recommended a redesign of the Senate to better represent regional and rural interests.
Is it a coincidence that these proposals have been resurrected just when the ACT is celebrating 20 years of self-government?
The ACT is the closest thing to an electoral region in the nation, with no state barrier between it and its federal overseers, and if its legislative defects were corrected it could be an example of the advantages of regional government throughout the land.
Although it has politically confused responsibilities, these are minor compared with those of the 550 local governments themselves notoriously inefficient and further impeded by their anachronistic overseer states.
But who is to lead the nation out of this legislative mess? Certainly not its major party politicians who have long supported and profited from the present structure.
Perhaps a courageous maverick such as Joyce? Or maybe an organisation such as Get Up to lead the community in a political reform campaign to meet the challenges of the third millennium. Any takers?
Geoff Armstrong, Isaacs
When I'm 67
Whingeing aside, demographics indicate clearly that lifting the pension age to 67 is long overdue, reasonable, and responsible. When I was born, life expectancy was about 68. In 1990, life expectancy was about 75.
Working an additional two years is no big ask. But those born about 1990, whinge ''that is terrible''; ''I have to work longer''; ''I don't want to work longer"; ''I can't imagine working for another too many years'' ...
Live simply, smartly, and sustainably; save your money earnestly; then retire when you want. ''Old age'' comes later; taxpayer-funded retirement benefits should, too.
Judy Bamberger, O'Connor
Gaza confusion
Simon Leeds (Letters, May 11) seems to be confusing his United Nations inquiries into the Gaza war.
The one he is referring to was not chaired by Richard Goldstone.
An indication of the degree of bias from its findings is in its first recommendation. It called for Israel to apologise for its claims that Hamas fighters fired from the school in Jabaliya without mentioning the relevant facts. Israel only made those claims in response to Palestinian claims, backed up by UN officials, that Israeli shelling of the school killed 40 civilians. It subsequently emerged that the Israeli shells had not hit the school, but had hit the Palestinian position outside the school from which mortars were being fired, and that 12 were killed, only three of them civilians.
Leeds claims Israel escapes criticism for policies that would be condemned if carried out by any other country, but the opposite is the case, especially when it comes to the UN.
Israel is often condemned while far worse acts from other countries are routinely ignored. Also routinely ignored, as it was by this inquiry, is the violence to which Israel is responding.
Alan D. Shroot, Forrest
Library lunacy
The Greens are somewhat naive if they believe their presence in the Legislative Assembly will provide a more sustainable Canberra (''Greens show way'', May 8, p15).
They have been ''rolled'' yet again by Jon Stanhope, just as they were with the Unit Titles Act, by agreeing to the ''Kingston Shops Option'' for the reopening of the southside library.
I challenge Stanhope to produce one shred of evidence that the southside residents want their library in the Kingston shops (''New library turns the page on Griffith'', May 7, p5) rather than in the building that was originally refurbished at Griffith for the sole purpose of being a library. It is difficult to understand how anyone could agree to the incredible cost of renting and refitting an unsuitable shop in an unsuitable location when the Government already owns a library building in a suitable location. This is not a sustainable solution.
Stanhope's ''spin'' that ''Kingston is the ideal location for the inner-south library because it is a vibrant shopping precinct'' shows how out of touch he is with reality. Parking is virtually impossible close to the centre for most of the day and this is about to become far worse with Stanhope's recent proposal to hand over the last remaining Eyre Street parking area to a supermarket chain. Furthermore, with pay parking the only option, the ability to sit in the library and read a newspaper or magazine, or just browse will be unaffordable.
Please, forget the ''face-saving'' compromises and let some common sense prevail. Listen to the people on the southside and reopen the Griffith library which is also far more accessible to the youngsters that used it regularly after school. It was a genuine community centre, something the proposed ''shop front'' at Kingston could never become.
Murray Upton, Kingston
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