The dignified refusal of our Attorney-General Simon Corbell to be stampeded into joining NSW in reproducing the panicky South Australian bikie legislation brought to mind Rudyard Kipling's words about keeping ''your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you'' (''ACT could become bikie oasis'', April 1, p7).
All too often in recent years we have seen politicians rush through legislation that has trampled underfoot civil liberties that our forebears have struggled and died for.
Moreover they do this in the name of improving security and effectiveness which they rarely assess.
Today I received my newsletter from Graham Long who does wonderful things at the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross. It includes the following: ''For what its worth I think the Government's intention to ban these groups is misguided at best. Sooner or later we'll have to discuss the simple answer to this problem which is to take the amphetamine market away from these groups.
''Once Abe Saffron built a massive fortune on gambling and the sex industry. Because these things were illegal, Saffron not only made a fortune, but he developed a sophisticated system of corruption with police and with politicians. Saffron's dominance was undermined and finally ended because the government took his market away.
''No amount of police attention ever worried Abe but when his market was taken away, he simply ceased to be the king pin of Kings Cross and his corrupting influence on public officials ended.''
Bill Bush, Turner
We can but won't
Unless there is a fundamental shift in mindset, whatever Minister for Education Andrew Barr has on his agenda to target the exodus from Government schools (''Government school exodus targeted'', April 2, p5) will not make a jot of difference. I fear all Barr will do is tinker and that will not be enough.
Behaviour management at most government high schools is a tragic farce and demonstrably fails to deal successfully and decisively with the more anti-social students within them.
The slavish compliance to failed process ensures that these students have a full four years to disturb and sometimes destroy the working environment of their peers.
Too many staff, worn down by excessive responsibility, have given up on expecting more.
New staff, knowing no better, assume that this is the way it has always been and live with it.
Principals, neutered by their contractual obligations to the Department of Education, are reluctant to make waves, while the directors of education remain largely ignorant of the situation in schools because they spend so little time in them.
Our political leaders, ill-informed and too pre-occupied with finding the middle road, implement ineffectual policy.
To this point the public service hierarchy and our political leaders have failed to give teachers and schools the support they deserve and need.
Mediocrity prevails.
We can do so much better but I doubt we will.
Graham Clews, Kambah
Car park nightmare
The proposed replacement multi-deck car park for The Canberra Hospital (''$41m hospital car park plan unveiled'', March 30, p3) is an overly tall, bulky, amorphous, unarticulated box with flood lights on top, that is dominating, and disrespectful of, the existing medical campus.
Its ''architecture'' is mere applique.
It's in the wrong place because it precludes the functional and cost-effective expansion of the hospital, and will significantly increase traffic in suburban Garran.
It should be across Yamba Drive, on the site of the (recently but prematurely installed) existing surface car park, integrated with allied health components, including rent-paying occupants to help defray costs.
That would enable an attractive, low-rise structure, re-cycling most of the existing multi-deck car park, with covered pedestrian bridges, and vehicle access to/from Yamba Drive, via queuing bridges.
Photovoltaic cells and rainwater tanks should be incorporated.
Jack Kershaw, Kambah
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