Federal Golf Club development plan the 'least worst' option

I am a member of the club and have been for 38 years. Like a lot of members that I have spoken with I am not completely enamoured with the current proposal, but as the ACT government denied approval for the previous plan it is the better of the remaining options.

The matter of kangaroos has been raised. I don't know if an audit of numbers of our marsupials has been carried out, but as a regular visitor to the fairways (and the rough) I can honestly say I have never seen so many.

Some of them probably escaped from the Red Hill Nature Park during the cull some time ago. Regardless of where or when a development occurs at FGC, some land will be taken up by construction, so the land available for kangaroos to graze will be reduced. From memory, previously attempts were made to sterilise some does to reduce the population explosion, but that failed.

Having said that, if the development does not proceed, and FGC fails financially, which is a possibility, a previous member of the ACT government has already stated that the front nine holes would become the suburb of Federal and the back nine would be returned to the nature park.

That would obviously mean the FOFF members living in Garran and Hughes would wake up to the views of houses everywhere and the value of their properties reduced accordingly.

Progress is not always to everyone's liking but having FGC on Red Hill for the long term is certainly a plus for everyone.

The only publicly known certainty in the CIT contract and decision-making debacle is that costs to ratepayers will continue to mount. Procedural fairness must be provided but surely it is time to shed kid gloves when extending deadlines for those privileged, months ago, with the supply of the draft inquiry documentation for perusal and comment ("Watchdog still finalising CIT findings", April 25).

Still, this protracted review period also means that Messrs Barr, Steel and Rattenbury will also have had more months in which to consider this whole affair and work up wider administrative learnings and substantive responses that all ministers and directorates should take on board from July onwards.

When the Commission's interim findings are delivered, the government should be able to articulate its initial framework for action, one that also prioritises transparency and public accountability.

Much, much more than yet another Labor/Greens taskforce or review exercise needs to be committed to and rolled out before "the caretaker" period looms on the ACT election calendar.

Once upon a time, not long ago, we had an Australian society in which it was a pleasure to grow up. My parents never owned a home and all their cars were second hand but what a great community environment.

Much has changed in my short 80 years. We went from being a caring society in which people took pleasure in looking out for each other to becoming a selfish society. People are preoccupied with the pursuit of self-indulgent pleasure from sex, drugs or money and don't care about those they hurt in the process.

In my most recent days we have been bombarded with electronic devices which remove the human element. One example is the police force. I remember how comforting it was to see a police uniform in public.

I see a police force tied to their computers who never venture outside. But, as my dear mother used to say, "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves". Take care of the small things. Book that driver who fails to stop at a stop sign. The message will get out.

My challenge for my fellow citizens is to volunteer in some area that interests you. A lot of people in our poor society need help. You may prefer the outdoors, working in the bush or with animals. There are many areas available.

We still have many good people in our society. It is the selfish and the lazy who worry me.

Glenn Keys (Letters, April 26) calls for the ACT to introduce digital drivers' licences, in part to "minimise the environmental impact of traditional licences".

The environmental impact of printing and mailing one small plastic card every five years is minimal and insignificant. The real environmental impacts of a driver's licence are carbon dioxide emissions, toxic tyre dust, noise, congestion and everything else that comes with our car-centric society.

Moving to digital licences is still a good idea for numerous reasons, but let's not kid ourselves that this is about sustainability. For that, we need more investment in public transport, walking and cycling.

In his article "Anzac spirit lives on in young hearts" (April 25) Gary Ramage refers to deaths of Australian military during conflicts since 1885, including 41 in Afghanistan.

Jeff Kennet noted in his Remembrance Day speech 11 November 2016 that Australia had by then lost more returned military members to suicide than died in the Afghanistan war. I respectfully suggest military deaths by suicide should also be recorded in all such articles. Unless reminded, we will forget.

Military deaths by suicide are just as much due to the military members' war duty as any military death directly within the conflict zone. The difference is that military suicide is embarrassing for politicians. Death during service is recognised as heroic.

Military suicide is also heroic. It attempts to tell the stories of our neglect of military members who have been injured psychologically as a result of the trauma caused by war.

If the capital gains tax discount is to be removed - as it should - the former regime of indexing the cost base to inflation should be restored. This taxes real capital gain, rather than deeming someone "gained" because an asset maintained its relative value.

Claims the former regime was too complex are easily refuted: sellers of grandfathered assets were offered a choice of both methods and routinely calculated both to see which gave the more favourable result.

The true headache in CGT calculation is digging out the cost base from the deceased's files. This applies equally under the current discount system. Feed the historic cost base number into eTax and the ATO will do the calculation for you.

What is the maths behind the proposal to stick with the discount approach but halve it to 25 per cent ("Renewed calls for negative gearing fix", April 23)?

Bill Blair (Letters, April 22) suggests locating a nuclear reactor under Parliament House. Nuclear power is not just expensive with a poor safety record: it is very thirsty. It can use up to 300,000 litres of water to produce a megawatt hour of electricity.

Sea water can be used. Fukushima Daichi was located on the coast for this reason.

A traditional flow-through reactor in the ACT would use 1.9 billion litres of water a day.

Our current water storages provide half a billion litres of water per day to Canberra/Queanbeyan. It is simply impossible for our storage capacity to be expanded and still allow for agricultural and environmental flows to the Murray-Darling.

Darryl Johnston (Letters, April 22) flags wood smoke from wood heaters as a strong risk for public health. Many may not realise that humans inhale 11,000 litres of air every day on average, or nearly eight litres every minute. When the air contains health-harming PM2.5 particulates, that's not good for health. There is no recognised safe level for these particulates.

The PurpleAir real-time air quality map for Canberra gives PM2.5 values in micrograms per cubic metre across Canberra on a 24/7 basis. One can easily view this on the web and see values shooting up with high wood heater use or hazard reduction burning.

Real-time internet displays such as this can increase public awareness of how air quality worsens with domestic wood heater use and bushfire pollution.

The PurpleAir citizen-based measurements have been demonstrated by Dr Dorothy Robinson in Armidale to be as accurate as the more sophisticated monitoring used by the NSW government and Armidale Regional Council's DuskTrak measurements.

The ACT government has three main air quality monitoring stations, namely at Monash, Florey and Civic. The advantage of the PurpleAir network is that it offers much more localised monitoring all over Canberra.