His attributes of selflessness, obvious outstanding caving ability and remarkable ability to apply his very capable medical knowledge and ability in an extreme and challenging environment, must rate as one of the highest levels of achievement in recent times.

As Australians we are extremely proud of his most important part played out in another part of the world.

Dr Harris would be a very worthy recipient of an Order of Australia Medal.

One cannot overlook the tragedy that took the life of a rescuer.

Vale Saman Gunan.

Our condolences to Dr Harris whose father passed away while he was assisting with the rescue.

Martin Devine, Macarthur

M. Koziol describes hallway greetings between Senator Leyonhjelm — "G'day, hot chick" — and Senator Hume — "G'day, handsome." Hume asserts this banter is "totally harmless," "fun and it makes life colourful." ("Seeing Red", July 8, p.11).

Leyonhjelm and Hume somehow agreed such repartee is silliness and accept that teasing while passing in hallways is "OK." But words between Leyonhjelm and Senator Hanson-Young — on the Senate floor (!!!) — was never friendly banter. Certainly Hanson-Young never agreed to statements like those made by Leyonhjelm; his comments came during a formal, public, contentious debate versus friendly banter and privately.

Poor judgment by Leyonhjelm? [Hume] Absolutely!

Hanson-Young "foolish to put it all on Hansard ... [s]he shouldn't have made it a big deal"? [Hume] Absolutely NOT! Leyonhjelm violated a Senator's privacy and used the floor of Parliament to accuse the Senator of vulgar, immoral behaviour. Society determines that the behaviours asserted by Leyonhjelm are immoral; English dictionaries define the offending words as "vulgar."

Former Parliamentarian Cheryl Kernot put it well: "[The public] remember[s] the sexist slurs, so you get a bit defined by them ... And we might just forget everything else that [Hanson-Young's] done."

The tragic truth of this — when I moved to Australia (2000), people discussed Kernot's "affair" not "accomplishments" ... illustrating how tough Australia is on female politicians.

Even though I found Hanson-Young's use of a "vulgar" term inappropriate, I support fully her publicising Leyonhjelm's "vulgar" comment. I wish her the best in her suit against him.

Judy Bamberger, O'Connor

On Wednesday evening, senior executives of Transport Canberra addressed a meeting of the Inner South Canberra Community Council on the planned revision of the ACTION bus network and light rail Stage 2 (LRS1) (Civic-Woden), as they had done in the previous week at Tuggeranong and Woden Community Councils.

On buses, attendees at these meetings were not enamoured at all with the planned ACTION service, or lack thereof, to say the least.

On light rail, in response to the question of "How much is too much to pay for LRS2?", no figure was offered but implied "whatever it costs!", ie this Government does not care about how much it will cost. To illustrate the nonsense that is the Rattenbury/Barr election promise of the Woden link, based on the Governments own estimate of $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion for construction only, the total project cost (build+finance+20 years of operations) will be from $3billion to $3.7 billion.

These sums would be repaid over the 20-year operations period at from $150 million to $185 million per annum (on top of the $70 million a year for Stage 1, all out of the infrastructure component of budgets). These figures also translate into a 20-year subsidy of $25 to $31 per passenger who rides this limited form of transport.

All Canberrans should ask themselves the following question: "For $3billion to $3.7billion, would I rather see it spent on a single 12 km tramline to benefit only a very few, or on an extensive network of modern electric, flexible and technologically upgradable buses, capable of servicing all of Canberra and of benefit to all Canberrans?"

With the exorbitant amount of money that light rail will chew up, the ACTION network will never be any more capable than it is right now.

Costings in this letter are based on technical papers accessible on www.canthetram.org.

M. Flint, Co-ordinator, Smart Canberra Transport

How much longer will it take before the Territory Government realises that the second stage of the light rail will be devastating to the heart of our city to say the least?

Have our political leaders thought about how ugly and unattractive it will be to the people of Canberra and the thousands of tourists who come to visit our beautiful city every year?

After reading (Letters, June 28) regarding the removal of century old cedars on the Commonwealth Avenue median and how devastating that would be to the landscape around the whole central national area in the Parliamentary Triangle I was dismayed.

I believe that Canberra icons such as Kings Avenue Bridge and Commonwealth Avenue Bridge should remain as they are; beautiful and untouched.

What is going to happen to City Hill with the light rail coming that way?

Daily express ACTION buses are still by far the best option for passengers commuting between the city and Woden and from the city back to Woden.

Don't forget buses will still be needed to transport people from their suburbs to the light rail stations.

The light rail on the north side of Canberra is already on its way from Gungahlin to the city.

Let's stop it there.

If there has to be light rail on the south side of Canberra it should run from Woden to the Tuggeranong Centre and stop there.

Let's not start uprooting and changing the landscape around the Parliamentary Triangle.

Progress is important but lets not destroy our history.

Keep Canberra beautiful.

Jenny Lee, Braddon

Douglas Mackenzie (Letters, July 6) is being a little disingenuous when he claims that power generated by wind and solar can be stored in batteries and used as dispatchable power.

The problem is the amount of power that can be stored and the length of time said stored power will last once dispatched.

The answer is "not long enough to run any industry or manufacturing plants".

Mark Sproat, Lyons

KPIs might be driving school teachers crazy (Ross Gittins "Work smarter not harder" CT July 11, p. 16) but spare a thought for those teaching English to adult migrants.

Competition for contracts and the admission of for-profit providers has totally eroded trust. Providers are paid for student attendance by the hour, noted every 15 minutes, and the minutes students may be absent from the classroom is strictly specified.

A massively complex (and inappropriate) assessment system determines eligibility for tuition and whether a person has met the progress KPI for every 200 tuition hours.

Two pieces of evidence for performances against each of eight minutely specified indicators in four different skills (learning, reading, writing and oral communication) must be documented in triplicate.

As the student is assessed against each indicator, the degree of "support" must be noted. Assessments are audited by the Quality Assurance provider.

Assessments are administered individually and take a minimum of two hours per student. Classes consist of 20 or more students.

If you do the maths, you won't be surprised that teachers say that their work now consists of doing assessments and marking the roll. This system of determining eligibility is creating long waiting lists of applicants for English tuition.

Teachers (now called "trainers") are resigning. The Adult Migrant English Program is no longer directed to teaching English for settlement but rather to complying with the fiction of the "robust key performance indicators" (as described by the Minister) that are actually destroying it.

Helen Moore, Spokesperson for adult English provision, Australian Council of TESOL Associations, Cook

Caitlin Abbott raises an important issue about the need for students to build their communication skills ("The subject students really need to study at uni", July 12, p.17).

A practice that would also help is if student career advisers stopped referring to communication skills as "soft" skills and promoted the development of well-developed social skills.

The art of getting along with people is not "soft" in any sense of the word. The community, politicians, bureaucrats and lobbyists need scientists who can relate well and clearly explain their work.

Ann Villiers, Scullin

Caitlin Abbott makes an important point when she describes the lack of communication skills among her university students.

Her experience is not surprising.

In my many years of teaching in high schools and colleges in the ACT, it was assumed that "anyone can teach English". Certainly very few English teachers that I encountered had studied a full English program at tertiary level. Effective teaching of argumentative essay writing and communication requires specialist training and this should be compulsory for all teacher trainees before they are qualified to teach English.

Otherwise, we are failing our students.

This is especially important since an increasing number of students do not have English as their first language.

Glenda Naughten, Farrer

It was cheering to read Liberal MP Andrew Hastie's defence of Australian democracy and the need to preserve its values over time, indeed by implication "generationally" ('Defending democracy a generational struggle, Australian MPs warn', canberratimes.com.au, July 11), just as the Chinese Communist Party did to maintain its grip on power.

However, my very next thought was to wonder why the Coalition government had fought so hard to silence the democratic, and generally dissenting, voices of social equity and climate justice organisations in Australia, firstly through its attacks on their charity status and secondly through its espionage and foreign interference laws.

While the 60 amendments to these laws dispel some of the disquiet surrounding them, lingering doubts remain over the very broad scope of what can be defined as "political" and what actions or words might be seen as bringing the government into "disrepute".

The Coalition's illegal bugging of East Timor during the offshore gas negotiations and the subsequent harassing of human rights lawyer Bernard Collaery and Witness K, stand out as an example of how easily democratic rights can be stifled (the public's right to know how a very wealthy country acts to deprive a barely born third world democracy of a fair share of its natural resources) and how a government's own actions can bring not only itself but the whole nation into disrepute. This government's dogged refusal to act decisively on limiting the devastating effects of climate change, especially on the poorer nations of the world, is yet another example of bringing Australia into disrepute, but no doubt MPs will feel safe from any legislative repercussions. Civil society's core right to criticise government vigorously is the non-negotiable democratic right that MP Andrew Hastie and other MPs need to keep in mind.

Margaret Roberts, Narrabundah

It was very heartening to hear the Prime Minister, in outlining his views on energy generation, observe that "government subsidising one technology or another ... is only going to result in higher prices" (PM backs measure to cut power prices, p.9, July 12).

Naturally he will begin by tackling the biggest, if most unnoticed, subsidy: ignoring the externalities of fossil fuel-based electricity generation.

The costs of those externalities range from significant impacts on human health and resultant healthcare expenses, through to potentially catastrophic impacts on the environment.

If these are accounted for responsibly, renewable electricity generation, which is already competitive with new build coal, will become overwhelmingly cheaper.

But if we fail to acknowledge and deal with this hidden subsidy that we are all paying every day, higher energy prices will be the least of our worries.

Felix MacNeill, Dickson

STAMP OUT DIVING

What great entertainment the semi-final of the world football match between England and Croatia turned out to be. The reason England lost was that their diving technique was inferior to that of their opponents. Unfortunately "faking" has now become part of the game worldwide, and it should be stamped out for the future good of the game.

Mario Stivala, Spence

EXPANDING INITIATIVE

China's one belt one road initiative could probably be expanded to two roads and a pair of trousers.

Rod Matthews, Fairfield, Vic

LATHAM'S SECOND CHANCE

There are those who say that if you're not a lefty when you're young you don't have a heart, while if you're not a righty when you're old, you don't have a brain. If so, then the guy with the biggest heart and most massive brain must be Mark Latham. We once had a chance to let this nonesuch lead the nation, but we foolishly let the opportunity slide. Now we may have another chance.

S W Davey, Torrens.

BLOW TO DIVERSITY FIGHT

Mark Latham's latest political vacillation, a recording in support of Pauline Hanson's party, is an embarrassment for equity and diversity campaigners.

Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor

RESCUE LESSON IN UNITY

Wonderful news that all the boys and their coach have been rescued. How brave were all the volunteer divers that kept risking their lives to accomplish such a difficult task. I love the fact that everyone, worldwide, was able to work together to get these boys out. What a shame we can't take an example from this exercise to unite.

Barbara Mecham, Melba

CONTRASTING FORTUNES

Great news from Thailand about the operation to save the trapped boys. Meanwhile 200 kids on Nauru and Manus are also praying for rescue.

Tim Hardy, Florey

RELYING ON MILITARY CASH

Of course Trump wants NATO countries to raise military spending. It's the only way he can keep the American economy breathing. America is the world's largest arms dealer.

Barry Healey, Toronto, Canada

MINISTER'S CAST-OFF

Did Boris Johnson return his government-issued pushbike to the pool or has he been using one of those share bikes and just dumped it like he did his PM?

Allan Gibson, Cherrybrook, NSW

POLITICS TURNS UGLY

The best argument against both Leyonjhelm's ridiculous party for one and Hanson's dodo-like exercise in political irrelevance is both think Latham may be the answer. It must have been an ugly question.

M. Moore, Bonython