With no experience in public broadcasting she sought to impose inappropriate commercial media solutions in programming and staffing, which have proved totally unsatisfactory both internally and externally.

In Canberra we experienced it at firsthand through the unjustifiable sacking of Genevieve Jacobs (with a resultant drop in local radio quality), while similar poor decisions have been made across the country. I am sorry for Guthrie for losing her job, but not as sorry as I am for the professional people forced out by her approach and the "dumbing down" of program standards she presided over.

I hope the ABC board will also learn from the experience and find a new managing director who has a full understanding of the ABC's role and its institutional status.

Eric Hunter, Cook

I don't know if Michelle Guthrie deserved to be sacked but I do know that when I moved to Canberra five years ago ABC Canberra was the best ABC bureau I had ever encountered. Its counterparts in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane could not compete for quality.

In Guthrie's time that changed. Wonderful veteran staff were lost in droves. Great work is still being done by new and remaining staff but in ever decreasing quantities. Music, pre-recorded segments, and content from outside the region are increasingly prevalent.

The Canberra Times reported that veteran journalists were being whittled down by a Hunger Games style of management (May 2). The loss of Genevieve Jacobs and Marcus Kelson was a loss of 100 years of collective regional knowledge.

I've since lost count of the times ABC Canberra has dropped the ball on breaking news.

Two years ago, no commercial outfit would've beaten ABC Canberra to a breaking news story. This is what happens when you have the right mix and numbers of excellent veteran and junior journalists. But this change happened under Guthrie's watch.

Andrew White, Franklin

It takes the sacking of an ABC managing director who had been valiant in the face of party-politically instigated cuts and ensured investigative journalism went right ahead, to bring us to scrutinise just whom the ABC board has been stacked with. Two ABC staff aside, corporate types all, with property development, mining, agribusiness, and the financial and stock markets prominently represented.

I guess they won't have any trouble appointing a replacement with a "leadership style" and "relationship with the government" more to their liking – perhaps Lachlan Murdoch, any shock jock, Gina Rinehart, Georgina Downer or any other IPA-affiliated operative.

Alex Mattea, Kingston

The news that Michelle Guthrie has been sacked as the head of the ABC is a glowing tribute to her. Her efforts to maintain the ABC in the face of ruthless financial cuts by the Liberals has earned her approval from all ABC watchers. To be disliked by the rednecks and the bigots that make up the conservative side of our media is high praise.

I think the next elections will see different government and a different ABC board.

Howard Carew, Isaacs

Well, our rates notice arrived on Friday. From what I had read in the Letters section to date, I was ready for the bad news. Since 2009 our rates have increased 109 per cent, whereas between 2009 and 2017 CPI has increased about 20 per cent.

The ACT government has extracted an additional 89 percentage points above CPI and for what? Nothing. We still have cracked footpaths. We still have public areas that are not properly maintained. We still have graffiti all over the place.

Oh, that's right, the increase in rates is to move the income generated from stamp duty on house sales to rates, based on a report that called stamp duty an inefficient tax (what the hell is an efficient tax?).

And then we have the fact that when we bought our house in 2009, we paid the full stamp duty and now, the government is extracting an additional amount through the rates system. It may be a benefit for those who have enjoyed reduced stamp duty (but it's going to take years to actually bring it down), but for those of us who paid full stamp duty, it's double dipping by the government.

Based on the way the rates are increasing, when I retire my annual rates will be a huge percentage of my fixed income.

But I guess that's what Mr Barr wants. Get all the old folk out of town so he can make Canberra the "Cool Capital".

Tony Firth, Narrabundah

Thank you, Warwick Davis, for your economic viewpoint ("A death with dignity", Letters, September 24) on assisted dying.

I agree we should all have the right to end our lives if we are ready to leave this world. However, the tone of your letter shows an intense lack of compassion for a group of people in our community who are living with dementia.

Your choice of words, "dementia-ridden animal", and additional comments, are highly offensive.

There are more than 436,000 people living with dementia in Australia, and about 250 join them each day. (www.dementia.org.au/statistics) These people, along with their carers (usually family members) and extended family work tirelessly to break down the stigma of this insidious disease so those with dementia can remain active in society.

Dementia is not just an old persons' disease. In Australia, about 26,000 people are living with younger onset dementia. Dementia takes many forms and each type manifests itself in different ways, and in the end stages of the disease it is cruel for all concerned. To refer to people living with dementia as "animals" adds another dimension of cruelty for them, and their loved ones.

Sally Pertzel, Kambah

In Saturday's Canberra Times Finbar O'Mallon reports the ACT government charges a $10 fee to buy a three- or six-month car registration. The renewal document states "a surcharge is included for registration periods of less than 12 months". Well, our registration is due so I thought I would look into the $10 fee option. If I bought 12 months registration it would cost me $952.50; six months costs $495.20 and three months $255. My maths tells me there is a $16.88 fee in a three-month purchase ($67.52 annualised) and an $18.95 fee in a six-month purchase ($37.90 annualised).

Are you sure the government is only earning $3million a year from this fee?

Valdis Juskevics, Flynn

We can still read headlines such as "Does new cybersecurity proposal go too far?" (September 23, p13) but for how long? Most of the criticism of the Assistance and Access Bill 2018 centres on "Australia's less than exemplary record on handling sensitive data".

There is a presumption of the reliability of the government's good intentions despite the essence of the legislation being to outlaw any communications to which the government is not privy. To counter any possible objection to this requirement the paedophile card is slammed down. Nobody can object to stopping it.

The only other objection mentioned apart from the enormous penalties proposed, the futility of the exercise in cost-benefit terms, came from a former AFP detective superintendent turned cybersecurity professional.

What happens when sedition segues into simple opposition to government policy? What happens when commercial data is used to bolster the position of the government's own enterprises? What happens when medical information is used for employment selection?

Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor

Why are chaplains not only allowed but funded in our public school system, which I understood was meant to be secular? And to say that they are not permitted to proselytise is a joke ("Chaplaincy faith course for schools encouraged", September 24, p4). Why else are they there? And are they required to have any formal teaching or counselling qualification, as all other teachers are?

If chaplains do not teach religion I am not quite sure what they do, but I understand that they also support students seeking help. They may be caring and well-meaning, but if, for example, a distressed young girl wanted to discuss an abortion, how objective, non-judgmental and knowledgeable could a chaplain be if they came from a religion with entrenched views on such things. If students seek help or advice what they need and deserve is a well-informed, trained, professional counsellor, not a chaplain. Presumably these chaplains come from various Christian churches. Do we also encourage and fund representatives of other religions – Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc – to come into our public schools and take part in their programs? If the objective is to broaden students' thinking and their understanding of the world around them, then every religion should be included. Better still, however, would be to introduce courses in ethics and philosophy, taught by properly trained teachers – not chaplains. There is no role for them in a secular public education system.

G. Ford, Kambah

Australians already have freedom of religion. Like other freedoms, it's not absolute; we have freedom of speech, but I'm not allowed to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre, and your freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose. Scott Morrison is now proposing that the religious equivalents of those restrictions be lifted. What we don't have is freedom from religion, and we won't as long as religions pay no tax and our tax dollars go to supporting their schools. Unscrambling that toxic omelette is going to take a lot of money, at least some of which should come from taxes on churches. But unscramble it we must.

Fred Pilcher, Kaleen

The plastic bag problem is not how many we use ("Plastic usage returning to pre-ban levels", September 21, p3). The problem is we do not use the best available disposal method in theACT.

Some states have extensive plastic waste collection and a recycling program. For more than 20 years the plastic recycling company has produced a range of products and has grown to become Australia's leading plastic product manufacturers. Replas has since developed world-leading technologies at our plastic recycling centre to reprocess Australia's waste into robust recycled plastic products for outdoor use. Instead of chopping down trees for so-called "treated pine" sleepers we could utilise sleepers made from recycled plastics.

The next ACT election is due in two years. Voters would do well to remember that Mr Green, Shane Rattenbury, has given us the tram: slow, inflexible routes at great expense. We could have had modern buses serving every conceivable route by now. While Mr Rattenbury forced the ALP to give him a tram, our plastic wastes piled up in landfill. Thick plastic, thin plastic, plumbing and electrical poly pipe waste, polystyrene foam – oh, so much polystyrene foam. Only by exhuming our landfill dump areas can we establish just how much plastic waste has been buried, out of sight, away from every government's mind. Then we can start to know our plastic problem.

Warwick Davis, Isaacs

The Australian Bureau of Statistics published its quarterly population figures last week for the year ending March 31, 2018. In that year, the ACT grew by 8500 people, or by 2.1 per cent compared with a national rate of 1.6 per cent.

On the basis of 2.7 people per household, that means another 3000 or so housing units needed to be built in Canberra to accommodate the extra 8500 people. Were they? Certainly a lot of new suburbs are popping up along Horse Park Drive in Gungahlin, but Canberra may be running out of room. Forde, for instance, already abuts the NSW border. At the end of March, the ACT had 419,200 people.

When is the growth going to stop? At half a million? When we run out of water? Or when traffic grinds to a halt?

Jenny Goldie, Cooma, NSW

It is time for a new vision of an integrated schools system. This would result in all Australian schools being treated fairly by coming under a national system and thus for funding equally by the federal government, with the ability for all school systems and individual schools to be able to use additional funds from other sources, with all adhering to minimum standards of staffing and adequate achievements.

This also seems an appropriate move for higher standards emulating the Finnish school system that consists of only public schools, with some of the highest standards in the world.

Geoff Henkel, Farrer

BISHOP IN THE DARK

How sad to see Julie Bishop fall for the "poor me and it wasn't our fault" 60 minutes interview.

Even now she cannot see the failure that was Malcolm Turnbull, which he continues to reaffirm daily with silly tweets from his sanctuary in New York.

Mark Sproat, Lyon

RAMPANT ROOS

Frankie Seymour (Letters, September 21) claims that culling will result in the extinction of our kangaroos. Having recently driven more than 6500 km through Queensland and NSW, I can assure her that there are indeed millions of them still gracing our country, eating valuable crops and colliding with hundreds of vehicles. The "cull" rate from vehicle collisions alone was often over three per kilometre. We need to maintain a balance between the sustainability of farming and the continued existence of kangaroos, and alarmist statements like those mentioned earlier do nothing to help discussion.

David Hobson, Spence

NEW FACILITIES

Cashing in on the Civic-Gungahlin light rail, isn't it the ACT government's plan to provide new facilities for the racecourse and the showground (and more), somewhere down the Majura Parkway, and to install a lucrative new "urban village" on their existing sites in Lyneham and Mitchell? ("Racing's new master plan", September 24, p1).

Jack Kershaw, Kambah

KEY TO ALL PROBLEMS

Health services in the ACT a basket case? So what – we've got a tram. Public spaces falling into disrepair? Who cares – we've got a tram. Fences and facades covered in graffiti? No problem – we've got a tram. Urban forest being buried under concrete? Stop complaining – we've got a tram. Government in the pocket of developers? Oh look – here comes the tram.

Fred Pilcher, Kaleen ACT

HOPE IS IN THE AIR

Does that mean we could get Geneveive Jacobs back?

Pamela Fawke, Dunlop

UNITING FORCE

The ABC is the glue that holds Australia together. No nationalism based on military conflicts on distant shores, or on various codes of footy, will replace what the ABC does for Australia, glueing the city and bush together in a classless and apolitical whole, despite constant attempts by vested interests to say otherwise.

Adrian Gibbs, Hutt St, Yarralumla

UNFAIR GO

Scott Morrison's acolytes operate from the Old Testament principle that welfare recipients are "poor" because they are wicked, so deserve to feel the wrath of a vengeful Centrelink, meanwhile choosing to ignore contracting multinational tax-evading corporate trespassers ("Centrelink plan to use labour hire staff sparks union ire", September 21, p4).

Albert M. White, Queanbeyan

Email: letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au. Send from the message field, not as an attached file. Fax: 6280 2282. Mail: Letters to the Editor, The Canberra Times, PO Box 7155, Canberra Mail Centre, ACT 2610.

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