According to the census, both transport about 7 per cent of workers to their daily toil, well short of the ACT government’s target for cycling and public transport. Transport and City Services revealed earlier this year about 25 per cent of ACTION buses do not run on time while the operating cost alone of the service costs ratepayers about $150 million annually.

In its report to the government in March 2015, transport and planning consultants MRCagney said ACTION was subsidised by about $7.20 per passenger, about double that of other similar public and private bus operations.

As with previous reports, the government rejected major recommendations by MRCagney which would have saved $47 million annually from ACTION’s operating budget within about 10 years. Instead it opted for the 30 per cent inefficiency of ACTION’s operation, identified in a report to government in 2010.

In late 2015, responding to the MRCagney report, the government said improving the customer experience of ACTION was needed to support patronage and as a result improve financial sustainability.

‘‘This will be a key emphasis of the government’s work over the next six to 12 months.’’ Instead, its key emphasis has been to spend about $1 billion on the 12km tramway from Gungahlin to Civic with only marginal improvements to bus operations.

Meanwhile, in a report of June 2017, Auditor General Maxine Cooper said the maintenance budget for cycle paths had been cut from $5 million in 2011-12 to $3.2 million in 2015-16.

As there were now more paths, the budget was $1150 per kilometre, compared with a budget of $1970 per kilometre five years previously.

Graham Downie, O’Connor

Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg’s National Energy Guarantee (NEG) is all smoke and mirrors.
It sounds good on paper but in practical terms it’s as good as useless in terms of guaranteeing enough energy for Australia’s future needs.

For starters, the ACT looks like it won’t sign up to the NEG as it wants to go 100 per cent renewables thus scuttling it before it gets off the ground.

The reality is the NEG does absolutely nothing to replace the power generation lost from the closure of Hazelwood (which supplied 5 per cent of the National Grid’s power) and the impending closure of the Liddell power station.

For the obscene waste of money spent on intermittent wind and solar renewable energy projects, for half the money we could have built a coal-fired station to replace Hazelwood which could have supplied baseload power 24/7. At this point in time only fossil fuel power plants can supply despatchable power. Renewables simply don’t cut the mustard and have a much shorter production life span than fossil fuel plants. Both federal and state governments delude themselves if they think that building lots of wind farms and solar plants – even with battery storage – will magically supply dispatchable power. They can’t and they won’t.

And here’s the kicker – after all this obsession with reducing our impact on climate, when asked what impact Australia’s 1.3 per cent contribution was to global emissions, Australia’s Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel said our nation’s impact on climate was virtually zilch. A royal commission on climate change and energy costs should be called immediately to lay the foundation for a proper energy policy.

Alan Barron, Grovedale, Vic

While there is at least a theoretical ecological basis for reducing the Kosciuszko brumby population (although there appears to be little scientific evidence to support it at the moment), three things remain certain: that it would be impossible in that mountainous country to kill every brumby; that anything short of killing every brumby would ultimately result in more brumbies, not fewer, than there are now; and that killing sentient beings, even individually, much less in their thousands or millions, will never be an acceptable solution to any human problem.

While I am all in favour of using physical barriers to protect corroboree frog territory, and fertility control (pretty easy with horses) to reduce brumby populations, I am constantly mystified that anyone would think that one animal has more inherent right to live than another, just because one is a native and the other introduced by humans.

Additionally, given that the brumbies are now naturalised in the Snowy region, the environment will certainly have adapted to their presence, and we have not the slightest idea what other native animals we may harm by removing them.

I for one am delighted that the NSW government has decided not to massacre these horses, and I don’t really care about their reasoning. I just wish governments across Australia could be persuaded to also spare our native keystone species, the kangaroos, without whom we know our ecosystems cannot survive.

Lydia Steele, Red Hill

If Brian Cooke’s letter ( May 31) says anything, it is to highlight the fact that there is no satisfactory solution to the problem of brumbies in the Kosciusko National Park.

He says that, ‘‘on imagining how brumbies might be culled, he (meaning myself) is paralysed, unable to think further’’.

Ask a conservationist about this issue and he will always tell you that, although the cull must happen, it must be done humanely. The problem is that last word. It is not that I am unable to think further but that further thought leads to the conclusion that there is no humane way of culling brumbies in large numbers. If there were, it would have been adopted long ago.

As for his statement that ‘‘a shooter will occasionally fail to kill with a single bullet’’, it is not a stationary marksman taking aim at a stationary target. It is a rapidly moving marksman (in a helicopter) taking aim at a horse at full gallop, swerving to avoid obstacles, jumping over logs etc.
Not an easy task. If it were, we wouldn’t have shooting in the Olympic Games; all the competitors would get perfect scores.

Stan Marks, Hawker

Hearts go out to the two brave police officers and the innocent civilian killed in the terrorist attack in Belgium. The attacker defamed Islam, which teaches that killing one person is akin to killing the whole of mankind.

Khizar Rana, Walkerville, SA

With the likes of Tony Abbott and John Howard on the board of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, ANU students and staff are well justified in their concerns that a $3 billion bequest by the charity to run a degree and scholarship program controlled by the board may compromise ‘‘the ANU’s core values’’ and ‘‘potentially damage the reputation of the university’’. (‘‘Academics fear autonomy at risk’’, May 25, p10).

Student association president Eleanor Kay cites fears that ‘‘the language of ‘Western civilisation’ could ... prioritise Western civilisation over other cultures’’.

How true. Many distinguished academics, including some from the ANU, have gone to great lengths to assure us so-called ‘‘Western civilisation’’ has brought nothing but death, destruction and oppression to the cultures of Chinese, Indians, the Middle East and the native peoples of four continents.

Why one particular culture, whose British converts were running around in blue paint while those elsewhere were enjoying the benefits of urban harmony or arcadian rapture, should be raised to current prominence is a disgrace to everything the ANU stands for. There is evidence the maniacal right wing Institute of Public Affairs is fostering the program.

The IPA’s bias against the ANU is on record in their Free Speech on Campus Audit 2017 where it sneers at the university’s eminently sensible Rule 2017, which prohibits behaviour that is ‘‘unwelcome’’. How dare the IPA unfairly mark the ANU down for rightly limiting ‘‘dangerous’’ ideas on campus.

The ANU, and other like-minded tertiary institutions, can take great pride in their efforts to hold back such pernicious schools of thought and dubious socio-cultural constructs as logic, objectivity and truth.

These all pose serious threats to the colourful diversities of post-modernism, neo-Marxism, deconstruction, neocolonial theories and the like that have done so much to enrich the human experience.

Should the program proceed, the ANU academe must ensure arrangements for trigger warnings and intellectual space, as well as having stand-by counsellors in place should any ideas harmful to the ANU’s core values and reputation be propagated.

Bill Deane, Chapman

Re: ‘‘ACT pitch for Chinese buyers’’, (May 29, p1) I must say that for Geocon, a company with its only aim in life to make money, to declare to the world that Canberra is ‘‘in a less than desirable position’’ and ‘‘is not as spectacular as other capital cities in the world’’ its people must walk around with paper bags over their heads.

It might be a surprise to this company that we Canberrans like our city, the Bush Capital, the way it is; not built out with high rises.

Inviting Chinese investors here first, over the local community and other Australians, is a bit rich.
Maybe it is time we all started learning to speak Chinese.

Errol Good, Macgregor

In your article ‘‘ACT pitch for Chinese buyers’’ (May 19, p1) it is reported that Geocon has the ambitious vision to transform Canberra into the ‘‘face of the southern hemisphere’’.

Is Geocon going to consult with the Canberra community on their vision for Canberra or is this the job of the ACT government?

The ACT government should at least ensure that a regulatory framework is in place so that the proposed 3200 units (and any other dwellings) to be built in Canberra are erected to a satisfactory standard.

Robyn Vincent, McKellar

Your correspondents David Roth and Rod Hazelgrove (Letters, May 30) have done an excellent job in countering the dubious assertions of Tom Switzer (‘‘Millennials should feel optimistic’’, May 28, p18).

Switzer takes the blinkered approach of the economist who fails to take account of the connections between things.

He needs to take a systems approach. As the author Richard Heinberg of the Post-Carbon Institute wrote this week: ‘‘Evidence of failure to think in systems is all around us, and there is no better example than the field of economics, which treats the environment as simply a pile of resources to be plundered rather than as the living and necessary context in which the economy is grounded. No healthy ecosystems, no economy.’’

Heinberg argues that this single crucial failure of economic theory has made it far more difficult for most people to understand our sustainability dilemma or do much about it.

Many humans have progressed, as Switzer argues, in recent times, but it has been unsustainable in environmental terms.

The fact that Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years bears testament to that.

Jenny Goldie, Cooma, NSW

Drinking my cup of tea just before retiring for the day, I hear a sharp gunshot, just like in my front yard.

I run out and am almost choked on the stench of gunpowder.

Yes, they are at it again, the butchers of wildlife.

I live on the edge of Fraser and my front yard is the bush, hills across were lit and they were firing gunshots as if they were going out of fashion.

Neighbouring dogs were barking madly and I felt like in the middle of a war zone.

This has to stop.

This is pure barbarism! Stop the slaughter!

It is so traumatising to witness, especially knowing how much suffering it brings to poor animals.

Blood must be running down the hills, and all the tiny babies losing their mothers breaks my heart.

Why not have an objective conversation? Research can be very biased, we don’t hear all the truth.

Maya Blaževic-Parer, Fraser

Senator Cash has instructed lawyers to have a subpoena to give evidence ‘‘set aside’’.
Imagine trying to object because you think there is a political witch-hunt that is trying to investigate the political witch-hunt that you started!

Why not just appear in court and tell Australians the truth under oath, so we all know what happened?

Doug Steley, Heyfield, Vic

I am glad the ACT government is encouraging people to buy electric vehicles. While additional charging stations will not sway me to do so, a government subsidy that would let me buy one for less than $20,000 would have me doing so tomorrow. Meanwhile I will persevere with my similarly priced petrol vehicle.

Jim Coats, Fadden

I’d like to thank Gary Wilson (Letters, May 30) for his new perspective on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Now I understand it’s all about the rise and fall of the Assyrian Empire it’s so much clearer!

Kym MacMillan, O’Malley

Barnaby Joyce would have done well to remember the saying: ‘‘It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.’’

Rosalind Carew, Isaacs

Since Barnaby Joyce’s fall from grace began, questions have arisen as to his judgment — what judgment would that be?

M. F. Horton, Adelaide, SA

You would be right in saying that ‘‘If it ain’t broke Barnaby Joyce can fix it!’’

Ted Tregillgas, Flynn

The issue of live sheep export should not be conflated with vegan agenda, for which Sussan Ley is hardly the poster child. Ms Ley has stood strong in opposing the live trade because ‘‘it is not humane, it is not economically sustainable, and it’s not necessary’’. Those are not the words of a bleeding heart animal rights activist, they are just the facts.

Lucy Rivkin, Potts Point, NSW

Mike Quirk (Letters, May 29) is missing the point: Canberra needs to have a proper city centre before the need for polycentric city planning becomes a necessity.

Professor Greg Clark’s report about the state of Australian cities is mainly about our larger cities, like Sydney, which have overflowing CBDs. We’re nowhere near that point yet.

Baron Hay, Griffith

Will Australian politics ever climb out of the slime of the micro (personal trivia, scandal and scuttlebutt) to the sublimity of the macro (environment, the rich-poor gap and our dignity among the nations) or are we doomed to be ruled forever by third-raters?

Freesia B Orlzov, Flynn

What a brilliant and sensible solution to end live animal trade suggested by Roslyn Bourne Qld in her letter to the editor (Letters, May 30). Hopefully this will be read by those that can do something about it.

V .Walker, Yarralumla

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