It is unlikely that many people living in West Basin will need to get to Woden regularly or vice versa. Like the Henry Rolland Park, criticised for its lack of children’s playground and public toilets, the purpose of the Stage 2 Light Rail, rather than being a practical efficient rapid transport route, is appearing as another blatant extravagant marketing ploy.

The twisted and damaging stage 2 route will be servicing the exploitation of our heritage to ensure the West Basin apartments can be sold to foreign investors for as much as possible.

As noted in recent press articles, we can expect that 86 per cent of the new apartments will be purchased by foreign investors with a high percentage of those apartments not lived in. Our 2.8 ha of heritage lake, lake vistas, the ceremonial route across Commonwealth Bridge, the beautifully treed Commonwealth Avenue, the significant parliamentary zone will all be damaged by a blinkered romper-stomping ACT government full of fake ’Griffin inspired’ spin and questionable consultation.

Juliet Ramsay, Burra, NSW

Whenever the ACT government purchases land (even land owned by the CFMEU) ACT taxpayers should be entitled to expect that the government’s representatives will act bona fide in the public interest and in a thoroughly business-like manner.

Thus, in the context of the Land Development Agency’s purchases of rural land parcels, those engaged to represent the LDA should have bargained hard to purchase each parcel for the lowest possible price, just as if they were purchasing the land with their own money.

Taxpayers will be disappointed but not surprised by the ACT Auditor-General’s findings with respect to the LDA’s rural land purchases that the LDA’s representatives failed to negotiate the lowest possible price and, thereby, cost the public purse millions of dollars.

Bruce Taggart, Aranda

It was a year since I’d been to ANU. I knew it was doing construction work.

Reality (circa July 15, 2018) slapped me in the face with truth. Good-bye ANU. Every building I knew is going. In their place: multi-story human filing cabinets.

Being Sunday, no work was done. Wreckage and construction were silent.

People were scarce. Metal barriers had an aura of Dutton’s detention centres.

I got lost in the labyrinth of barriers, wreckage, construction and anxiety.

But a student from Taiwan had a gismo that talked me out of the labyrinth.

Only the ANU could destroy (and build) a university, all at the same time. Why is the ANU doing it? To get more students and to get more money.

Maybe the ANU should be registered on the Australian Stock Exchange.

What about the students’ union? Swamped by the corporate ethos.

The Liberal Party will be so happy. Pity about a balanced education.

Graham Macafee, Latham

The Raiders’ management are apparently fuming over the NRL’s decision to increase the penalty imposed by the club for Jack Wighton’s drunken night out.

They may have further reason to fume once he faces sentencing in November.

Alluding to their track record as a strict disciplinarian by sacking Carney, Dugan and co for off-field incidents is irrelevant — in their case no law was broken.

In Wighton’s case, five unprovoked assaults on innocent bystanders in the one drunken night could bring penalties that would make a 10-week ban from playing football like a slap on the wrist.

Having no recollection of the events occurring on the night would be a very flimsy defence. The Raiders may well be without their fullback for a lot longer than 10 weeks.

Tony May, Pearce

The ACT government is proposing to remove the 90-year-old Cedrus trees planted by Alexander Bruce in Commonwealth Avenue (‘‘Century-old trees to fall for light rail’’, June 28, p4).

The government states the trees were assessed in 2013 to have a life expectancy of five to 40 years. Today the trees appear in good condition and likely to live another 100 years if given some care and a little fertiliser.

Would the government tell us what in 2013 were the agents considered to be killing the cedars? Are those agents still present?

Jack Simpson, Narrabundah

Felix MacNeill is correct (Letters, July 13) – the unfettered use of fossil fuels is no different to allowing people to dump refuse wherever they see fit.

Imagine if individuals were allowed to leave bags of trash in front of others’ homes, drop garden waste in the middle of busy intersections, and deposit raw sewage in front of businesses, with the burden of cleaning it up falling on any unlucky individuals who happened to be affected by it.

Allowing the use of fossil fuels without properly accounting for the cost of the associated pollution is a subsidy every current and future inhabitant of the Earth will be collectively paying for a very long time to come.

James Allan, Narrabundah

The federal government has been advised to shut down the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme. This is another blow to making our energy cheaper and cleaner.

Roof-top solar panels should be encouraged for every household.

Bob Elliston, Bruny Island, Tas

A report comissioned by Solar Citizens found NSW’s solar owners saved all consumers $2.2 billion to $3.3 billion in just one year, partly by reducing peak demand. Rooftop solar is the best way for households to take back control of their power bills; that’s why 1.8 million Australian households and businesses have installed solar and started producing clean power.

Abolishing the small-scale renewable energy scheme will just make it harder for everyone else who wants to be a part of the rooftop revolution.

Terry Baker, Wright

I wish Ms Banerji every success when she takes her case re free speech to the High Court (‘‘Public service Twitter sacking to High Court’’, July 18, p1).

One of my ancestors, London writer and Publisher, Daniel Eaton (1753-1814) was not so fortunate.

He was tried and imprisoned for libel because in one of his pamphlets he compared the King Of England to a game cock.

Judith-Ann Sjostedt, Higgins

Anyone claiming that our national public broadcaster, the ABC is not biased only had to watch the once informative sports program, Offsiders on the weekend.

Even though Margaret Court has won a record 24 singles titles in women’s grand slam tennis that still stands today, that wasn’t good enough for shock jock journalist Caroline Wilson, who claimed Court’s achievement doesn’t mean anything after her comments regarding gay marriage.

Then Wilson and the other predominantly female reporters were complaining because the women’s finalists weren’t consulted about the time of their game because the men had to play their extended semi-final on the same day.

Considering the men were playing three more sets than the women and their games in some instances went for seven hours compared to the women’s one hour I didn’t hear the female journalists asking the men how they felt getting the same amount of pay as the women but having to work for three to seven times longer.

When was the last time you saw our national flag displayed on our national channel? If you look at shows from the past on the ABC you will, but not now. What changed?

Ian Pilsner, Weston

The live sheep export travesty continues because of a pathetic rump that has survived for 30 years.

Part of that rump is the National Party tail wagging a Prime Minister whose family would be appalled were their pet dog subjected to the cruelty he condones for sheep.

Next are a few veterinary surgeons on whom the industry depends, who understand the causes of the suffering, and who would know that current export standards are a prostitution of veterinary science.

The principled refusal of vets to be involved would end this trade.

Last are a few export companies who, despite national outrage, wish to use their oven-ships to carry millions of sheep in shocking distress to the Persian Gulf in high summer. Their arrogance is exceeded only by their moral blindness.

Because of this rump, opponents of live animal exports in America, Canada, Britain and Europe, will eventually call for a boycott of Australian produce, citing the barbarity of our live sheep export trade.

If candidates opposed to live sheep exports are elected in the Super Saturday byelections, a private member’s bill to phase out the trade will be passed.

The trade will quickly collapse because no one will want to spend a cent to make the legislated changes required for animal welfare in the phase-out period of a terminal industry.

A small number of humane swinging voters can make this happen.

P. O’Keeffe, Hughes

US President Donald Trump seems to be inordinately fond of self congratulation in his relentless tweets.
Trump has claimed that he got on well with Mr Putin, that ‘‘big results will come’’, and that ‘‘so many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved’’ his performance in the Helsinki press conference.

Trump tried to wriggle out of the widespread accusations that he was accepting Putin’s denials that Russia had meddled in the 2016 US election ahead of the advice from US security agencies (at which Putin was seen to smirk) by using the schoolboy-like excuse that he really meant to say the reverse.

It seems to me that Putin was playing to Trump’s narcissism and underlying sense of insecurity and it was he, rather than Trump who was victorious in Helsinki.

President Trump also boasted that ‘‘the process’’ in North Korea ‘‘is moving along’’, with Russian help, and that there will be ‘‘big benefits and [an] exciting future at [the] end of [the] process!’’

Trump allegedly claimed that he had achieved his aim of securing an agreement with Kim Jong-un to unconditionally, irreversibly and verifiability denuclearise that country.

It seems to me that Kim simply blew up a few tunnel entrances and adjacent buildings, albeit spectacularly, probably leaving the nuclear weapons and related equipment safe and sound deep in the mountains.

Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin

Why would President Donald J Trump suddenly find himself embracing the full panoply of the warfare/security/corporate/police state agenda?

The attacks on President Trump have been outrageous. There was no clear effort by the political and media elites to understand the deeper issues involved about US foreign policy. What justifies spending so much on defence?

Why put up with a vast police and surveillance state in a supposedly free country? Why don’t the Americans mind their business and tend to their own problems?

There was one clear goal: extract an apology from the President and bring about what the Chinese communists call ‘‘rectification’’: one declares publicly that the regime is right and you are wrong.

The Putin-Trump summit advances the cause of peace.

During the press conference following the summit, President Trump said, ‘‘I would rather take a political risk in the pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics’’.

No one should have to apologise for advancing the cause of peace and of being an opponent of the Leviathan state.

The world needs a president who is prepared to undermine the foundations of US imperial power.

Victor Diskordia, McKellar

If Mark Latham chooses to continue on his long march towards irrelevance, as indicated by his recent dalliance with both One Nation and the Liberal Democrats, his next step must be to move his political agitation to take up residence in the recently vacated Thai cave system, that is unless of course this space has already been optioned by disappointed British soccer fans seeking reliable isolation from having to acknowledge a French World Cup soccer win.

Mark Latham should have prior rights to this cave space, previously occupied by the soccer playing Wild Boars, as Mr Latham is well known for being a political Wild Bore.

Garry P. Dalrymple, Earlwood, NSW

BUSINESS BUDDIES

There’d be many a dead hero gyrating in their graves at the elasticising, and desecration of the term ‘‘patriot’’ to apply to misogynist, narcissist tax-dodger Trump. (‘‘PM disagrees but still calls him a patriot’’ July 18, p5). Ah well, businessmen must stick together.

Albert M. White, Queanbeyan, NSW

NEVER NOT DISAGREE

I don’t not disagree when you said you that you were not saying you did not agree that you did not mean to not say it. Well done (again), Mr President.

Greg Simmons, Lyons

A PLACE IN HISTORY

Donald Trump’s speech in Helsinki and its speedy repudiation must now rank his speech with the early drafts of Charles Stanton’s 1917 ‘‘Lafayette, we are not here’’ speech and Winston Churchill’s ‘‘We will not fight them on the beaches’’ from 1940.

Peter Harris, Belconnen

MEANINGLESS COMMENTS

Trump’s pronouncements have a ‘‘boy cries wolf’’ quality to them. As just about every statement he makes can be reversed in subsequent days, what he actually says and means becomes meaningless.

Murray May, Cook

USE IT OR LOSE IT

Undeveloped diplomatic leases (‘‘Diplomacy prevails on empty sites’’, July 14, p2), also should apply to vacant or rubble strewn ACT residential land under the ‘‘use it or lose it’’ rule. The long-term unsightly block adjacent to the Yarralumla shops warrants heritage listing.

Greg Cornwell, Yarralumla

BITCOIN IS THEFT

High time someone pointed out that bitcoin profiteers are no better than common thieves. Money for nothing always comes out of someone else’s pocket.

David Collier, Narrabundah

NO PROGRESS OF SIGN

MLA Bec Cody, where are the 40km/h signs you suggested should be installed for Irving Street, Phillip that we discussed last September? Still not installed. Come election, you’ll be vying for our votes. These constituents have a good memory.

J. Bodsworth, Phillip

ORCHESTRA REPRIEVE

A fabulous Canberra Symphony Orchestra concert on Wednesday night was a reprieve from the idiocy of Trump and parlous state of global affairs. The Elgar was sublime.

Janet Berger, Weston

UNPLEASANT AVENUE

Re Stan Marks’ letter about Northbourne being a ‘‘pleasant avenue’’ (Letters, July 19) until light rail and Geocon. Does he believe the rows of housing commission flats were a fitting entry in to the nation’s capital – or was he only talking about the lost trees?

Greg Burner, Dickson

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