As ACT Discrimination Commissioner I would agree that the marriage equality vote is about humanity, not religion.

From a human rights perspective the vote is about whether our government will provide equal access to civil marriage recognition currently available to heterosexual couples.

Marriage equality is about an obligation to ensure everyone has equal access to services provided by the Commonwealth, free from discrimination. We look forward to a respectful process free from discrimination and vilification, irrespective of which side of the vote debate you are on.

Any concerns about discrimination or vilification people experience in the process in the ACT should be brought to our attention.

Karen Toohey, Discrimination Commissioner, ACT Human Rights Commission

The appointment of Malcolm Snow to head the City Renewal Authority is welcome as is his desire to make Northbourne Avenue one of the world's most beautiful and functional boulevards.

However, the operation of the authority and the government generally needs to take place within the context of the planning and development strategy for the city.

A review of the strategy is overdue.

A review would enable the assessment of the environmental, social, infrastructure and travel benefits and costs of alternative distributions of employment and population and involve the community in discussions about how the city should develop.

It would examine whether liveability and connectivity are optimised by concentrating development along the light rail corridor from Gungahlin to Woden or whether achieving these aims is better served by focusing development at town, group and local centres or by increasing the frequency of bus services across Canberra.

It could explore whether the extension of the light rail to Woden is the best use of infrastructure funds, whether incentives should be provided to Commonwealth offices to locate in preferred employment locations and where new greenfields settlement and redevelopment should occur.

It should be accompanied by a 10-year urban development program outlining the likely level of population and employment growth, where growth is to be accommodated and the infrastructure costs associated with the development pattern. The government's reluctance to undertake the review will result in poor development outcomes and waste of limited infrastructure funds.

The Canberra community is the loser.

Mike Quirk, Wanniassa

Capital Recycling Solutions has prepared a scoping application paper for a waste-to-energy incinerator on Block 9, Section 8, Fyshwick, in Canberra Central District, 16 Ipswich Street.

The land is IZ2 – industrial mixed use zone, and was the site of a former oil depot so presumably contaminated. However it is conveniently located for transportation by rail of waste from NSW (150,000 tonnes per annum) and sewage sludge from the Palerang/Queanbeyan Shire.

CRS is partnering with ACTewAGL Retail (AAR), and Benedict Industries, a recycling company based in Sydney. Reminiscent of the Four Corners program on moving waste around? No, no this scheme is to provide a local, sustainable, reliable and a cost-effective energy supply for the ACT with AAR taking 50 per cent ownership.

Before you say "what about the congestion of trucks on Ipswich Street?", a major access into Fyshwick as well as the only direct access from Canberra Avenue to the Monaro Highway, this joint venture claims to reduce traffic congestion.

Don't question the proximity of 650 metres to the nearest residents and a kilometre from three local schools and a fresh food market and the Eastlakes development. Our government is brave, indeed perhaps arrogant enough, to contravene its own territory plan.

"Special consideration" is required to change the purpose of the lease to an incineration facility, an IZ2-prohibited development.

B. Moore, Kingston

I have just spent a week on the Gold Coast where I saw council workers everywhere, there is no graffiti, streets and gutters are spotless, lawns are mowed and there is no long grass or rubbish anywhere.

Canberra on the other hand has graffiti everywhere, long grass, rubbish abounds and the streets and gutters in the suburbs very rarely see a street sweeper.

The City Centre is a disgrace.

Given the Barr government has imposed additional taxes and levies on just about everything, why then is this government allowing our once beautiful city (the National Capital) to continue to decline.

Dare I suggest that the light rail project has taken the money that was once set aside for essential services?

Mary Robbie, Aranda

Jacobs the consultants have been paid by the ACT to produce a guesstimate of the returns to the ACT from its investments in renewable energy production ("Household renewables bill will be $21.18 a week", August 17, p2).

Jacobs produced a figure with the proviso that the operators may pull out of the scheme "as the prices become uneconomical".

Mr Rattenbury said from 2026 the scheme should have no net cost to Canberrans.

I take this as an apology but fail to understand why Jacobs was contracted in the first place.

We did not need a guesstimator to tell us the scheme has ever been a costly and precipitate over-investment in emergent technologies.

It remains over-expenditure on ideology by a figurehead activist turned politician.

Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor

Greg Cornwell is a bit disingenuous when he claims that the North's aim was to save the union and that freeing slaves was merely a "ploy" (Letters, August18).

The South's reasons for secession were all about slavery and its economics, and about whether new territories should be slave or free.

Lincoln did say that if he could reunite the Union without freeing any slave he would do that. But he certainly didn't intend to allow any new state to become a slave state.

Southern soldiers such as Lee and Jackson were certainly honourable men, as were most soldiers on both sides. But not all men wearing the grey or blue were. Massacres of black prisoners, such as at Fort Pillow, starvation of prisoners of war at Andersonville, and the armed thuggery of Quantrill's Raiders come to mind.

David Roth, Kambah

Greg Cornwell (Letters, August 18) rightly condemns the behaviour of both sides in the current simplistic argument about removal of American Confederate statues.

The famous 1862 letter to his friend Horace Greeley made Lincoln's position clear: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would doit."

That said, in his second Inaugural Address in March 1865, after four years of the Civil War, Lincoln stated "slavery was, somehow, the cause of the war".

Phil Teece, Sunshine Bay, NSW

Greg Cornwell (Letters, August 18) repeats the myth that the American Civil War was not about slavery.

The war was initiated by the declaration of independence by the state of South Carolina, followed by the Confederates firing on Fort Sumpter.

The declaration is easy to find simply by googling "Confederate Declaration of Independence".

The authors made it abundantly clear they were attempting to leave the Union because they believed the institution of slavery was under threat, particularly after the election of Abraham Lincoln as president. Other states joined the Confederacy for the same reason.

Paul Pentony, Hackett

What's all this citizenship debate about? The constitution is quite clear: "S.44. Any person who — (i.) Is under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights and privileges of a subject or a citizen of a foreign power ... shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House to Representatives."

Nothing ambiguous there.

S.45 then states : "If a senator or member of the House of Representatives ... (i.) Becomes subject to any of the disabilities mentioned in the last preceding section ... his place shall thereupon become vacant."

But the section that I like, S.46, says that "Until the Parliament otherwise provides, any person declared by this constitution to be incapable of sitting as a senator or as a member of the House of Representatives shall, for every day on which he so sits, be liable to pay the sum of one hundred pounds to any person who sues for it in any court of competent jurisdiction".

All I need to know now is what constitutes a "court of competent jurisdiction" and I'm off.

Talk about high farce.

Richard Parker, Page

The Australian constitution came into effect in 1901. S.44 (i) does not refer to Australian citizenship; Australian citizenship did not exist until 1948.

In referring to a "foreign power" the constitution was referring to a non-UK power. The constitution was an act of the UK parliament!

Clearly the clause is outdated, so either the High Court can interpret our way out of it or else we need a referendum to bring our 1901 constitution into the 21st century.

Bert Kelly-Johnston, Giralang

Labor senators have had the nerve to complain that Senator Nash's revelation to the Senate that she may be a British citizen was made to a nearly empty chamber.

Why was it nearly empty? Because our overpaid and underworked senators decided to take an early mark for their weekend. Is it any wonder that parliamentarians are held in such low esteem?

If this skiving off early is good enough for our elected representatives then no one need work on a Friday afternoon if that might interfere with their weekend.

Roger Dace, Reid

Pauline Hanson should be barred from holding a seat in the Senate for her abuse of the Muslim faith.

She has shown not only her personal ignorance but her utter insensitivity and empathy for others. If we do not throw her out of our political system she will drag us all to her shameful gutter level.

Gerry Gillespie, Queanbeyan

Well done, Julie Bishop. Not only did you annihilate Australia's aid program as soon as you came to office by abolishing AIDAB and decimating the aid budget – now you have put a torpedo into our relationship with our closest and most valued friend, New Zealand. I wonder what more you can do?

Tim Terrell, Farrer, ACT

The Spanish officer who shot and killed four terrorists in Cambrils was the right man in the right place at the right time. Hope he gets a medal.

J. Trethowan, Belconnen

SALUTE THE SAINTED

Great to see people around the globe commemorating Princess Diana's 20th anniversary. But have people forgotten about Diana's friend Mother Teresa of Calcutta who died on the eve of Diana's funeral! The "people's princess" and mankind's saint.

Gerry Coleman, Bassendean, WA

AULD LANG SIGN

James Gralton (Letters, August 18) proposes to move Australia day from January 26 to January 1.

Whatever merits this proposal otherwise has, reducing our public holidays by one seems unlikely to win it widespread support.

Greg Pinder, Charnwood

SALES RESISTANCE

Peter Ellerton, the director of the UQ Critical Thinking Project at the University of Queensland in a comment on the ABC website on the same-sex marriage debate says, "When you ask that the taxes of your fellow citizens support your belief, you will be resisted." Is Andrew Barr expecting such resistance for spending other people's money on his own personal crusade?

Jevon Kinder, Murrumbateman, NSW

STAMP OF DISAPPROVAL

Will the ABS mailout include a return-postage prepaid envelope? If not, why not? And will, as a consequence, Australia's exorbitant postage costs discourage pensioners and dole recipients from responding?

Mark Hartmann, Hawker

BROADLY UNHAPPY

I am currently with a broadband service provider and am more than happy with their service, the download speed and the costs involved.

I am now told that, contrary to what I want, and need, I have no option but to change to the NBN, even though the speed will be much slower than I currently experience, and that the costs will be higher.

V. Lauf, Bungendore, NSW

BOTTOM FEEDERS

Local television and radio are inundated by money-grubbing ads from ambulance-chasing, legal firms. Surely the ACT Law Society can see that, by failing to deter its members from engaging in this unsavoury practice, it does itself little credit and contributes further to the tarnished, public image of the legal profession.

D. N. Callaghan, Kingston

HANDS OFF

Mr Barr, like you, I will support the yes vote for marriage equality. However, putting your hand into the ACT taxpayer's pocket to promote a personal belief is going one step too far. Stick to spending ACT taxpayer's money solely on ACT business.

Vickie Arnott, Canberra

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