I was involved with two earlier census as a field officer when it was all paper, with door to door contact with households, before joining the permanent staff of the ABS, so I am familiar with the old system.

During my time with the ABS I witnessed reductions in staff and budgets. I watched as the IT people attempted to make do with what equipment they could afford.

When my family and I attempted to complete our survey on Tuesday night , I was not at all surprised to find the site had crashed. Prior to my retirement, I had expressed my concern that post census, we would have an impossible workload thrust upon us to follow up all the non participating households when, as I feared, the antiquated servers failed to cope.

The lame excuses we are hearing about "cyber attacks" simply do not wash, or if they did indeed occur , the expenditure restrictions placed on the budget meant that not enough was done to guard against this event.

Name withheld

Like many of us I felt uneasy about changes in collecting the census that had not been discussed before being implemented.

I felt reassured by the explanations on television of how well the risks had been dealt with. Now I find that the self assured census spokesmen belong to an organisation that could not run a chook raffle let alone a census. I have now changed my mind and I do not want to give my name and address to the government.

Howard Carew, Isaacs

Paper rules

I must confess to being totally over all this ballyhoo concerning the online census, it looks like we're doing our level best to become a nation of whingers. The paper form took less time to complete than to make a cuppa.

I subscribe to the view that if you attempt to log on to such a facility when something well less than a modicum of common sense would tell you that an inordinate proportion of the nation is also likely to be doing so, then you're a mug and, you get what you deserve and you deserve what you get.

Michael Doyle, Fraser

Costly tram move

The Capital Metro full business case states that light rail will result in "over 3000 additional public transport boardings each day across the network by 2031" (p 74). There were over 48,000 boardings per day on ACTION buses in 2015-16, so light rail would at best result in an increase in ACT public transport use of 6 per cent. This would be a poor result for spending around $1bbillion.

But is the estimate of 3000 additional boardings credible? I suspect not. My requests to Minister Corbell for the modelling that supported the estimate have gone unanswered so I assume he would rather that it not be subject to public scrutiny.

My conclusion: we are going to spend a lot of money just to move people from buses to trams, with minimal increase in overall public transport usage.

Michael Plummer, Watson

Good and bad?

Heather Sorensen (Letters, August 11) claims "God is all love". Is this the mythical entity who had his supposed son tortured and killed in the cruellest fashion? Is this the mythical entity of the blood soaked pages of the Old Testament?

This approach is far too glib to be a credible basis for answering the question "if God is to be held responsible for all that is good, should he not also be held responsible for all that is bad?"

Peter Dark, Queanbeyan

Logic of belief

It is up to Heather Sorensen (Letters, August 11) to believe what she wishes and I am genuinely happy for her if she gains comfort from her faith. Nevertheless, rather than her claiming my arguments against an exclusively "good" God lack logic, I can't see any logic in a God who has washed his hands of us all (saying we make up our own minds over our actions); a God who, at the same time, tells us though his book, that he is all powerful and watches over everything we do. So, he just lets us go ahead and visit catastrophe on ourselves and millions of others without interfering? That's the logic of belief; the assertion that God has planned everything, down to the smallest blade of grass, yet he tells us to make our own decisions.

Then, to top it all, he will forgive us our sins. All we have to do is ask. But the disasters roll on.

Eric Hunter, Cook

Religious vilification

Like Mike Hutchison (Letters, August 11), I too have concerns with Shane Rattenbury's religious vilification legislation. However, I doubt that the legislation will ever be used in relation to attacks on Christians and their religion.

I believe the legislation will be applied, in the name of tolerance and fairness and human rights, where adherents of other religions are "vilified" but, given attitudes prevailing currently in government and the community, I suspect haters and mockers of Christians and Christianity will be perfectly safe from prosecution.

Gordon Fyfe, Kambah

I don't know if anyone cares, but all the kangaroos are gone. I walk daily around Mount Majura and always enjoyed bumping into several kangaroos. They'd keep out of my way, and I out of theirs, and everyone was happy. I heard of the so-called "culling", but didn't realise this meant "massacre". On my walks now there are no kangaroos.

We cry blue murder if a cat harms one native bird, but we don't care when a whole population of native kangaroos are wiped off the face of the earth. This makes no sense.

I'm not interested in the bureaucratic propaganda reasons for the massacre. They were native animals doing no harm to anyone. I could go on, but want to conclude that I don't vote for governments who kill kangaroos, I only vote for governments who stop it.

Evan Moraitis, Watson

Skating on thin ice

It is great to see Ian Warden is a dedicated and adoring CBR Brave ice hockey fan ("Brave fans with ice in their veins", August 8). It is wonderful that the Brave are doing well and that Ian is championing their very impressive efforts.

Ian is his usual contrarian self and sings the praises of Phillip ice rink for its "adorably dilapidated" and "uniquely perfumed" presence. Notwithstanding the close contact with the players that Ian extols, the rink's use-by date has come and gone.

All ice sports would benefit from a better ice rink in Canberra. How that happens is the issue for the ice sports community and the ACT government.

Evelyn Sommer, O'Connor

Poll result unsought

John Warhurst's final words for the week were "if the Coalition and the Greens wanted to promote voter choice when they introduced the reforms they certainly got it in spades in ways they never predicted" ("Part giants beatable", August 11, p16).

Obviously the results were not expected, at least by the Coalition, but it beats me how the results promoted voter choice. They certainly demonstrated election diversity but that diversity, in many cases, was far from the voters' choice.

It was merely a vagary of our undemocratic counting system predicated on ensuring that the outcome bears no semblance to the choice of a majority of voters or even of any proportionality.

Gary J. Wilson, MacGregor

Voters made a choice

R. King (Letters, August 11) observes that, under the new Senate voting system, One Nation's Malcolm Roberts won a Queensland Senate seat despite managing only 77 primary votes. But what other voting system would provide a more democratic result?

The two major parties are on the nose with voters, and they managed to muster only about two-thirds of the primary vote between them in Queensland. On that basis, they deserved only 8 out of the 12 available seats, leaving 4 other seats to be allocated.

How were the views of the other one-third of Queensland voters to be reflected if not by the preferential system currently in place? Roberts was elected because Pauline Hanson received more primary votes than she needed to get elected in her own right and her preferences and those from other sources flowed through to Roberts as a result of voters' decisions, not the machinations of preference-whisperers.

Frank Marris, Forrest

Hope for Australia

Now that Malcolm Turnbull has "saved" the United Nations from Kevin Rudd, can we look forward to a more committed approach by the Coalition to the United Nations and other multilateral bodies? Dare we hope that Australia might listen and respond more sensitively to comments by UN committees on Australian policies which contravene our stated endorsement of UN human rights and development standards? Or will the Coalition continue its well-established preference for bilateralism and ignore Australia's responsibilities as an international citizen?

David Purnell, Florey

Vilification laws

Felix MacNeill's point (Letters, August 10) that there is a distinction between criticism and vilification is well made but the rest of his letter actually explains why we should not have religious vilification laws viz. because one man's criticism is another man's vilification. We can define the basic parameters as much as we like but, in the end, the line is very much blurred with what some think is criticism being seen by others as vilification. The only thing that can be guaranteed is that, if we do get these laws, they will be interpreted in accordance with political correctness i.e. Christian fundamentalists will be caned by the courts and those they criticise will be able to say what they like.

Stan Marks, Hawker

Senators disappoint

I am terribly disappointed that a number of senators have chosen to advertise their personal view that their precious privacy could be compromised by the Australian Bureau of Statistics recklessly or otherwise carelessly releasing some information from their census form. They would know that the Tax Office and Medicare know much, much more about them than anything on their census form.

Whether they intend it or otherwise, their public statements on this issue will encourage others to follow their lead and that is irresponsible for people in their position. I am particularly disappointed that Senator Xenophon is part of this childish exercise as I had always regarded him as both sensible and practical in his public statements.

Bob Budd, Curtin

Marshall should go

However much cynicism can be expressed about its merits, when one factors in its limited scope and the damage that has already been done, the U-turn towards climate science ("CSIRO climate revival", August 4, p1) is nonetheless a step in the right direction.

With this in mind, Larry Marshall's position is no longer tenable: he enjoyed the patronage of Tony Abbott who appointed him as CEO.

Dr Marshall has lost critical credibility around his suitability to the role, his vision and leadership skills. It seems appropriate that he follows the fate of his political patron, and stands down.

Luca Biason, Latham

FINALLY, A CHOICE

Light rail or a better hospital: bit of a choice now really.

Ed Highley, Kambah

WIN FOR THE SNAILS

Welcome to Malcolm Turnbull's innovative high-tech world, which has just crashed. The old non-high-tech dinosaurs who filled in the paper census forms and returned them by snail mail have had the last laugh.

John Davenport, Farrer

EITHER WAY, A CON JOB

Was that a concensus or consensus we had on Tuesday?

Geof Murray, Ngunnawal

PAPER MORE SECURE

While Hari Arora makes a fair point about the security of paper-based data entry compared with direct digital processes (Letters, August 11), the difference between the two is that your personal computer is more easily hacked into than a bunch of papers on your kitchen table.

Philip Telford, Tarago, NSW

WAS IT JUST A STUFF-UP?

Was it really a case of the census website being hacked, or that the website could not handle the amount of requests and crashed? Better to blame external than internal factors and show that maybe someone stuffed up.

Alan Leitch, Austins Ferry, Tas.

PM'S PRIORITIES SKEWED

So Malcolm Turnbull is angry about the ABS census meltdown. But where is his outrage and bitter disappointment over how women and children in the Nauru detention centre are being abused and no justice for the perpetrators?

Joyce Wu, Lyneham

PLEBISCITE IS A MUST

Very vocal opinion makers are at work in our community, but what about the quiet ones – millions of "non-engaged" people?

We need to know what they think about same-sex marriage, too.

Ask everybody, via plebiscite. Then we'll know Australia's true wishes.

Barrie Smillie, Duffy

TALK ABOUT MARRIAGE

Drop "divisive plebiscite", says Barr (August 11, p1). Yes, marriage is too important.

There should be widespread and open debate followed by a referendum on same-sex marriage.

Les Broderick, Farrer

PHILLIP OVAL BETTER

Couldn't agree more with Ian W. Morison (letters, August 9) [about Phillip Oval being a better site]. It's so obvious for all those reasons, and the sooner it's done, the better.

Jane Malcolm, Kambah

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