Deregulation disaster
The Chinese imported building materials containing asbestos in common use here represent the mere tip of the shonky building materials iceberg, and should not be singled out as substandard just because of their toxicity. As the son of a civil engineer, Ican report that the Australian building industry for generations operated on the Australian Standards code, which specified every aspect of acceptable construction methods and materials. Future forensic historians will no doubt ascertain exactly how, why and when all this went out the window, but deregulation has for two decades now ensured that entire buildings arrive by ship from China, every last component and fitting sourced to a price and not to any standard — even for prestige developments.
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The adequacy, safety and durability of such materials is well documented in the records of litigation and rectification buried in most newish body corporates' files.
Laying the blame on Border Control for not intercepting substandard building materials misses the fundamental faults of our deregulated building industry, which create a market for these products.
Pity the poor buyers of such housing, who pay Australian world-highest prices for really dubious constructions.
Alex Mattea, Kingston
Strangely quiet
Like A. Brown (Letters, October 26) I, too, have been irritated at Mark McCabe's resort to megaphone diplomacy.
A few years ago, he was all over the front pages in the wake of a court verdict regarding a restaurant accident, loudly proclaiming that the court sentence was "too lenient". This was a remarkable attack, not only on the restaurateur, but on the WorkSafe system itself.
But on the matter of neighbourhood complaints regarding dust clouds drifting over nearby houses during a privately funded asbestos house demolition, he was notably less aggressive, ruling out any possibility of something going wrong. Could this be because Mark McCabe and his agency were active partners in the demolition itself?
Paul Varsanyi, Kambah
Asbestos deaths
Re "Dying man's plea to be heard on asbestos" (October 26, p1), we must also not forget the tradesmen who have died or are terminally ill with mesothelioma as a result of their work on what turned out to be Mr Fluffy houses.
My electrician, a young man, told me he expects to die of mesothelioma, as his tradesman father did.
John Milne, Chapman
Greens' real game
Yet again, the Greens are attempting to delude Canberrans into believing they can win the Senate seat held by Zed Seselja ("Greens target Seselja over climate, gay marriage", October 23, p5).
The Greens, and the Democrats before them, have a long history of running campaigns aimed, they say, at replacing a conservative senator with a progressive one, when their target is really the Labor Senate seat.
One needs only to undertake a cursory analysis of the 2013 election results to understand this.
The combined Labor vote in the House of Representative seat was 103,676, compared with their total Senate vote of 84,974, which is 18,702 fewer votes.
The combined Liberal vote in the Reps was 83,612 and in the Senate 81,613. A decline of 1999.
The Greens, on the other hand, polled 32,356 votes in the lower house and 47,553 in the Senate, an increase of 15,197.
The above figures clearly demonstrate the Greens are being, at best, disingenuous and, at worst, totally dishonest, in their claim that they are seeking to unseat Zed Seselja when their real target is clearly Katy Gallagher.
Ian De Landelles, Hawker
Light-rail failures
Bill Scott (Letters, October 27) can easily Google "Light-rail failures" for the examples. I recommend the first paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis. Bill should also know that more light rail track has been abandoned than built in the last 80 years. The failures are mostly in low-density cities like Canberra, not in Europe, where light rail is flourishing in population densities that are 10 times Canberra's. I am a rusted-on advocate for public transport, but you can't escape the reality of the map displayed recently by Shane Rattenbury with Canberra laid over Sydney. Canberra extends from Hornsby to Heathcote. Who wants to "strap-hang" from Gungahlin to Tuggeranong by tram compared with sitting in an express bus.
A more local example of bus versus rail is the trip between Canberra and Sydney. The public have voted with their feet for the non-subsidised coach service, rather than the much slower and more expensive, yet subsidised, rail.
Chris Emery, Reid
Funding for MLAs
Jack Pappas (Letters, October 26) asserts that intended changes to the ACT Electoral Act will "damage the transparency of the governance of the territory". Such strong commentary by someone with so poor an understanding of the actual issue.
Rather than damaging transparency, the amendments I intend to present to the Legislative Assembly on Thursday serve to preserve the effect of the existing law. All MLAs have been paid a communications allowance since July 2014, when the allowance was introduced by the Remuneration Tribunal following a major review of entitlements. In its April 2014 final report on entitlements for MLAs, the Remuneration Tribunal explicitly stated that the new communications allowance was "subject to the abolition of the discretionary office allowance and the executive postal allowance" and was intended to cover the same type of expenditure.
These are funds provided to assist MLAs to represent and communicate with their electorate. The difference is that the discretionary office allowance was administered by the Office of the Legislative Assembly and the communications allowance is paid as a component of salary. As the tribunal noted, other parliaments also pay such allowances through payroll. In both circumstances, the payments were not made for purposes that could be characterised as electoral expenditure under the Electoral Act.
The Electoral Act currently does not require MLAs to disclose, as part of their annual reporting, funds "provided by the Legislative Assembly to assist MLA in exercising his or her functions as an MLA". The effect of the proposed amendments is to treat the communications allowance in exactly the same way.
Simon Corbell, Deputy Chief Minister, Legislative Assembly
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