Canberra's proposed light rail system appears to be running the same course. The majority of Canberrans may well like light rail, as a concept, but not necessarily like the one proposed. It is a pity the ACT government has provided the people of Canberra with a light rail proposal that many cannot like.

The model on offer involves the destruction of our architectural heritage (consider the Sydney Ancher Northbourne housing group), the destruction of our mature landscape entry to Canberra (consider the cutting down of 400 existing trees on Northbourne Avenue), the visual pollution of our beautiful open skies (consider the use of 1890s technology of overhead wires) and a "like it or lump it" attitude from the ACT government (consider construction contracts to be signed up just prior to the next election).

Some pundits seem to infer that those against the light rail are either anti-progress or anti-environmentalists or threatening to damage the broader Canberra economy. However, the truth may be that many Canberrans are simply against the light rail model on offer. The major parties are gearing up for light rail to be a major issue in the next ACT elections.

If Canberrans vote against light rail in October 2016 it may be because many of us place high values on our architectural heritage, our mature urban landscape and our uncluttered skies.

Penleigh Boyd, Reid

Robert Knight (Letters, June 11) pleads the case for light rail over cars but neglects the alternative of increased efficiencies of an existing bus network already in place throughout Canberra. He stakes his claim on Professor Peter Newman's apples and oranges comparison with his excellent Perth transport network of trains and buses – hard rail not trams. This further muddies the waters of the politically charged debate in Canberra, seemingly devoid of the elephant in the room. If the Gungahlin tramline really does cost only $783 million as the first of the projected Canberra wide network – what is the total cost to complete the network for our city/state with (currently) 380,000 people? And if the Gungahlin line's annual subsidy is then $100 million – would ACT taxpayers of the future be up for half a billion dollars a year for say five lines?

Trouble is, such projections have been clouded by vested interest spin. Perhaps sensible debate should be focused more on practicalities than an idealistic and debt-laden retrofit of a city latterly developed more for road users than Walter Burley Griffin's grand design?

Len Goodman, Flynn

Just read with delight, Patrick O'Hara's letter (June 12). Welcome to the Light Rail Supporters group, Patrick, I think there are now three of us!

Judy Bailey, Kambah

Alistair Coe hates the tram.

He'd like to see us stuck in a traffic jam.

Rip up the rails! Give the workers the sack!

Cancellation penalties? We'll pay it all back.

What's half a billion? We Libs think big.

Taxpayers' money? We don't give a fig!

We'll make it all up! Just wait and see.

Alistair says, "Just leave it to me."

"We'll set up tollbooths on the cycle ways,

To show the car haters about user pays.

And decent people won't say nay,

To a huge tax on lattes and Chardonnay."

But we who think Alistair's time is past.

Will be sure, next year, to put him last.

John Mason , Latham

There are any number of celebrations for our Indigenous people that make us feel good about ourselves but achieve precious little for those concerned. Kevin Rudd's much vaunted apology is a case in point. The latest initiative to acknowledge Indigenous people in the Constitution is in full swing, and is already running off the rails with proposals that are far from a simple acknowledgment.

For example, we have Noel Pearson proposing a special aboriginal body to comment on laws that affect Aboriginal people. Is he saying that such advice cannot be sought now? Marcia Langton is so concerned that this growing initiative might not be accepted by the Australian people that she is proposing a referendum that funds only the yes vote. How democratic is that?

Now Nicolas Reece is suggesting ("Reconciliation day could replace Queen's Birthday", Times2, June 8, p5) that we discard the Queen's birthday celebration and replace it with a reconciliation day (as distinct from NAIDOC week, Reconciliation week and Sorry Day).

John Warhurst suggests ("Set aside a day to build unity", Times2, June 11, p1) a variation on the same theme. I have reservations about any initiative that would set one group of Australians apart from the broader community however well intended, but until I see the final proposal I shall keep an open mind.

It seems we have an enormous appetite and reverence for all things Indigenous except when it comes to confronting the intractably difficult issues that pervade Indigenous society. Before we embark on yet another round of vacuous symbolism, I would prefer that we focus more on the things that really matter.

A good start might be for indigenous luminaries to show some leadership.

Rather than prancing around the halls of power obsessing about past wrongs or performing war dances at the footy, how about focusing all that energy on the children who have no chance of a productive life because of abuse and neglect by adults whose own lives are a pathetic sequence of substance abuse violence and hopeless indifference.

H. Ronald, Jerrabomberra, NSW

There are far too many honours, awards, knighthoods and dameships in this country (Set aside a day to build unity, John Warhurst, Times 2, 11 June). Half the total number, once a year on Australia Day would be enough and get rid of the knighthoods altogether. Otherwise we run risk of forever looking backwards. Replace the anachronistic Queen's birthday holiday with Reconciliation Day (no awards) and make Wattle Day, commemorating our national floral emblem and deeply historic, the holiday for the republic.

Sarah Brasch, Women for an Australian Republic, Weston

Those who are following the current ACT Legislative Assembly inquiry into the ACT licensed clubs sector would find it both edifying and concerning to look at the submissions (which are available online).

It is appalling to see the blatantly self-serving submissions from charities and community groups which form the bulk of the submissions. Clearly, the clubs have advised the recipients of gaming revenue – an estimated 40 per cent of which comes from problem gamblers – to testify as to the importance of this revenue and, incidentally, how wonderful their relationship is with the particular clubs in question.

All of these submissions, including, most startlingly, that from the gambling counselling service of Relationships Australia, praise the clubs and take it as "given" that a thriving clubs sector must continue.

It may be news for some, but gambling is not an essential or even an important aspect of life – just ask anyone who grew up in thriving communities, with a variety of social venues, where poker machines were completely unheard of. Perhaps the claims by the clubs sector that they are being pushed to the edge of survival, while undoubtedly overblown, should be regarded as encouraging news, and entirely consistent with the points made by Senator Nick Xenophon and others that it is the number of gaming venues, rather than the number of machines, that should be drastically reduced.

Karina Morris, Weetangera

Interesting that an ACT non-government school is identified for the possible off-campus behaviour of a staff member ("Teacher charged with child grooming", June 11, p1) when the government school which caged a student remains unidentified.

Greg Cornwell, Yarralumla

Tony Abbott used to be called the Mad Monk. Perhaps it's time to revive the monicker. His captain's picks, his shafting of honest critics like Gillian Triggs, Amanda Vanstone and other voices of reason, his drive to authorise the revoking of citizenship at a minister's pleasure, his broken promises and his contradictory economics are the hallmarks of an autocratic mediaeval monarch, not of a wise and rational head of a democracy. Having stopped the boats, he emulates King Canute, commanding the waves of climate science to cease their pounding.

His scary style is infecting his troops. In February, most of his backbenchers wanted to unseat him. Today, they are cheering him on to be even more rabid in excommunicating "terrorists". And you have to worry even more about an Opposition leader who has yet to offer a clear alternative narrative.

How ironic that as we celebrate the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, Australia still has no Bill of Rights for its citizens. In the land of the fair go, precious democratic freedoms and the rule of law continue to retreat.

Who will turn the tide?

Ray Edmondson, Kambah

It strikes me that our federal Coalition government are intolerant bullies. They tell us we should not be bullies, but that is exactly what they are.

To berate and denigrate using their positions of power sets a very bad example to all.

We are all trying to prevent domestic violence, but the way the appointed Human Rights Commissioner is being treated, gives a tick to abuse of power.

Colin Handley, Lyneham

After watching the behaviour of Tony Abbott, George Brandis and Peter Dutton towards Gillian Triggs and now Ray Hadley and Dutton's behaviour towards Sarah Hanson Young, I am readily reminded of Julia Gillard and the total sexist nonsense she had to put up with.

On top of this we have the risible spectacle of the avowed non-feminist Julie Bishop calling for women to unite against (and fight ) Islamic State.

E.R. Moffat, Weston

In light of Joe Hockey's "get a good job that pays good money" comment, it was deeply moving to read that he had to struggle to meet mortgage payments on his first home ("Hockey's impressive housing portfolio", June 11, p4). Well at least last year's taxpayer-funded travel allowance payments of just under $50,000 is helping him now as he juggles his current real-estate portfolio of four properties.

Gene Schembri, Cook

Prime Minister Abbott is right about terrestrial wind farms as they currently operate ("PM's tilt at wind farms exposes stance on RET", June 12, p4), but he is right for the wrong reasons. Bill Shorten, true to form, is still lying low.

Wind farm operations are ridiculously high-tech and resource hungry. The gullible among us consider them "green" when in fact they are about as far from the genuine passive generation of electricity as you can get, short of staying with coal or going to nuclear fission.

Four hundred tonnes of concrete (that's not a typo) goes into the base of each large turbine tower. And then there's the rest of our high-value resources that will be left in the paddocks, crowning large steel trees, when the turbines wear out or become comparatively inefficient – as they will quite quickly.

The concrete alone is a considerable greenhouse contributor, without all of the added extras. Is farmer Fred going to dig it up later?

Clive Banson, O'Connor

The media has reported that a man, claiming to be Aboriginal and holding a current Australian passport, has been detained in Yongah Hill immigration detention centre. Immigration officials claim that he is a Fijian national and that his passport was invalidly issued. The truth of his citizenship is unclear, but in this case it seems to have been determined administratively by government officials.

Surely, in the 800th anniversary year of Magna Carta, such matters should be subject to decision only by an independent judiciary acting on transparent and tested evidence? Or are we entering an era in which personal liberties are at increasing risk from potentially capricious, error-prone, arbitrary – and possibly politically convenient – administrative action?

Mike Hutchinson, Reid

Extending the theme of the Canberra Times editorial "Little analysis behind ABS pay dispute" (Times2, June 11, p2), the federal government also appears uninterested in objective analysis of necessary public service staffing levels for required outputs.

Threats of job losses if unions push for pay rises beyond do not appear to be an empty threat.

In that event, which programs will be set up to fail through insufficient staff resources? What service levels will be reduced? How will policy development continue with any degree of rigour?

A "death by a thousand cuts" method of reducing staffing levels without a corresponding formal review of achievable output is haphazard and inefficient.

Until the government actively decides which of the myriad programs it will adequately staff and what level of service is required, the federal public sector's staffing level is also likely to continue to be guided by little more than rhetoric and whim.

Tim Herne, Calwell

The White House announced yesterday that 400-plus extra American troops are being sent to Iraq as "trainers" and "advisers," bringing the officially acknowledged US force there to over 3500.

The latest escalation comes exactly one year after Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, fell to Islamist fighters of Islamic State.

Needless to say, Australia, the well-practised US lap dog, will probably follow along without a whimper. So, here we go again. Next stop Asia with China in the gunsights.

Rhys Stanley, via Hall, NSW

HELP A WASTE OF TIME

We must be mad if we think that sending more Australian Defence Force training teams to bolster the fighting spirit of the Iraqi army will make any difference. Ever since the 2003 war in Iraq, it should be obvious that the Iraqi army's battle code is RASC: run away, someone's coming!

Roger Dace, Reid

RAIL COST TOO HIGH

Jamie Briggs ("Libs' light rail threat 'economic lunacy"', June 11, p1) should mind his own business. Light rail may create jobs, but who will pick up the tab for the long-term running of the rail? Not the Commonwealth. The proposal's capital cost to Canberra taxpayers is $12billion, this in a public transport environment where decent patronage figures haverarely if ever been achieved.

Russ Morison, Theodore

GET ON WITH THE JOB

Jeremy Hanson's comments ("Libs' light rail threat 'economic lunacy"', June 11, p1) imply that Labor has a responsibility to push ahead with implementing the rail system and getting the contracts signed because Canberrans had their say on the issue at the last election. This is why I voted for them, to build the rail system. I've had my say on the issue and now it's time for you to step out of the way and let them get on with the job that they were elected to do.

Chris McMullen, Kambah

COMMON SENSE NEEDED

It bothers me that Robert Knight (Letters, June 11 ) believes that it is only the intellectuals among us are capable of sound judgment, and that their opinions cannot be challenged or disagreed with.

The problems we as a nation are experiencing are the result of an oversupply of so-called intellectuals and an undersupply of people with practical, common sense.

Mario Stivala, Spence

LED BULBS HARDLY FREE

ActewAGL's campaign promoting the free replacement of light bulbs with LED bulbs is farcical. ActewAGL is reimbursed for providing the light bulbs. Who pays? The electricity customers of through their power bills. The bulbs will be free if ActewAGL does not ask the regulator for a reimbursement – asifthat will happen.

Adrian Smith, Yarralumla

CREDENTIALS LACKING

Having got rid of non-team players Carney, Dugan and Ferguson, the Raiders are reported to be chasing non-conformist B.J.Leilua. So far, the latest recruitment has been very successful, but Isuggest Leilua does not have thecredentials we want here.

Ewan Higgins, Garran

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