The editorial ("Our waiting times are an emergency", December 18, p44) deplores the under-funding of Canberra's hospitals. This is not the first such contention, it continues the selective view that provision of necessary infrastructure is a supply side-only issue, implying that all that is required is for governments to make different political/financial decisions. If true, how is it that our infrastructure deficit is permanent, never meeting demand?
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The answer is obvious, if uncomfortable for the many who profit from rapid population growth, that growing demand for health services from increasing numbers of people will always outstrip their supply. Any check on government future intentions, at federal, state, or territorial levels, reveals high population growth policies. Therefore, any expenditure to improve hospital services in Canberra will soon be absorbed by growing demand from local and surrounding NSW hinterland inhabitants.
When might a Canberra Times editorial take a longer term view and question this obsession with impossible, eternal, population growth, and its never stated impacts on society and the physical world?
When the next Murray-Darling Basin drought arrives, and there is increased demand for its non-increasing quantum of water, and more rivers run dry again, and more fish die again, and inevitable restrictions are imposed in towns, how will that be explained?
How important then the "economic growth" claimed by economists to have been generated by this growth?
Vince Patulny, Kambah
The Christmas spirit
Federal Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton was a Queensland policeman in the years before he entered politics. After reading the article by Jenna Price "Where is Dutton's Christmas spirit" (December 18, p46), in which she describes Mr Dutton's harsh, even cruel, treatment of the Tamil family who had found a welcoming home in Biloela, Queensland, I was left with the strong impression of a Christian man who has lost his Christian charity. However, Mr Dutton has evidently not lost his policeman's appetite for wielding power.
Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin
Fossil fuel investment
In the light of the report from the ABC that the value of the Bluewaters power station (Australia's newest coal-fired power station) has been written down to zero by owners, Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo, the government's enquiry, chaired by climate denier George Christensen, into the decisions of companies - finance and insurance - to deal with fossil fuel industries because of their high risk of becoming stranded assets, looks like being very short.
Margaret Lee, Hawker
Let's see the carbon data
What is the point of the tram? If it is to save carbon emissions, let's see the data.
It is quite possible that the construction activities of stage 2 light rail will generate more carbon emissions than are eventually saved by motorists using rail instead of their private car.
The exercise of calculating the date when carbon generated by construction activities is recouped by lesser car use is a crucial factor in determining the environmental benefits (or not) of light rail stage 2.
It is surprising that this exercise has not already been carried out. The government should no longer delay providing this crucial information enabling an informed decision on stage 2 light rail.
Without this research, continuing construction of light rail could well turn out to be government sanctioned pollution at a time when more responsible action against climate change is needed.
Penleigh Boyd, Reid
Pope misses the mark
How disappointing to see David Pope at it again. Does your cartoonist have any idea how offensive it is to depict Treasurer Frydenberg as the inquisitor in his cartoon "Parliamentary Inquisition""
Surely Pope must understand that depicting a Jew as inquisitor when Jews were driven out of Spain and forcibly converted to Catholicism is totally unacceptable?
Duncan Grant
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