Safety standards for lake flying boats important

I was always excited when I saw a huge, four-engine Short Sunderland flying boat coming in low over our block of flats. Sydney Harbour has always been a busy boating area and Dad and I would hire a boat every so often.

The authorities did a great job clearing boats away from the landing or take-off area. This, of course, varied depending on the wind direction and the surrounding hills.

I recommend that today's authorities look at the record of this and other bases to help avoid making any mistakes.

The only disaster I ever remember there was a Catalina which caught fire late one night in, I think, around 1947. It blew up with quite a bang.

Interminable delays at COVID-19 testing stations could surely be avoided if people collected kits from chemists and supermarkets, enabling home testing - as occurs for pregnancy or bowel cancer.

Interstate flights could include one or two on-board testing officers who would handle the entry paperwork mid-flight while swabbing each passenger and processing test results during the journey.

Everyone could then exit the plane with no further queuing or delay.

And, if anybody did test positive, the captive close contacts could be processed with no further exposure to the community and no requirement to round-up the passengers long after they have disembarked.

Despite eye-watering record debt and deficit, the federal government is doing its best to suggest that all is going well. The "debt and deficit disaster" of the last Labor government looks like a broken piggy bank compared to what the "great economic managers", the Liberals, have racked up.

The Liberals have managed though to squirrel away some $16 billion for election pork barrelling. They have of course overlooked the fact that Labor can also spend this money and the Liberals will be in no position to complain if they do.

There have been numerous letters over recent months despairing at the government's persistence with plans for more light rail. But the government remains bunkered, apparently unable to answer the criticisms, and is pressing ahead regardless.

Since 2016 Brisbane has been planning a new metro system, initially intended as light rail but changed when it became obvious that light rail would not provide value for money. They are now going ahead with a dedicated electric busway, adapting existing European technology to Australian conditions.

This approach may not be the right one for access to Woden. Simply electrifying the bus fleet may be sufficient.

Being prepared to think again when the odds are so clearly in favour of doing so is what is needed.

The ACT's government's persistence with light rail in the face of its cost, the chaos it will cause on London Circuit, and without clarity on how to get it across the lake doesn't make sense.

Your report ("Contraband an ongoing issue inside jail", December 12, P4) quotes 56 percent of community service orders in 2020-21 were breached by participants. Why was this and what penalties apply?

Re: "Minimum submarine cost $116b" (canberratimes.com.au, December 14).

One notes the additional cost of extricating Australia from its arrangements with France. And we won't see any new boats for perhaps three decades. This, from a government that professes concern about security and boasts of superior economic management.