National curriculum is flawed

Our former system of school based curriculum, which was possible because of the compact size of the ACT, was vastly superior to the one size fits all, generic system imposed upon us.

Courses were written by classroom teachers with oversight from subject panels composed of academics, administrators, education department officials and other practicing teachers.

The system was dynamic and was regularly reviewed and revised.

At the high school and college level this curriculum provided breadth and real choices for students and teachers.

What we have now is a narrow, heavily prescribed curriculum.

One example is in the area of college history offerings.

Formerly there were dozens of approved history units that built on knowledge gained from Years 7-10 courses and from which schools, teachers and students could choose based on interest and available expertise.

The recently approved new national curriculum offers only two senior history courses - ancient and modern history.

In 1984 George Orwell warned against government policies and language that "narrowed the range of human thought"; the national curriculum does exactly that in regard to high school and college students.

The saving grace is that teachers are not programmable robots and will continue to interpret curriculum documents in ways that most benefit their students.

Some Australians are whingers. No matter what is done for them to help financially, they whinge. They cannot help themselves. The federal government is doing all it can to help in a time of financial stress on a lot of households.

Sure the $250 payment to various low income earners is a one-off, but it helps (even though some will just spend it on grog, fags, and gambling).

Pensions have recently risen. The fuel excise has been halved for six months. All of these measures will help. But still they whinge.

Instead of whingeing, say thanks, no matter how small and for how long, everything helps.

There will be many in the Australian community who will say thanks.

Our government, Defence and the DVA have known about the abuse, bullying and sexual assaults within the ADF and many other criminal acts for decades but have done nothing to protect those who have done so much to protect them.

All ADF members have been willing to risk their lives to protect others, no one has stood up and protected them when they needed it.

That's the real crime here. Small wonder the government was so opposed to their victims being given a voice in the Royal Commission. Small wonder they wanted to keep us silent.

Karen Barlow reports on the early polling for the prime non-ALP contenders for the second ACT Senate seat. ("Liberal senator Zed Seselja warns against 'risk' of independent David Pocock after adverse polls", canberratimes.com.au, April 6).

It is a reminder that for this seat, the flow of preferences is very important.

So the two issues for voters are who they put first and the importance of giving every candidate a preference, all the way to the last candidate on their list. Ideally in the ACT where we don't have a tablecloth of a ballot paper, below the line voting best reflects a voter's preferences.

The Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy 2022 Election webpage has some videos explaining the Senate voting system and a figure of how the 2019 Senate election voter preferences went for voters who want to know more.

Our power as citizens is in our vote. We invite Canberrans to contribute to good government and action on climate change.

There was a loop-hole in the dealings of off-the-plan units. It allowed a win-win for the real estate seller, lawyer and government.

A beautiful picture and an affordable price would be created by the real estate office. People did not want to miss out. They signed a contract after a percentage of the total was paid up front.

The sucker (aka the buyer) received their unit's plan. Assured the building would be approved and commenced in a few weeks they mentally began furnishing their new home.

After waiting and waiting, the government approval did not come before the contract date expired. A second contract was drawn up and the buyer was offered the same unit at a price that, most likely, was now out of their league but the building was approved.

In NSW the loophole was closed when it came to light. In the ACT the Law Society advised that, as long as the Stamp Duty was paid on the original amount agreed to (and the deposit was based on that price) the loophole was covered.

From April 1 the ACT government has enabled buyers of units off-the-plan, whose price is no more than $600,000, to not have to pay stamp duty.

Always make sure of your rights with the Law Society. All else is folly.

I cannot believe this absurd ACT government thinks forcing everyone to have their rubbish collected once a fortnight is acceptable. We live in a developed nation and basic human rights such as not having to live amongst overflowing refuse should be the norm.

Enough of this Greenie nonsense. I can guarantee that when they roll this ridiculous scheme out across the ACT, two things will happen.

The first is that there will be no reduction to our rates even though we will be receiving less servicing than we currently are.

The second is that there is going to be rubbish dumped everywhere because people will not want bags of rubbish laying around their rubbish bins and will not (and should not have to) make a trip to the privatised dump to pay more to dispose of the rubbish.

Nature reserves and park lands are going to become private tips in the middle of the nights, mark my words.

Please, please do not reduce the number of garbage collections.

We have unsuccessfully requested another green waste bin as we are overloaded with garden waste.

Every week I struggle to fit all the rubbish into the bin.

The same applies to the recycling bin. We compost all our garbage and a good portion of our paper waste.

Please, please do not reduce our collections. Yes, we have a large family and a large garden.

On Tuesday night's 7.30 program Scott Morrison said he intervened in the NSW preselection debacle because he wanted to protect strong women.

The man has no shame. Could he, at least for once, be honest and say that the intervention was to protect his mates and parachute supporters into seats knowing they will back him should the worst happen and he wins the election.

The federal government has so far committed to spending well over $100 billion on submarines which won't be finished for 20 years. That cost doesn't include the $5 billion for cancelling the French submarine deal.

They've also factored in spending hundreds of billions more on an assortment of other armaments of all shapes and sizes. Now we have hypersonic missiles to be built in Australia.

I'm not quibbling with the expenditure, Australians simply need to see that their money is being well spent. Unless we see these things in operation there will always be doubts in our minds.

The best way to remove this doubt is to display our military might via a preemptive attack on Heard Island. The penguins wouldn't be expecting it so we would have the element of surprise.

If we blew up a few buildings people could see that their money is being well spent. An attack on Fort Denison by one of our new, non-existent submarines would be a real eye opener. It would terrify the Chinese and the Russians.

I'm not questioning the value of our vast military expenditure; we just need to assured it is ready and operational at a moments notice.

On the same day I put out my recycling rubbish bin, Zed's resplendent blue flyer arrived in my letterbox. I didn't get to read much of it. It's only four meters from letterbox to bin.

Shanghai is in lock down and 25 million citizens are being tested by force for COVID-19. Why doesn't China just use Pfizer to vaccinate its population instead of their useless vaccine and save the world an economic and humanitarian catastrophe in the making.

In his Facebook response to having tested positive to COVID-19 George Christensen MP wrote: "Watch the haters now hope for something horrible to happen to me as a result". George, why would anyone hate you? Most of us just think you are a fool and wish that you would quietly walk off into the sunset.

If you recycle and compost properly but can't cope with having your landfill bin collected fortnightly you should do a bit of self-education. Perhaps the ACT government would be happy to give you some advice. The myth that any family's landfill needs would exceed this level is itself a load rubbish.

What is now being discovered in Ukraine in the towns near Kyiv which Russian troops have vacated are sickening. It's time for us to send the Russian ambassador home. He represents a regime of murderous barbarians.

Once again we have the inevitable spectacle of this LNP mob masquerading as a responsible federal government while appointing former LNP politicians, staffers and mates to tax-payer funded government bodies on the eve of an election.

Rajend Naidu (Letters, April 5) criticises China for holding the trial of journalist Cheng Lei in secret and without independent scrutiny. I wonder how Rajend feels about the pursuit and trial of Bernard Collaery by the Australian government here in Canberra. This was the pursuit not even George Brandis would approve but Christian Porter did.

Morrison, the Master Chef, is running a master class. It's called, with apologies to Paul Keating, "How to do yourself slowly".

It's Volodymyr versus Vladimir, or Kyiv versus Kiev.

Eric Hunter (Letters, April 5) relishes the response of a climate scientist to Jim Molan's remark he was openminded about human-induced climate change: "It's good to be open-minded, but not so much that your brain falls out". Glib non-sequiturs don't aid an argument, they surrender to it.