Canberra's alleged pothole 'repairs' just aren't good enough

Then, lo and behold, a contractor's Mercedes tray top ute pulled up on the side of the road with flashing amber lights. Two workers exited the vehicle and proceeded to dump several shovels of dry tar road mix into the potholes.

One of the workers stomped on one of the dry mix heaps. They then did several laps around the street to run over the newly "repaired" holes, I assume in an attempt to pack the mix into the holes.

As you can see from the photo I took it was not a great result.

I have no doubt the holes will open up again in no time.

I don't know what ACT government (ie we taxpayers) are paying for this service but my five-year-old grandson could have done a better job with a bucket of sand.

Chief Minister Barr will never condone a review of the ACT's judicial system as his sole objective appears to be to extract as much revenue as possible from Canberra citizens.

He will fine people hundreds of dollars for innocently exceeding the speed limit by four or five km/h, but will concur with the release on bail of serious criminals who invariably repeat their crimes whilst out in the community.

Perhaps he thinks that by not incarcerating these hoons they will speed excessively thus increasing his revenue base.

Re Kym MacMillan's recent letter on the frontier wars. (Letters, October 10).

The term "war" is English, derived from European traditions of killing each other with maximum ferocity.

Invading the lands of "natives" and murdering them in different ways to overcome resistance was called dispersals or just colonisation.

If still we cannot acknowledge the brutality of our shared violent past then Indigenous people need a formal mechanism to protect themselves from our continuing antipathy.

Bill Deane's (Letters, October 11) apparent objection to public funding of the proposed Voice is a sad disappointment. For years and years governments have, with broadly the right motives, poured taxpayers' money into getting it largely wrong (recall, for example, the famous "intervention").

It has been pointed out again and again that a completely different approach is needed. The proposed Voice is a major part of that different approach, including to the expenditure of public funds. In view of the condition Indigenous Australians now find themselves in, primarily as a result of the actions since 1788 of non-Indigenous Australians, taxpayer funding is entirely appropriate.

It is important to establish the Voice's existence by a fairly simple Constitutional amendment. The nitty-gritty of the structure of the Voice does not, however, belong in the Constitution. That and the Voice's funding are appropriately determined by Parliament which controls all public expenditure.

Let's get on with it.

Sorry, John Coochey (Letters, October 11), your view of continental defence doesn't coincide with the objectives of the 2020 Defence Strategic Review to which the ADF works.

They are to shape Australia's strategic environment, to deter actions against Australia's interests, and to respond with credible military force, when required.

And how could Australia support the UN if it doesn't have the capability to move its ground forces offshore? East Timor, Cambodia, and Somalia come to my mind.

The solution for Light Rail 2 has been revealed on SBS's Epic Train Journeys. The Darjeeling to Ghum railway (appropriately 19th century technology), employs double-loops, Z-reverse bends, and sprinkling sand on the track, to climb hills.

Probably all that is required is to loop the track once or twice around City Hill to get it up to Commonwealth Avenue, with maybe a bit of sand to aid traction. Why didn't they think of that?

I couldn't agree more strongly with Felicity Chambers (Letters, October 20) that we should call it as it was; the British Aboriginal war (or invasion).

After all, to my knowledge, Japan and Germany are now sovereign states, despite being defeated. How come, Australia is now governed by a claimed sovereignty which is part of the British commonwealth which is led by the king of the Commonwealth? While the Australian "sovereignty" has given some special control of sacred Aboriginal sites to the original owners of the land, it appears to retain the right to mine those sites, endanger the natural traditional waters through fracking, and dynamite those sacred sites without consultation with the original owners of the land.

Surely we could base our present important conversations about our future relationships without shame on the real truth.

I'm with Mr Hull ("Australia's Parliament, not prime minister, must vote on war decisions", canberratimes.com.au, Oct 11).

The war call is too big to be made by just the PM or advised on by just the armed forces themselves. The latter are easily duchessed by a mere secondment for parachute training at Fort Worth or a chance to play crash landings in blazing cognac on a mess table.

By the time we would have a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines we can have at comparable cost a home-based deterrent force capable enough to defend Australia: let's regain self-respect and fight our own corner as an independent self-sufficient part of south-east Asia and the south-west Pacific. Otherwise we are an expendable decoy target for nuclear weapons aimed at Pine Gap and North West Cape and "alliance" bases from Cape York to Cocos Island. We need to court respect and comity, not enmity and oblivion.

Oliver Raymond (Letters, October 7) said the proposed Voice to Parliament "will not have parliamentary power; it will be advisory" and that "it will essentially be just another influencer alongside hosts of others" (such as those representing big business and trade unions).

However a key difference between the Voice and these bodies is that the Voice would be established under the Australian Constitution, whereas the other bodies are not.

An important issue in the Voice debate is what the High Court of Australia would make of the three Voice related provisions that the Albanese Government proposes to have inserted in the Australian Constitution by way of a referendum.

Is there a reasonable chance the High Court could find that a certain law of the Parliament was invalid because, in the view of the High Court, Parliament had not had proper regard to representations made by the Voice in respect of that law prior to its enactment?

Does the Albanese Government propose a fourth Voice related provision be inserted in the Constitution to put the matter beyond doubt one way or another?

To help to inform proper public debate on the Voice proposal, the Prime Minister must address these questions.

I feel for people feeling distress on receiving their rates notice (Letters, October 12), particularly since nearly every ratepayer's bill has increased far more quickly than their income and the Labor/Green government has never shown Canberrans they are spending our money carefully.

That said, Canberrans should not be distressed by the increase in the Unimproved Value of their land per se since the valuation is merely used to apportion the government's total rates revenue between properties.

By way of contrast, Canberrans have good reasons to be outraged that the Labor/Greens government has consistently increased the total of all rates and taxes by far more than income and population has grown. They have also consistently run budget deficits, in effect borrowing more after taxing us through the nose.

As many others have noticed, it is easy to see waste and neglect.

Unfortunately, the next meaningful opportunity for improvement is just over two years away at the next ACT Election scheduled for 19 October 2024.

By then it will be well beyond time to carefully consider whether to continue with a Labor/Green majority lording it over us, or whether to elect a minority government dependent on a constructive cross-bench.

Western nations should stop sending arms, military equipment, and other support to the Ukrainians. It simply risks a global apocalyptic escalation over the fate of one nation. It's just not worth it.

There is argument about whether the government should abandon the tax cuts and, if they did, would it be a broken election promise. If they were John Howard they could just say, "it was a non-core promise".

A friend from Germany drove from Canberra to Batemans Bay and couldn't find the Kings Highway. He was gob-smacked when he discovered the run down, potholed road was the connection between Australia's capital and the coast.

Could Attorney-General Rattenbury publicly explain why he will not personally review court sentences ("Advice council will consider sentencing", October 7, P.3) when our judiciary appear soft on offenders and he is elected by the community to protect our interests.

I'm pretty cranky at the continued inaccurate and misleading reporting by the media of a recent protest in Melbourne. People gluing their hands to a work of Picasso, as reported repeatedly by the media, is a story. People gluing their hands to a sheet of perspex, which is what actually happened, is not.

A complete mess on major defence projects? So what is new? When has it been otherwise? It will not change until the engineers who dominate the Defence Contracting Organisation are replaced by those with relevant qualifications and not trying to ingratiate themselves with contractors.

Crispin Hull makes some good points ("Australia's Parliament, not prime minister, must vote on war decisions", canberratimes.com.au, October 11). Maybe we need a referendum to change the Constitution to make the executive arm of government either subordinate or more accountable to the parliamentary arm.

I read the news on Monday, oh boy. ("Hole lot of trouble", page 1, October 11). If there were 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire I wonder how many holes in Canberra it would take to fill the Albert Hall?

Re light coloured roofs to reflect heat (Letters, October 11). Another very effective option is to shade the roof with a set of solar panels. And, as a bonus, you can make electricity.

Tens of thousands of cubic metres of fill is needed to raise London Circuit. Meanwhile hundreds of potholes have suddenly appeared all over the city. Coincidence? I think not.