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For years Canberrans experienced some of Australia's worst services in retail, restaurants and building trades. Now these are mainly as good as elsewhere in Australia and in some cases exemplary.
Our schools have a long way to go to catch up to the average Australian performance.
While the national curriculum specifies what learnings students should achieve in the various subjects, teachers are left with the task of creating the curriculum materials to enable students to learn.
This is an impossibly difficult task even for the best teachers. My daughters in ACT public schools had as curriculum materials in mathematics a series of unbound, scrappy photocopies produced by their teacher. Hopeless.
The ACT needs to invest in quality curriculum materials, either on its own or in partnership with other jurisdictions. If the Liberals could campaign on this, and leave their ideological wokery behind, they would win my vote.
Andrew McCredie, Red Hill
A wicked problem we have to fix
Re several articles on December 18 about education. Private school fees are increasing to ridiculous levels that only the rich can pay if they are not wage earners, despite continuing government subsidies.
Public school results in literacy and numeracy are not as good as they once were due to lessening system support for schools and teachers.
Teacher shortage makes everything worse because teachers cannot access the kind of ongoing evidence-based professional development available 20 years ago. Now teachers are faced with commercial interests and lobby groups peddling their wares. It is a wicked problem but it must be sorted for the good of our children and grandchildren.
John McIntyre, Bruce
No time to stop Drum beat
We appear to be at a moment in history when serious thinkers worry about the future of democracy.
The problems seem to centre on extreme individualism, contempt for people who don't think as we do, and the loss of ability to see, hear and exchange ideas with people who are different from us.
Digitisation and individually consuming our information from personal sources, often created by algorithms to keep us in our private bubbles, are part of the problem. It is at this very moment that the ABC has chosen to move towards individualised streaming instead of broadcasting.
To support this move it has decided to dump a program that has been providing a superb model of how to behave if we are to continue to be a democracy.
The Drum daily shows exchanges of divergent views on important issues of the day with intelligence and respect. But The Drum suffers from a small viewing audience at a critical time, 6pm, when commercial channels want to capture their audience for the rest of the night. So, we are likely to be served up another piece of popular fluff to keep us distracted as we hurtle unthinking into an uncertain future.
Jean Gifford, O'Connor
Politicians standing for nothing
I cannot accept the vitriol, abuse and prejudice displayed by the conservatives in relation to the Australian government enacting legislation to address the High Court of Australia's finding that indefinite detention of non-citizens after serving their sentences was illegal.
My disgust is all the more-so at the present time when we celebrate the birth of a young Middle Eastern man, long-haired, bearded, undocumented and of doubtful parentage. Indeed, it is fair to say our politicians hunt with the hounds and flee with the foxes, standing for everything but standing for nothing.
James Grenfell, Bruce
Improving Northbourne for bikes
The editorial on December 16 ("Infrastructure is the key to bike safety") again raises the problems in shared road usage between cyclists and motorists. Northbourne Avenue is mentioned as one of the worst "shares" between the two modes of transport.
Rather than build separate cycle paths next to this road, why not use the space between the road and the tram tracks for a cycle track, one way only, on each side of the tram?
There would be significant interaction between cyclists and pedestrians as a result and it would be necessary to change signage and give right of way to pedestrians (and the tram), and to impose speed limits. Worth some thought? Of course this would not be the answer in other locations mentioned.
Peter Baskett, Murrumbateman
Falls belong to public
Of course, the Ginninderra Falls and Gorge precinct should be in public hands as a national park. That's despite the best environmental intentions of its private owner, which has interests in property development.
A land swap, with some Commonwealth subsidy, could be the best mechanism to achieve the transfer - say, the Falls precinct for a parcel of suitable existing, or future (as the NSW border is extended north-westward), ACT land.
Jack Kershaw, Kambah
Reactor in your backyard?
The pro-nuclear proponents often spruik the pros of small modular nuclear reactors, however, I don't hear much about the cons like radioactive waste, cost, complexity, poor performance or development time. A search on the web on the pros and cons of SMRs is quite revealing. Not sure too many Aussies would want an SMR in their backyard.
Geoff Gillett, Chapman
Australia must set the example
Janaline Oh, in her defence of Australia continuing to export fossil fuels, really does stretch credibility to breaking point ("Stopping new coal and gas exports won't reduce emissions", Opinion, December 18). She uses the drug-dealer's defence then argues that "Australia must be the dealer who takes their clients to rehab and supports them off their habit". Give us a break. Other countries are not going to have any incentive to move away from fossil fuels if they have an easy supply of them.
It's a vacuous argument, devoid of moral merit. Australia has to set an example, even if it costs us in the short term. We have to both stop exports and stop approving any new coal and gas developments.
Thus, it is bitterly disappointing, after Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen performed so well at COP28 in Dubai, that the federal government announced it is planning to subsidise the Main Arm project in Darwin that will open the Beetaloo Basin - potentially unlocking huge new fossil gas exports.
Jenny Goldie, Cooma, NSW
Dicey history of 'deterrents'
Peter Radtke approves our submarine deal as "a great deterrent", whilst David Perkins disagrees, and sees the deal as casting shame on our Labor government (Letters, December 19). Who is right?
Once upon a time the atom bomb, capable of destroying a city of Hiroshima size, was the nuclear deterrent. Then came the improved deterrence offered by the hydrogen bomb.
A quite small hydrogen bomb would utterly destroy the largest capital city, London, New York, and all its inhabitants. Then came a further improvement with the intercontinental ballistic missile, guided by patrolling satellites, unstoppable.
This excellent deterrent was adopted by other nations: today we have seven nuclear-armed nations, not counting North Korea. This is the situation today, many trillion dollars after Hiroshima. For all we know there are further improvement in the pipeline, driven by the need to improve deterrence even more. As this deterrence must be operated by fallible humans, it does seem a dicey way to security.
Harry Davis, Campbell
Singing from same song sheet
In an effort to appear "economically competent" the federal Labor government has cut $40 million a year from the ANU's budget ("'Bone crushing' COVID stymies reform", December 19, p3), In doing so Labor is simply singing from the same song sheet as its Coalition predecessor.
One would have hoped that the ANU economics department would have been able to call out the economic nonsense of Labor's continuing austerity drive when it comes to tertiary funding. But sadly, the ANU economics department is itself as much a captive of neoliberal austerity as the Labor government. There is a better alternative.
Terry Gibson, Kambah
Happy Christmas correspondents
Can I take the opportunity to wish The Canberra Times letters editor, staff and all my fellow correspondents a most joyous and peaceful Christmas. And to thank you all for keeping us and the broader readership informed, amused, bemused and sometimes utterly confused with your views on all Canberra and world's problems and how they may be resolved.
It has been another challenging year news-wise and no doubt 2024 will be likewise, but I am confident that we will rise to the occasion and continue to offer our views in the hope that in doing so will not only make us feel better, but perhaps go some way to making a difference to decision and policy making, to benefit us all.
Angela Kueter-Luks, Bruce
TO THE POINT
MORE STORIES LIKE THIS
What a joy to read an obituary about a person, Petronella Jacoba Wensing, who was not a senior public servant, academic or journalist. ("Vale skilled teacher and activist", December 17, p16). An extraordinary life. Several years ago I prepared an obituary for a Polish refugee who had minimal schooling and a working life as a labourer in Canberra. Died age 100. In early September 1939, he was being fitted with his National Service uniform when German planes flew overhead. This obituary was not published.
R.J.Wenholz, Holt
SIMPLE SUMMER PLAN
Unlike ScoMo, all Albo needs go do this Christmas is stay home, visit natural disaster regions and offer assistance where ever required.
John Sandilands, Garran
EXPECTED MUCH BETTER
What I thought I was reading was an expose on the impact of cyber bullying on a person's mental health, ("Animal lovers caught up in toxic hate", December 17, p4-5). Instead as I read further it turned out to be about the spiteful machinations of who said what to whom and ended with a complete character assassination of a person who is no longer here to defend herself. I expect much better from The Canberra Times than this.
Robyn Soxsmith, Kambah
LACK OF EMPATHY
As an animal defender, and occasional volunteer at Lucky Stars animal sanctuary. I was appalled and disappointed by the article in Sunday Canberra Times (December 17, p4-5). While it may have sought to be balanced, it displayed a lack of empathy, complete insensitivity and sought to stoke division and conflict within a grieving community.
Chris Doyle, Gordon
ROOM AT THE LAKE
Relatives visiting for Christmas? Can't be bothered to pay for a campsite? Based on the number of feral vans and campers at the far end of Black Mountain Peninsula it looks like the ACT government has opened a free caravan park. Hey ACT Policing, how about some of that community policing you keep talking about.
Neil Kinsella, Fadden
IDEAL SITE FOR MEMORIAL
Ian Pearson (Letters, December 18) laments the appalling state of the Kokoda Memorial at the former Canberra Services Club site at Manuka. I think an ideal place for the Memorial would be at the entrance to the Kokoda Trail at the base of Mount Ainslie.
Felicity Chivas, Ainslie
OBSTACLE TO PEACE
Jeff Hart (Letters, December 18) says there will be no peace or security for Israel until the Palestinians have their own state. In fact, there will be no Palestinian state until the Palestinians promise and demonstrate that once they get it, they will respect Israel's right to exist in peace and security.
George Rothman, Chapman
WHAT IS HUNGARY DOING?
Isn't it darkly ironic that Hungary has blocked aid for Ukraine? The Soviet Union crushed an uprising in Hungary in 1956. One would have thought that, given the history between Hungary and the USSR, it might have been more supportive of Ukraine's attempts to withstand its takeover by Russia. Clearly, I'm missing something.
Gordon Fyfe, Kambah
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