Congestion our threat

Every day the CT broadcasts public opinion on the proposed light rail, opponents arguing its benefit / cost ratio compares poorly with road transport. If Canberra's transport environment was static, that might be true, but static it most definitely is not. Our population has grown quickly to its current 389,000, and according to ABS predictions will continue to do so. If the Libs continue to pursue current policies without factoring in mass transit systems having their own operating spaces, as do trains (and some Brisbane buses), our roads will fill up and eventually congest as we see elsewhere. How efficient then will be the buses ?

The only difference between local ALP and Liberal is that the Libs will be more radical in pursuit of business friendly development options. They are today pressing for expansion of residential development west of the Murrumbidgee River with no mention of any limits to it. They'll take us along the same sprawling path as Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane's pro business leaders have and continue to take their cities.

Every day we see new and upgraded roadworks, new suburbs, and new residential estates and apartment buildings – evidence of growth. Canberra is still unpopulated enough to be spacious and uncongested and is indeed an attractive place to live, but try and find a political plan for preserving into the future its desirable attributes – there is none, only corporate beneficial population growth stretching into a socially unplanned future.

This lack of planning guarantees an eventual Canberra suffering congestion and social ills as Sydney and Melbourne. Must it be so? Without federal government policy change away from high population growth (all three major parties the same), it's inevitable.

Is that what we want?

Vince Patulny, Kambah

With all due respect to Ken Stokes (Letters, October 12) Mike Reddy does not miss the point. The fact that Mike Reddy enjoyed his ride on the light rail system in a city that hasn't gone broke as a result of it, is just the point. The time for Canberra's light rail beginnings is now. Zurich's light rail dates from 1890 when the city had a population of less than 100,000. Stockholm's light rail began early last century with a population of 300,000.

Can we afford the cost of one billion dollars? Yes. Finance will never be cheaper and of course costs will be reduced by economic benefits the rail system will bring to Canberra. Is light rail the best alternative for the 12 km trip from Gunghalin to the city? Yes. Metal on metal is the most efficient form of public transport. Arguing that there are better ways to spend tax payers money is a nonsense argument.

On that basis anyone can challenge any expenditure at all, from submarines to private schools. Canberra will grow, it will develop, it will prosper.

Spending for the future of our city and its people is enlightened, future looking government.

Patrick O'Hara, Isaacs

Messrs Barr and Corbell are delusional if they think the Feds will pay to extend our tram line just because they're spending up at the Gold Coast ("ACT chasing feds for light rail funds", October 13, p1).

We dip out on three key grounds. First, the relevant federal infrastructure body dismisses the Gungahlin tram as not viable. Second, unlike ours (with little along the line), their back-of-the-beach tram links their casino with their dolphins, with the accommodation used by fly-in, fly-out tourists in between. They're extending it to the railway station, enabling trips to/from Brisbane, etc.

Third, the Gold Coast is in the federal electorate of Moncrieff: held since creation by the Liberals with an average 59 per cent of the vote. We vote 60 per cent Labor.

We get swingingly marginal or get no money. Ever.

Tossing out those foisting this white elephant on us would be excellent practice.

Manson MacGregor, Amaroo

Your story headlined "Movement at the station as history goes up for sale" (October 10, p1) claims this Brindabella property is "the genesis of Australia's most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin award ..." and claims it is associated with her most famous novel My Brilliant Career and thereby, in part, "a cradle of national culture".

The facts are otherwise.

Franklin's setting for My Brilliant Career and her other famous country novels was around Bangalore – a locality off the present Federal Highway, some 27km south of Goulburn and 11km north of Collector. In May 1889, aged 10, she moved there with her family, was educated locally and wrote My Brilliant Career (1901).

Professor Jill Roe's 2008 celebrated and much awarded biography, Stella Miles Franklin, states (p29): "it was from Bangalore she dispatched the manuscript of My Brilliant Career... [It] "describes Bangalore's location, 'in the novel the heroine's father, Richard Melvyn, believes 'Possum Gully' will be ideal for stock trading: only 17 miles from a city like Goulburn" ... a small overgrown cemetery nearby contains the grave of the namesake of the heroine of My Brilliant Career, native-born, Penelope Sybilla Macauley, a dairy farmer's wife who died of pneumonia on July 15, 1899, aged 47. John Franklin [her father] was a witness at the funeral". As a paper of record, The Canberra Times will hopefully correct the misinformation from real estate agents about the locations associated with Miles Franklin's novels.

Frank Ross, Collector, NSW

According to the the Australian Citizenship website, people over 60 years of age are not required to sit the language test.

I will assume that elderly definitely means over 60. It was nice of Michael Cavenor (Letters, October 13) to try to help his fellow passenger. It can often be very difficult for elderly people to take on a new language – especially if they are not in the workforce. Quite often, women in these cases can become quite isolated. The woman concerned has perhaps come to live with her children.

Jude Ardern, Macgregor

In advocating even more extreme police powers, it would seem that as our nation's first law officer, Attorney-General George Brandis sees the law as nothing more than a crude hammer with which to intimidate and alienate the community in the guise of defending it ("Terror-related evidence could be kept from 'control order' subjects", canberratimes.com.au, October 14).

In response to the three deaths from domestic terrorist attacks in the past 15 years, Australia has enacted more anti-terrorism laws than any other country on the planet, while throwing close to a billion dollars at police and security agencies: all allegedly intended to "keep us safe". But where is the balance and common sense in this response when, in the 10 years to 2012, 22,800 Australians took their own lives, 8500 were killed driving cars, 2600 fell victim to homicide and 850 to domestic violence?

And if that is not evidence enough of the stupidity and impotence of those who would govern us, consider the fact that in the same period more than 400 Australians died by falling out of bed and more than 200 from falling off ladders, while 66 Indigenous Australians died in police custody.

That both sides of politics in this country have cynically and wilfully sought to outgame each other in this hysterical abuse of public trust and wanton waste of public resources is surely testament to the real dangers confronting our democracy.

John Richardson, Wallagoot, NSW

In the final scene of the film The Lord of the Flies (1963), Ralph is about to be murdered by Jack and his hunters. The boys' island world is real to them, of course, but it is all fantasy. A crawling, stumbling Ralph is brought to reality by a pair of adult legs. As the camera pans up from the white shoes, white knee socks, white shorts and white shirt, reality is revealed to be an officer of the Royal Navy.

This ending serves as an allegory for what is happening in our real fantasy world today. All of the posturing, America, Russia, IS, TPP, Australia, the whole thing is real to us, but it is a fantasy. Reality in the form of anthropogenic global warming will confront us with real reality; maybe at a tipping point as dramatic as the final scene of a movie, maybe slowly inexorably over the next 200 years, but reality surely will bring us up short.

Kenneth Griffiths, O'Connor

I have been reading in many forums that now Malcolm Turnbull is Prime Minister the republic is back on the agenda. I believe in a republic, but I will not vote in favour of one until the agreed model, which must be adhered to, is put forward.

The "republicans" are all saying King CharlesIII will be a disaster. I believe Charles will never be king. He is divorced and married to a divorcee; it will never happen. The crown will go to William, which it can, as succession does not necessarily follow the next in line. When it does, because of the popularity of William and his family, there is no way Australia will want a republic.

My model of a republic? The head of state to be elected by 80per cent of a joint sitting of Parliament. The head of state cannot be an ex-pollie or pollie of a political party (at all three levels), union or political party member, or a member of the clergy. We would still remain a member of the Commonwealth. There are many great people out there who fill the criteria.

John Perkins, Cooma, NSW

Justin Said (Letters, October 14) perpetuates the myth that Israel "generously" offered the Palestinians statehood three times (in 2000, 2001 and 2008). The falsity and bad faith of the Israeli offers in 2000 and 2001 were fully exposed by Jewish academic and Israel-based peace-activist Professor Tanya Reinhart in her book Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948, where she catalogues Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's "concept of endless negotiations" and how it was enthusiastically adopted by his successors, notably Ehud Barak in his phoney offer to the Palestinians at Camp David in 2000, and ever since.

This was also the tactic used in Ariel Sharon's Gaza plan in 2005, where Reinhart noted that "the crucial factor behind the plan was gaining the time necessary to advance the project of the West Bank barrier". Moreover, the plan made it explicit that the Israeli military would never truly leave the Palestinians in peace. Subsequent authorities have confirmed the accuracy of Reinhart's view. Oxford Professor and Israeli veteran Avi Shlaim, for example, in 2009 wrote that once Gaza had been "converted overnight into an open-air prison ... withdrawal from Gaza was not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank ... [and] part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land". The offers of statehood have, in other words, been a total sham.

Chris Williams, Griffith

The ACT Jewish Community, much like the wider Australian Jewish community doesn't agree on everything – there is no singular view. However, I am almost sure there is a strong consensus within my community that when people step on to a bus and shoot 19 people, or when someone stabs several people at a bus stop – we all cry out. On Tuesday, in Jerusalem, that is exactly what happened.

These attacks were not in disputed territories and they were not against soldiers or security officials; reasons given to support attacks by terrorists against an "occupying" Israel. They were in Israel proper, created under international law – not part of any proposed land swaps and green lines. They were attacks perpetrated against civilians trying to live their lives.

Our people are bleeding, our communities are crying – yet the world is silent.

Peace should prevail, and peace would prevail if the Palestinian leadership would condemn these attacks and shut down these terror cells.

I have ask our elected representatives to condemn such violence, and to show the Australian Jewish community that they stand with us in solidarity with the victims and their families.

Rabbi Alon Meltzer, ACT Jewish Community Inc, Forrest

I question the justification for establishment of 40km/h precincts in Belconnen, Civic and Tuggeranong.

Seemingly endless Australian pedestrian-safety studies rely on accident data that is decades old, being regurgitated by the same groups of academics, over and over again, just in slightly differing context. The TAMS website even has a graph showing us a 50per cent risk of pedestrian death at impact speeds of 60km/h, while they spruik the benefits of only a 30per cent risk of death at 40km/h. However, more recent studies from the US and Britain reveal only a 25per cent or less risk of pedestrian death at impact speeds of 60km/h.

On TAMS website, the "risk of death to a pedestrian or cyclist as a function of impact speed" graph they use is from a 1990s study of 176 pedestrian fatalities in Adelaide between 1983 and 1991.

Reviewing the raw data reveals the average vehicle involved in these 176 pedestrian fatalities was manufactured around 1977, the vintage of heavy chrome bumper bars.

Immediately, this study and graph become totally inappropriate for ACT government use in 2015.

Important information is never even mentioned. For instance, pedestrian fatalities in Australia are down from 538 deaths in 1985 to 152 deaths in 2014, and I respectfully note there was only one ACT pedestrian fatality in 2014, which was not speed-related, anyway.

The introduction of 50km/h limits in Canberra has already achieved superior safety levels than those being proffered by the ACT government for their 40km/h precincts.

So, what is the ACT government's actual agenda – especially in the context of the idiotic abomination they have created in Bunda Street?

Now that's a pig wearing lipstick and French knickers if I've ever seen one.

Jamie Geysen Aranda

AVERT YOUR EYES

To those airport passengers concerned about the military advertising there, just relax. The adverts are aimed at politicians and military brass, not ordinary citizens. Also, the barons of war have much more to spend than Aboriginal heritage societies or Canberra's many wonderful attractions, so the latter are not in the race. The airport corporation is all about making money (as it should be), but such advertising limits ethical citizenship.

Barry Peffer, Flynn

PARTIAL TO PEACOCKS

I am disappointed by the proposed further removal of peahens and peacocks from Narrabundah. As a regular visitor to the suburb, with close friends living there, I enjoy the sight of these beautiful birds. All residents in the area deserve the opportunity for discussion before ACT Parks and Conservation embarks on another expensive exercise of relocation.

L. Wallington, Yarralumla

PERMEATE-FREE MILK

The Nutrition Australia website (nutritionaustralia.org) says permeate is a valuable component of milk containing lactose, vitamins and minerals extracted from milk using ultra-filtration. All the fresh whole milk on sale these days claims to be "permeate free". Why would anyone want to buy milk with all this good stuff extracted?

Bruce A. Peterson, Kambah

EXPLANATION NEEDED

R.Foster (Letters October 13) complains of another shambles in the design of Canberra's roads. I'm sure there are good reasons for the designs; it's just that they aren't apparent to most people. I suggest the erection of explanatory signs at new projects. Each explanation should have the preamble, "We know this design seems stupid, but ...".

Mike Dallwitz, Giralang

GNOME IN DANGER

What shocking news that metadata retention designed to keep us safe from the terrorist threat may not come on stream until 2017. To protect the vulnerable community, Senator George Brandis should immediately lower the control order age to include toddlers and extend the detention without charge period to five years. Otherwise, I fear for the safety of my garden gnome.

Thos Puckett, Ashgrove, Qld

DIVERSITY DISHARMONY

I appreciate Alison Coster's faith in diversity (Letters, October 13). Fortunately, Jerrabomberra isn't a hotbed of Muslim agitation. I suggest she move to south-western Sydney. I'll count the months until she changes her idealistic tune.

Gerry Murphy, Braddon

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