Asset test a bad idea

The very rich would get richer, with a lower tax burden due to a reduced pension bill, and the majority would be worse off.

Tim Herne Calwell

Simon Cowan proposed a system of government-guaranteed low-rate reverse mortgages, allowing home-owning pensioners to reduce their reliance on the pension by funding their own retirement. Wait. His proposal has the government deeming mortgage income for the purposes of the pension income test, so his idea does not so much "allow" involvement, as mandate a mortgage-funded reduction in pensions. Anyway, in Simon's world, everyone is happy — the pensioner, the government and the taxpayer.

Oh, and the "banks and superannuation funds" that (for some reason unexplained) would provide the annuities at low rates would apparently be just as happy as everyone else. Strangely, Simon stopped there. He did not explain the minor matter of the "government backing" for these mortgages.

So, while he is being coy, how could it work?

Simon's friends in the current administration would not countenance the government under-writing such a scheme. Better to have some private-sector expertise involved. Clearly a role for international financiers – perhaps one of his centre's sponsors might be interested. Or perhaps one of those who participated in the orgy of mortgage foreclosures during the global financial crisis could bring a bit of good old American know-how to the party.

G. Williams, Gowrie

Susan Helyar (Letters, April 27) misrepresents the heritage listing of the Northbourne housing precinct. The listing states explicitly that the flats do not meet the criteria of being valued by the community.

They do, however, more than meet all the other criteria for built heritage, including being an important example of modernist architecture, and have, therefore, rightly been given heritage listing. The heritage listing does not require public housing tenants to continue living in the flats. The buildings can be sympathetically renovated and controlled development could occur around them. Public housing stock can be increased throughout all of the ACT by other means, such as a mandated percentage per new development. The ACT government has successfully muddied the issue of the Northbourne housing precinct by insisting it will only build public infrastructure (ie, housing and light rail) if it is allowed to disregard its own planning laws in order to make more money from land sales. It has also allowed these heritage buildings to fall into disrepair while some of the most vulnerable members of the community still live in them. If a private developer was to do the same thing, there would be public outrage.

The ACT government has an opportunity to create a unique place in Australia by working sympathetically with this modernist heritage. It is limiting itself by its lack of imagination.

Beth Sloane, Scullin

Please tell the community, Andrew Barr, that you are not going to cut the funding of the territory's police force by $15.4million ("Fears local police positions will go as funding cuts begin to bite", canberratimes. com.au, April 27) while proceeding with a light rail project likely to cost around $1billion.

Stop leading ACT taxpayers up the garden path. Listen to the people for a change and stop driving your own agendas, as you will certainly meet defeat in next year's ACT election.

Graham Stripp, Richardson

Let me see if I have this right. We have until the end of May to comment on a proposal to vary the Territory Plan (draft variation 343) to allow Mr Fluffy blocks to be subdivided/unit-titled. However, no list of the affected blocks will be released until the end of June. How am I supposed to know if any or all of the blocks adjoining mine are affected? Shame on you, ACT government, for such a sneaky move.

K. Clarke, Chifley

I was interested to read about the chaos the revised bus schedule on Monday, April27 (to a Saturday timetable) caused for commuters. Shane Rattenbury's response was "bus drivers were entitled to the day off as part of the ACT public service holiday". However, I was advised by a spokesman for ACTION that bus drivers had a public holiday on Saturday, April25. They changed the Saturday bus timetable to a Sunday bus timetable for the reason that "bus drivers were entitled to a public holiday" and that "all public holidays in the ACT revert automatically to a Sunday timetable".

So, from Mr Rattenbury's response, it appears bus drivers had two bites of the public holiday cherry and, as a result, greatly inconvenienced commuters on both the Saturday and the Monday.

I was one of those commuters inconvenienced on the Saturday. Anzac Day was a busy day and people were out about into the night, consuming alcohol as part of the Anzac celebrations. For that reason, on Saturday I went to catch a late-night bus into Civic which didn't arrive. I was then told by a passer-by that because it was a "public holiday" the timetable for that day had reverted to a Sunday timetable. I was not happy.

Really ACTION, I think a bit of strategic thinking would have gone a long way. If you decided to make Monday a Saturday timetable to give bus drivers their time off as part of an ACT government "public holiday", then Saturday's timetable should not have been changed to a Sunday timetable.

Sebastian Cole, Ngunnawal

What on earth is happening to this country ("Malcolm Turnbull did not request Scott McIntyre sacking", canberratimes.com.au, April 28)? The sacking of this SBS journalist is a disgrace. Why was he fired? For two, (maybe) inappropriate statements?

For many of us, this year's Anzac Day message has been a cultification of an imperialist invasion. And there is no doubt that some Australians celebrating Anzac Day were poorly read, largely white, nationalist drinkers and gamblers. These two comments are true.

Perhaps McIntyre's comments could have been expressed with more subtly and sensitivity. But surely Australia is too sophisticated to accept blatant propaganda at the expense of honesty, truth and balance.

McIntyre has the right to express honest opinions, based on fact, on social media. He is an Australian citizen with rights of free speech. John Burns of 3AW is still in his job after a flippant comment labelling a prominent AFL player a terrorist. A reprimand or a warning sure, but a sacking, come on SBS, time to get a life, this is Australia 2015.

Patrick O'Hara, Isaacs

Nepal's government is admitting its probable inability to cope with the aftermath of the recent earthquake. Too many people have been killed or injured, or are homeless. Sadly but obviously, this is yet another example of how the human impact of natural events increases with population size.

Nepal's population increases annually by about 2 per cent. From a 2000 base population of 24.7million, Nepal in 2012 had grown to about 29.9million. If such growth continues, Nepal's government will be increasingly unable to cope with natural events, as will other governments supporting unsustainable growth.

Australia's 1.85percent annual growth rate foreshadows such problems here as Joe Hockey's 2015 IGR ambitions of 39.8million by 2055 are pursued (average 400,000 a year over the next 40 years), largely through high immigration.

Where's the plan, Joe ? What would be the environmental and social impact? At what population number should growth cease so we don't become ungovernable?

I don't know and I'm certain Joe Hockey and Bill Shorten don't. The Greens? Population poison seems to affect them too.

Vince Patulny, Kambah

In addition to Nicholas Stuart's excellent piece "Anzac reprise defies reality" (Times2, April 28, p1) can I add two observations.

First is the complete lack of coverage by Australian media of the Cape Helles Memorial service (April 24), commemorating the much larger and important battle that Nicholas Stuart refers to than the Anzac Cove diversion (bloody that it was).

The second is the announcement of a $100million education centre at the already extravagant Australian war memorial two kilometres outside Villers-Bretonneux. Presumably it will open in three years' time at the 100th anniversary of the much smaller but at least strategically more important battle than Gallipoli.

Outside of Anzac Day it is hard to see who will visit such a centre in the middle of nowhere unless hordes of tourist buses are expected to bring Aussies from Paris each day. There are a lot better things to spend $100million on than extravagant seldom-visited memorials.

Patrick Kilby, Lyneham

The Abbott government is spending $100million to search the Indian ocean for a black box that could be six kilometres below the sea, and $100million for yet another foreign monument to commemorate a battle which took place 100 years ago. But only $5million in aid for a poverty-stricken country suffering one of the worst natural disasters of recent years. Liberal? Really?

Michael Adler, Gungahlin

Now that Indonesia has lawfully executed two habitual criminals, the Anzac Day brouhaha is over for another year, the cricket media circus and offers of state funerals for commentators is behind us, knighthoods for old English nobility is past and with the "drugs in sport" probes over for the moment, is there a chance that politicians can get back to making a small effort to save the country from self-induced bankruptcy before the next media circus?

Rhys Stanley, via Hall, NSW

Nine families in agony when Indonesian law is implemented. More than 600 Australian families a year experience magnitudes of pain when drug smugglers murder our children. Who causes this gargantuan distress?

Executing the smuggler who caused her death won't bring my dead daughter back, but at least that one smuggler won't kill anyone else's child, and also does not need to be housed, fed, doctored and catered for, on the public purse. Neither the perpetrators nor their victims remain on this earth to suffer.

The illusion of fast money leaves death, ruination, misery and agony in its wake. Did the smugglers not know this? Or did they not care and were hoping they would never be caught?

Michel Meredith, Fraser

Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran gambled a big reward against a big risk and lost. It's too bad that the Indonesians stuck to their guns but unsurprising. Australia is offended but should move on because our nationally important relationship to Indonesia needs to get back to normal.

Neville Exon, Chapman

Indonesia: Never been there, never going there, never knowingly buy anything they produce. Their president reflects the opinions and attitudes of his people. I don't want to know them, don't care about them. Join me.

Patrick Stewart-Moore, Wanniassa

Further to the article about Clanwilliam cedar from South Africa ("Seeing the wood for the Clanwilliam trees", April 22, p9) where it is an endangered species (but not here in Australia, as implied by the story). It is indeed very strange that Aussie foresters continue to overlook or perhaps to ignore our second-most economically valuable softwood timber species – Toona ciliata, sometimes still known as Toona australis or Australian red cedar. There is a near "perfect specimen" of this native species growing up on the eastern slopes of Black Mountain, where it has been growing in a moist, rocky spot since 1974.

Not only do foresters "ignore" the evidence of our red cedar's amazing adaptability, the National Botanic Gardens' staff are still, I am told, not indexing or cataloguing this fine specimen of a "regionally-rare" native softwood.

As there are now three regionally-based growers of red cedar within 85 kilometres of Canberra, and large-scale plantings have in recent years begun on the NSW South Coast, foresters need to take a long, hard look at the history of not planting red cedar trees in all our southern forests.

I have personally grown red cedar at Mongarlowe through three winters, as has one other "independent scientist", near Braidwood. Selecting fast-growing cultivars from known superior remnant mother trees has been a vital step towards re-establishing the known (by Aboriginal elders) original geographic range of red cedar through all of southern NSW.

With ground-warming now observable and widespread, there is no valid reason why trialling red cedar in sheltered parts of the ACT should not proceed.

Joe Friend, Mongarlowe, NSW

LEST WE MISS THE POINT

Thoroughly approving of Pope's cartoon (Times2, April 29, p1), I sincerely hope that 30 years hence my offspring would consider money far better spent on looking after returned servicemen and women, and others suffering post traumatic stress disorder or other mental conditions than on grand edifices at Villers-Bretonneux.

Susan Street, Cook

DAWN PARKING STING

Isn't it odd that the ACT government can consider reducing the police force ("Fears local police positions will go as funding cuts begin to bite", canberratimes.com.au, April 27), but proceed with light rail (which we cannot afford) and increase the size of the Legislative Assembly. They are so desperate for funds that the parking inspectors booked hundreds of cars at the Dawn Service on Anzac Day. Absolutely disgraceful.

Ron Sheargold, Chisholm

NANNY CUTOFF UNFAIR

It is reported that eligibility for access to the proposed "nanny program" will apply to couples with a combined annual income of $250,000 or less. This seems a rather high cut-off point when compared to seniors and retirees, where the cut off point for access to the Health Care Card is about $80,000. Perhaps the "nanny program" needs a rethink.

Tom Cooke, Pearce

TPPA ACCESS SELECTIVE

The text of the secretive Trans Pacific Partnership agreement has now been made available to members of the United States Congress. If representatives from one of the signatory states have access, one might ask why access continues to be denied to members of the Australian federal parliament.

Pauline Westwood, Dickson

RESPECT NURSES' SKILLS

If the Commonwealth government is fair dinkum about saving money in the health system then it could abolish the nonsense of nurses in general practices having to be supervised by a doctor while giving a flu vaccination. If Australian nurses can't be trusted to give an injection without supervision our health services really are in trouble.

Timothy Walsh, Garran

ROOM TO VENT VIEWS

John Bromhead (Letters, April 29) is clearly angered by the prominence given to David Pope's cartoons. As any Canberra Times reader knows, the next two pages of Times2 provide ample opportunity for nationalists, militarists, xenophobes and prohibitionists to blow off wind without any requirement for intelligence or artistic merit.

Paul Feldman, Macquarie

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