The Attorney-General, Simon Corbell, in an attempt to discredit the views in my earlier letter, states that he is confident that the new controlled operations legislation will prevent corruption and increase accountability (Letters, August 16 and August 11).
Time will tell if his confidence is justified.
But he has failed to comment on the most important accountability issue in his response. That is the need for measures to determine whether this legislation makes real reductions in the ACT drug market, in the availability of drugs on the street, and in the people who organise drug trafficking in the ACT.
These are matters that should be reported and tabled in the Legislative Assembly.
What will be reported is simply details of the controlled operations but not the effectiveness of those operations.
B. McConnell, Higgins
I wish the Attorney-General (Letters, August 16) would get a better grip on the implications of the laws that he administers.
He seems to assure us that the new Controlled Operations Act cannot be used to entrap drug users because it applies only to ''serious drug offences'' carrying a penalty of three years imprisonment or more. In 2004 his same Government introduced a chapter on ''serious drug offences'' into the Criminal Code.
This imposes draconian penalties on scores of routine actions of ordinary drug users. Even the resale to a friend of a single ecstasy tablet that he has bought for a night out incurs a maximum penalty of 10 years. The latest legislation continues the long march of ever tougher legislation dreamed up by national committees of law enforcement officials and their compliant ministers.
Their schemes, tamely implemented in the ACT, eat away at civil liberties in the name of protecting us from serious crime.
But just who does the Government think it is protecting? It's certainly not keeping drugs from our kids.
The recently announced seizure in June last year of 4.4 tonnes of ecstasy did not cause a ripple in the Australian market. The Government is mindlessly sacrificing both our kids and the principles that underpin our legal system.
Bill Bush, Turner
Don't blame farmers
Kevin Rudd claims that the Murray-Darling is ''over-allocated''. This is populist nonsense. All that has happened is that the relentless squandering of water by South Australia has finally been exposed by the prolonged drought. The total Murray-Darling allocations are about 50 per cent of average annual flow, a sustainable and modest division of resources. Ninety-five per cent of Australia's fresh water runs into the sea that's gross under-allocation and a dog-in-the-manger attitude that will not be ignored by less fortunate people to our north who don't get to eat lotus leaves.
The system was designed with the support of people from both sides of politics, before the rise of the parasitical and nihilist green movement.
It is brilliantly self-compensating larger water holdings on low reliability allocations simply do not get any water in dry years such as the last few, but irreplaceable permanent plantings such as orchards get most of their much smaller allocations.
So, no rice at all for the last three years, very little cotton and the cheapest fruit and vegetables in the world in the markets. All without any subsidies. Instead of robbing taxpayers to buy out rural communities who tend not to vote for the Greens or Labor, Rudd would be better placed buying out Nick Xenophon, the Wentworth Group and all the other blackmailers.
Australia is broke in a boom, with only miners and farmers, including irrigation farmers, paying their way.
Chris Smith, Braddon
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