Cat registration fee a cash cow for Barr government

That formula of cat training is a proxy for training owners: the aged cat owners might be hardest to persuade.

The registration fee will be introduced because Andrew Barr is scraping up every possible dollar.

It was legitimate to clean "fluffy" houses but not to treat the owners as miserably as they have been; It was not legitimate to introduce a tram just to bribe Green voters so Barr could stay in power.

Any major commercial undertaking such as a tram should have a sustainable business case; if the service requires a tax payer subsidy the amount should be clear in every budget.

One cut back in services is the closure of the Hydrotherapy pool at Canberra Hospital.

Another destructive proposal is building at West Basin. This will be the end of our lake as a resource for all.

Andrew Barr has had one good idea: moving off stamp duty is essential since we are, inevitably, running out of land to sell.

Scott Morrison defends the Coalition's preference deal with Clive Palmer by claiming that "Labor and the Greens present a far greater threat to the Australian economy and people's jobs than the UAP does" ("Coalition-Palmer deal attacks ramp up", April 28, p8).

When Queensland Nickel went broke in 2016, 800 former workers were owed $7.16 million, creditors were owed $300 million, and the taxpayer paid the former workers $66.86 million.

In the two years before the refinery's closure, Queensland Nickel donated more than $21 million to the Palmer United Party.

Yet Mr Morrison regards Palmer as a more capable economic manager than Labor. It beggars belief.

Yes Mr Shorten, many Liberal claims of Labor policy costs, death taxes and banning utes are intellectually dishonest. Unfortunately Labor's franking credit policy is also intellectually dishonest.

Labor claims that a few people with excessive assets in their SMSFs paying tax at 0 per cent (actually largely 15 per cent)) are a franking credit problem but they are a marginal tax rate problem.

Labor claims taxpayers receiving franking credits have not paid tax (a gift, loophole) despite 30 per cent tax paid from their dividends on their behalf by their companies.

Labor ignores revenue raised from taxpayers paying a greater marginal rate than 30 per cent on franked dividends.

Labor claims generational theft by taxpayers currently receiving franking credits, despite self funded retirees propping up aged pensions and Medicare, while stealing franking credit refunds from all generations.

Robert S. Buick (Letters, April 26) states that Australia's only exception to going to war to assist other countries was the second Gulf War.

I believe the most notable exception was the Vietnam war. Prime Minister Menzies' acquiesced to US President Johnson and sent Australian forces to Vietnam.

Australian soldiers acquitted themselves nobly, as is their duty, but the war was so unpopular the government used a lottery to select recruits for conscription.

It was also an exception to the concept of "assisting and defending the peoples of other countries".

I am surprised at the anti-Liberal sentiment appearing in the media.

Many people seem to be anxiously waiting to see the government replaced with a Shorten Labor government.

How quickly do we forget the shambles created by Labor when they were last in power, not to mention the huge debt they left and the 50,000-odd asylum seekers that has cost us about $16 billion.

Shorten was a key player in replacing Rudd with Gillard and then back to Rudd.

If Labor gets in then NZ is starting to look good.

A comparison of the 20 top selling cars in Australia and the US will find many familiar makes and models on both lists. The Toyota Corolla is the third most popular car in both Australia and the States. The Chevy Cruze surfaces here as the Holden Cruze.

Yet we are told that 17 of the 20 top-selling vehicles in Australia would not meet the minimum emissions standards now applying in the US. Emission standards translate directly into fuel efficiency. They are met by making a vehicle travel further on less fuel.

Why Australians are being sold vehicles that are so fuel inefficient when there are equivalent models sold elsewhere that meet tougher emission guidelines?

As a long time resident of Richardson, to some extent I took the Richardson shop for granted. I assumed it would always be there. The proprietor, Marinos, is a genuine, fair minded, good bloke who works hard, looking after community and customers.

Our shop is a really important part of our community. Residents are devastated by the closure. The impacts are huge; job losses, potential dereliction of the area possibly causing the loss of the public phone plus likely closure of the hairdressers. Families without a car, some older people and wheelchair bound customers will now have to catch infrequent buses to a shopping centre for everyday essentials such as bread, milk and toilet paper. A rent hike has robbed our community of a precious facility.

Let's hope the landlord isn't rewarded with tax concessions for lost rent or approval to re-zone this land for high rise residential development in future.

The Rev. Dr Vincent Zankin (CT 26 April) writes about the "....ongoing intractability of our (Muslim/Christian) religious differences." I suggest that the two religious traditions are not intractable at all.

Muslims and Christians share many common beliefs and principles. They believe in the same god and accept the same basic principles of honesty and humanity in their dealing with others.

Each religion has people with their own motives for distorting and hijacking its beliefs and principles .

Whether one is Muslim or Christian any effort spent in trying to understand what may, in the first instance, appear to be wrong-headed or dangerous beliefs will show that we have much more in common than many may suppose.

Dr. Zankin writes that at Gallipoli the Muslim faith of the Turks was attacked by the forces of Christendom. Religion had nothing to do with it. Turkey was attacked because it was an ally of Germany and Austria.

Thank you team Zed, aka team Dutton, for delivering your letter in our letterbox marked 'no junk mail'.

Thank you also for informing us why we should not vote for Labor this coming election.

Your letter did not contain a skerrick of information about your vision for Canberra or its people.

This is especially important given your history of continually letting Canberrans down with your outdated prejudices and your history of political self-interest.

How stupid do you think voters are?

Your actions (or lack of them) made up my mind long ago.

I thank Zed Seselja for his "personal" letter spelling out the Armageddon that awaits an ALP election win.

I am sure he reached these judgements with the same acumen and insight with which he previously concluded that Canberra lacked support for marriage equality; and then failed to support its overwhelming democratic support in the Senate.

No doubt with the quality of judgement, and organisational competence, he showed in promoting Peter Dutton as Prime Minister.

Above all, I thank him for his trouble in writing now, especially since he had notably failed to provide substantive responses to representations during his tenure.

I find it impossible to support to one who portrays the issues in such a simplistic and biased way; who says nothing about his prospective contribution if re-elected, who insults voters' intelligence, perhaps by assuming it is similar to his own.

Fortunately, I am not a cynic otherwise I would be reading something into the loss of television coverage from the Anzac dawn service at the Australian War Memorial. This loss of national coverage occurred as Morrison rose to address the dawn service in Townsville and was restored as he sat down.

If you want to get rid of Zed don't give him a number on the ballot paper. A valid Senate vote requires a voter, who chooses below the line voting, to number 1-12 only. The ACT has 17 Senate candidates. You can vote without voting for Zed at all.

One can only hope that the voters of Warringah recognise Tony Abbott as being one of the few conviction politicians in Parliament, and arguably the coalitions best retail politician. He has served the community under the radar, volunteering as a life saver, fire fighter and spending time in remote aboriginal communities.

Every time I hear news about the royal family (except the Queen) my blood boils. Why isn't the republic an election issue?

Many of the good people of Clermont appear to be a pack of ignorant, drunken, degenerates.

I have just confirmed with Transport Canberra there are no buses to the Zoo or the Arboretum. Although there are buses to the Australian National Gallery and the Portrait Gallery they are not in the bus timetable index.

Well may Brendan Nelson say fundamentalists are intent on "destroying the values for which Australian service personnel fought". Could he clarify how those values are reflected in having the Australian War Memorial funded by multinational armament-manufacturing corporations?

What a tremendous asset the new light rail system is. I recommend all Canberrans try it. Fast, comfortable, efficient it makes travelling along Northbourne Avenue and to Gungahlin a pleasure. It is also a climate positive way to travel. Congratulations to this forward thinking government.

What a privileged world the young of today live in if sharing a bedroom when renting a group house is considered such a hardship ("Friends share more than a roof", April 26, p.9) . When I was working as a nurse in the UK in the 1960's I don't think anyone renting expected to get a single room.

No family should have to contend with death threats no matter who they are or what they do for a living. ("Dutton's wife reveals email death threats", canberratimes.com.au, April 28). After May 18 this should not be a problem for the Duttons however.

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