Why does Housing ACT treat the bad better than the good?

If these people are good tenants who have lived in their house for decades, invested in their properties, and who are good neighbours, surely it would be an attractive proposition to leave them where they are.

If there are any budgetary concerns around maintenance or "tenancy experience", it is because Housing ACT allows unconditional freedoms to other problematic housing tenants who have no respect for their property, neighbours, police or even each other.

We know of ACT housing contractors who routinely replace walls, doors, carpets and other damage to housing properties at the hands of destructive housing tenants, tenants who are never evicted. This is at the taxpayer's expense. Canberrans should be furious. Neighbours to these same tenants also live with the stress, fear and anxiety while Housing ACT does absolutely nothing to alleviate this endurance test for them. It does not even enforce the ACT's Residential Tenancies ACT for its residents. Why ever not?

In a private rental market, anti-social or destructive tenants are simply evicted. With ACT's public housing, the reverse happens. Neighbour's concerns are ignored and anti-social behaviour continues unabated, it is a disgrace. Housing ACT is broken and pressure must be placed by Canberrans and the opposition for a complete overhaul of its management of government properties and tenancies alike.

ACT taxpayers fund Canberra's social housing and also deserve "an improved tenancy experience" and the quiet enjoyment in their own properties. A taxpayer-subsidised roof over one's head is not a right, it is a privilege and should be treated as such.

Your story "Unsafe trucks pinged" (canberratimes.com.au, March 3) states that some 15 per cent of trucks checked at Marulan are issued with non-compliance notices.

I'd be keen to know how far south that trend extends. The reason I ask is that I have travelled south from Canberra to Melbourne, using the Hume Highway, twice in the last three weeks.

On neither occasion have I observed any heavy vehicle station open for truck inspections.

This reflects my experience for all of the trips I've undertaken, with one exception some considerable time ago when there was a push to ensure trucks on our busy highways were actually roadworthy.

How can we be sure that we are sharing the roads with heavy vehicles which are roadworthy?

Outside of heavy vehicle stations, who and where are trucks checked?

Karen Barlow's report on the Australian Community Media Readers' Survey: The qualities that top your prime minister wish list (canberratimes.com.au, February 28) presents a list of attributes desired in a future PM. In fact these attributes can apply to all those we elect to represent us in parliament.

Vision for the future, accountability and responsibility and being honest and trustworthy were the top three. Authentic came in further down. These are also values the Canberra Alliance has found from our own conversations with people in the ACT.

The message for voters in the election to be held later this year is to specifically ask candidates about how they are going to deliver on these values.

Victor Diskordia (Letters, March 3) stated it is the Ukrainian President who is dangerous to all. He supported Putin and disparaged NATO and the US. This qualifies as the most irrational and offensive letter that I have read in any of the many letters in many publications in the last 12 months.

Is the AAT appeal process fair or just a game of poker, often well played by the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)?

Current statistics show that appeals to the AAT are up about 400 per cent but that the number of people who actually reach trial is about 2.5 per cent.

The NDIS approach seems to involve bombarding the person with requests for information, ignoring reports and minimising a person's support needs. Certainly not consistent with the NDIS Act.

Many people from flood affected areas may soon join the queue at the AAT as they find their requests for support, equipment and housing denied. Some people may find themselves stuck in hospitals or even worse, nursing homes as the NDIS fails to act with urgency.

Even without flooding, we have that occurring every day around Australia as people wait in state-funded hospital beds for the NDIS to act.

Please mention this to any politician who canvasses you for a vote and don't forget to mention that the My Aged Care system is getting worse, not better.

As for that game of poker, you can hold or you can fold.

Reporters seemed to be baffled about what to call "four large yellow emergency trucks with flashing blue and red lights (which) were parked outside the (Russian) embassy as investigations continued inside." ("Police investigate suspicious package at Russian embassy", canberratimes.com.au, March 3).

Mystery solved: They're called fire trucks, but can also more expansively be described as "fire and rescue appliances". The writing on the side of the trucks provides a useful clue.

Shane Warne was a great cricketer, undoubtedly. But a "great man" warranting 15 minutes' coverage on the 7pm ABC national news? Spare me.

There are many, many more individuals whose often selfless contribution to Australia far exceeds whatever a well-paid Warne may have delivered and we barely hear of them when they pass.

I guess this is another sad example of the cult of celebrity in full swing.

Exactly 50 years ago the now defunct International Herald Tribune published my first youthful letter dealing with the admission of "Communist China" to the United Nations.

That exercise involved the tactical dumping of the losing Nationalists based in Taiwan by the United States, at the time locked in the pits of a terrifying Cold War with the Russian-dominated Soviet Union. The US game was to recruit the Chinese against the Russians.

Great powers move their pieces on the world chess board as it suits them to win power and control. The pawns, people and countries, always go first. Six of the nine family relations of mine who volunteered to keep half the globe "British" now lie in graves at Posieres, Ypres, Peronne, Villiers-Bretonneau and Gaza.

The technology of war is so much more powerful since then. From the moment the atom bomb "Little Boy" left it's bay over the civilian target of Hiroshima, war became both infinitely immoral, lost any utility and became a mortal danger to all human life.

Russia must withdraw from Ukraine now. NATO expansion must stop. All security issues must be negotiated and settled so no nation or ethnicity feels threatened.

The age of all empires, always about money, power and domination, must end.

Nuclear weapons must go: they are illegal in international law. And Australia must have a good long think about whether there is a future as a pawn.

Does anyone else remember Hurricane Katrina and the very costly - but very poor - response from the US Federal Emergency Management Agency and other relevant agencies?

Of course that was largely the result of years of extreme Reaganite ideology, with unaffordable tax cuts and needless austerity that intentionally degraded vital infrastructure and the capacity of the public sector, in order to drive people into the arms of unscrupulous donor and crony corporations.

What government income still remained was too often misdirected into subsidies and support for the arms and fossil fuel industries, rather than providing vital services to the ordinary taxpayers who were actually providing that income.

Is this beginning to ring any bells locally?

Christopher Smith's recollection of the East Timor thing is different to mine. Mine says John Howard thought East Timor was not a viable country ('cos we had their oil) and should stay with Indonesia. He sat on his hands while the Indonesians and West Timorese freely murdered, burned and pillaged. He only went in at the urging of the Americans.

While we were banning plastic bags and fighting culture wars the Chinese and Russians were drilling for oil, building coal-fired power plants and increasing their military strength. We need an accelerated effort to catch up, especially with affordable reliable power and stronger armed forces. This is no time for niceties and some cherished green policies will have to go.

How in all conscience can the civilised West just sit back and watch on telly the KGB thug Putin invade illegally and smash Ukraine, a sovereign country with a thousand year history? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should get the Nobel Peace Prize for standing up to Putin and his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who should both get the terrorists award.

A lot of though went into Adrian Hobbs letter of March 7 about the qualities of a person we elect or not. As for David Pocock standing for election, I strongly suggest he reads that letter and tells us what he stands for instead of criticising other candidates.

Gary Frances (Letters, March 7) nails it on the subject of modish words and phrases. I'm wondering whether it is possible for the same event to be "heartbreaking" and "eye-watering". I expect the answer in the coming days.

Wars are easier to start than stop. And they are easier to escalate than to contain.

I see they're running that ad where they sit someone in a truck cab, ask them what they can see, and when they answer "nothing", get them to dismount and see something like three nuns in front of the truck, five pre-schoolers on the right and six ducklings on the left. They then ask "what does this tell us?" It tells me about the appalling standard of truck design. Given the availability of miniaturised cameras why are there any blind spots at all?

Lismore has been flooded ever since its conception in the late 1800s. It has suffered minor flooding every couple of years since then and 25 major floods over nine metres in height in the last 75 years. The current flood height is 14 metres. The town should never have been built where it is in the first place. Rebuilding there every time there is a flood every few years is futile.

Wouldn't it be great if scientists and engineers were as famous and celebrated as sportspeople.

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