The ACT needs its own accountable local police force

The inquiry has also revealed that sexual abuse victims in Canberra appear to be being used as training material for unskilled AFP investigators. If so this may explain the ACT's shockingly low prosecution rate.

We have also learnt morale within ACT Policing is plummeting and almost one in five officers are considering leaving.

It seems that the ACT Policing contract model is no longer fit for purpose. Is it time for the ACT to once again have its own police service, accountable to its elected representatives and subject to the ACT Integrity Commission?

Such a force should be structured to deliver a best practice local policing operation.

I was pleasantly surprised by the wording of the proposed change to the constitution. It is more concise than I had expected and raises none of the concerns I had about it impeding Parliament's ability to enact important laws.

I'm not concerned about people making representations on proposed laws that would affect them. That seems a sensible idea. And, unlike some others, I have no issue with giving the Voice the power to also make representations to the executive, not just Parliament.

Given the amount of subordinate legislation made by the executive, not allowing the Voice to make representations to it would be a significant gap.

Even so, I intend to vote no to the referendum proposal. I just can't get past the conclusion that selecting one group in our society for privileged access to Parliament and the executive on the basis of the race of the group's members is fundamentally racist.

Institutionalising such access presumes a permanent disadvantage, which seems to imply that the Voice won't correct the problems.

The attempted forced acquisition of Calvary Hospital will likely lead to the identification of a wide range of direct and indirect consequent costs.

These costs will not have been easy to calculate, or to agree.

Hopefully the ACT government has done its homework and is able to let the electors know what a well-functioning hospital is worth in the present market.

Presumably a likely order of cost is already known. So what is it, please? And how was it arrived at?

Allan Spira suggests that we should rent out part of our houses, to address the housing shortage (Letters, June 5). There is only one problem. While your main residence is usually exempt from capital gains tax (CGT), the ATO will come after you, or your heirs, for CGT if you rent out part of your house.

The additional CGT liability could swallow up a large proportion of the extra income you receive, making it barely worthwhile.

The government could fix this problem by fully exempting the main residence from CGT. This would allow retirees, for instance, to supplement their incomes while reducing their call on the age pension, thus saving the government money.

The exemption would need to be ring-fenced carefully to prevent abuses. But until and unless the government makes this change, renting out your spare room is something you should do only after consulting your accountant.

It's encouraging to see the new extension to Canberra Hospital will be all-electric. However, a large number of our public buildings in the ACT still use gas for heating and cooking.

Although gas was once thought to be a safe energy source we now know this is not the case.

Research shows that around 12 per cent of childhood asthma cases are linked with gas cooking in the home. Although the risks to health from gas heating can be reduced using flues, they can't be eliminated.

Children and vulnerable people are the most at risk from gas pollution. To my knowledge, only four ACT schools are gas-free.

The extraction and burning of gas contributes substantially to global warming emissions. Switching from gas to electric in schools is a good way to start tackling the problem on a local level.

Scott Morrison's recent "look at me" intervention about ACT public hospital management and servicing should be dismissed as just another one of his distracting "holier than thou" rants.

He should instead be telling us a lot more about how he torched so many precious health dollars as part of another "anything goes" major funding program bonfire that was lit and stoked by the Coalition, and fanned by a weak health department that was unable or unwilling to stand up to both the PM and the federal health minister.

He also has more explaining to do about the role and involvement he and his staff had in ensuring that the unregulated and now closed Esther Foundation received $4 million under this program before the 2019 election.

Having watched my three children and families manage their finances over the past few years I can inform the RBA that they have nothing to do with the high inflation rates.

They have had salary rises below inflation rates over the past few years and have had to pay more for food, power, rates and other costs.

How the RBA comes to the conclusion that raising their mortgage interest rates will help bring down inflation is beyond me. I can see a RBA-led recession coming if they keep raising interest rates.

That means many families have nothing to look forward to but more misery.

Only once in the coverage of the latest RBA rate "hike"(sic), have I seen any more than a passing mention about those who suffer the most; the third of Australians who are renters.

Mortgagees get the publicity; it's all about "more pain for borrowers". But those who are also landlords have it all over renters. They can soften the blow through negative gearing or, heartlessly in some cases, simply by jacking up the rent, or both.

Negative gearing means an income loss is necessary to gain a reduction in payable tax (we euphemistically call it an "offset"). Readily available professional advice often provides the paper loss that legally benefits the investment property owner.

If all else fails, the investment property can be sold. In today's market that can often mean a tidy profit, through which the seller can further benefit from reduced CGT.

Once again we see that in our supposedly egalitarian society some Australians are more equal than others.

As a professional firefighter I cannot accept the army's excuses for why they did not immediately report that they had started one of the biggest bushfires in ACT history in January 2020. What they are saying to cover their negligence defies logic and belief.

They could have landed their aircraft on an easily visible and well known large non-combustible concrete pad nearby that were the foundations for the old Orroral Valley Tracking station for the toilet stop.

Also, it would have only taken a few seconds to transmit a message saying they had started a fire. There were two pilots.

The Army pilot of ANGEL 21 who landed his craft in January 2020 for a "piss break" "forgot" about the 550 degree heat of the landing lights.

That oversight started a fire that burnt 80 per cent of Namadgi National Park. Millions of animals died painful deaths. There was a significant loss of the ACT's biodiversity.

Surely those causing or associated with the cause of the fires should face serious consequences?

In 1972 and 1973 I worked as a doctor in the African bush in Tanzania. The hospital was an Anglican Mission Hospital.

I was asked to locum for a time at the Catholic Hospital some distance away. I had no part in the religious side of these institutions. There was no interference in the way I practised medicine.

The altruism which is part of these religions is why there were schools and hospitals of any sort in that area.

Australian hospitals run by religious orders (ie Calvary) have a similar philosophy except for birth control (I was a VMO for 20 years).

If the system is changed in the ACT I do hope in reality that it is for more efficient use of the health dollar.