Is artificial intelligence going to crash ACT housing prices?

With the Australian government having engaged on a six-month trial of artificial intelligence based systems for the APS it will not be long before mass redundancies will be issued. Many roles will simply no longer be required.

In the recession we had to have, land values in Canberra were slashed. Partly due to the recession, but mostly due to the reduction in public service employees at the same time.

I can foresee in the very near future, a correction in real estate as workers move away and buildings are left empty.

Ultimately, it may be technological change, not policy change that will address the housing crisis plaguing this nation.

With Canberra heavily dependent on the tertiary sector, there is no doubt the ACT economy will face the worst impacts of the AI revolution.

Re: "Fence proposal divides ACT school community" (November 19).

I refer to the consultation associated with the proposed fence for Farrer Primary School.

While there are always likely to be some differences of opinion about such issues, decision making can also be distorted by funding provisions and school catchments.

Given maintenance costs and the rectification of damage caused by vandalism on school grounds must currently be met from the resources of individual schools, school communities have an incentive to protect their assets by putting up fences.

This incentive is increased as the cost of the fences is met directly by the ACT Education Directorate (not by individual schools).

Allowing use of playgrounds by local communities outside of school hours is a sensible use of publicly owned resources. Where school playgrounds are made available outside school hours, funding to offset additional costs should be provided, if necessary from Sport and Recreation or City Services budgets.

Decisions by individual schools about fencing are also distorted by school catchments and the extent to which "out of area" students attend the school. If the families of students do not live in the same suburb as the school, they are less likely to want to use the school facilities out-of-hours, and are therefore more likely to support fencing.

There is a need to give particular attention to the views of families living in the same suburb as the school, as they are more likely to seek to use the facilities outside school hours.

Thank you for your excellent, albeit depressing, editorial ("Climate change is an existential threat", November 22) in response to the UN's Emissions Gap report.

As the latter notes, at three degrees of warming, "...scientists predict the world could pass several catastrophic points of no return, from the runaway melting of ice sheets to the Amazon rainforest drying out".

In his 2007 book Six Degrees, Mark Lynas focuses on what each degree of warming will mean. The recurring theme of the Three Degrees chapter is the difficulty in conducting agriculture. Feeding people will be made ever more difficult by drought in many countries, more monsoonal precipitation extremes in others, and strengthening cyclonic storms.

As Lynas wrote: "With structural famine gripping much of the subtropics, hundreds of millions of people will have only one choice left other than death for themselves and their families: They will have to pack up their belongings and leave ... As social collapse accelerates, new political philosophies may emerge ... that seek to lay blame where it truly belongs - on the rich countries that lit the fire that has now begun to consume the world".

Australia is one such country. If nothing else, we must get out of coal by the end of the decade.

Kudos to The Canberra Times editorial team for tackling the climate change sized elephant in the room ("Climate change is an existential threat", November 22).

The 2023 UN Emissions Gap Report outlines that we are on track to warm by almost three degrees by 2100.

This will unleash social, health, ecological and economic disasters. Yet, despite reductions pledges, emissions still rose last year.

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen may have found an appropriate path forward, but still he, and all his global counterparts, are treading far too slowly and timidly.

Polling consistently shows that the majority of Australians support decisive climate action. We must push past the fossil fuel juggernaut and step up all aspects of decarbonisation.

They won't embrace teal but it appears the Coalition are greening up a bit around the edges and seemingly embracing recycling.

Peter Dutton, Tony Abbott, Angus Taylor and others were all talking up the alleged merits of Canberra's fallen Senate seat stealer Zed Seselja in running for a NSW Senate seat using a recycled script from the Trump/DeSantis Handbook of Stupid.

Zed vows to ban "woke" while offering "conviction, experience, and results".

Sounds impressive. Apart from the sad slide into right-wing US styled political slogans and fear of open-mindedness, being recommended by the logically challenged Dutton, Abbott and Taylor is not exactly a shining endorsement any should be proud of. I was not aware that Seselja had any "convictions" but the concept of recycling an ACT political has-been and foisting them on an unsuspecting NSW electorate with a glowing spatter of praise is immediately suspicious.

What did Queanbeyan or anyone else do to deserve Zed?

Alex Wallensky (Letters, November 22) seems to think Anthony Albanese "instigated" the recent "divisive referendum".

Not only was the whole process begun and funded under LNP governments (going back to Howard's) but it was supported by the LNP until Peter Dutton decided that there might be a few "cheap" votes in it and replaced Julian Leeser as Liberal Party Indigenous affairs spokesperson.

Incidentally, the issue was no more "divisive" than those on display during any federal or state election process.

If you believe that there is no historical and ongoing racism toward, and ill-treatment of, Indigenous people then you perhaps you have not experienced it or read history.

The business case for light rail Stage 2A says that light rail would take more than 27 minutes to travel between Woden and Civic.

Transport Minister Chris Steel supports the case for transit lanes. He says that, unless we improve our public transport system, "with more congestion on the roads, buses are simply going to be caught up in that congestion".

On Adelaide Avenue's T2 lanes buses zoom past congested traffic. Buses currently take less than 20 minutes to travel between Woden and Civic. Extending the T2 lanes could cut that travel time to 15 minutes.

Cutting public transport travel time from 27 minutes to 15 minutes would increase patronage by 16 per cent according to the ACT Transport Demand Elasticities Study.

Oh, please Bill Deane (Letters, November 22). Edmund Burke lived back in the day of rotten boroughs when very few men and no women had the vote. He lived in the day when civil liberties for common men and women were virtually non existent.

As a member of parliament he represented power and privilege. He died 22 years before the infamous Peterloo Massacre; the most significant political protest in 19th century Britain. A protest borne out of the failure of the political class of the day to listen to and address the wishes and needs of the broader population.

Burke's words, as quoted in your letter, have absolutely no place or relevance to a modern democracy based on universal suffrage. They could be rephrased as "when I want your opinion I'll give it to you".

Roderick Holesgrove cites a communique from the Armenian Patriarch in Jerusalem to suggest that no one who cares about Christians should support Israel (Letters, November 21).

The Armenian church in Jerusalem has a long history of being critical of Israeli governments. Its views are not representative of the broader Christian community in Israel.

While the population of the Armenian quarter is declining, Israel's Christian population has steadily increased since 1948.

The Christian population in every other Middle East country that has one has fallen. The Christian populations of the West Bank and Gaza have also fallen dramatically since the Palestinians gained autonomy there.

That is where Roderick should direct his concerns.