ACT government has dropped the ball on public housing

It is government's failure to invest in new housing, failure to adequately maintain existing public housing and progressive selling off of public housing for new private redevelopments.

As Jon Stanhope and Khalid Ahmed have pointed out the ACT government's targets for new public and community housing are "pitifully low". They say: "The target for public housing supply needed to be in the order of 1300 over the five years (2018-2023) in order to simply maintain relative stock numbers, excluding the relative decrease from 2011 to 2018".

In fact the Suburban Land Agency targets for public housing over the five years totalled not much more than 400 and even that low target was missed by a substantial margin.

The answer is not to blame a residents' group for opposing a three-unit "supportive housing" redevelopment of a single house block, essentially because of its poor design. It is in better maintaining the existing public housing stock and in ensuring that significant amounts of new stock are provided in large new urban renewal projects such as East Lake.

Much greater investment in new public housing in such areas is the only way to address the decline in public housing stock which has occurred over many years.

It was great to hear Andrew Forrest's assessment of our transition to renewables and the good doctor's speech on iView was well worth a listen.

I particularly agree with his call to have fossil fuel companies pay for the climate change pollution they create.

I'm astounded they pay huge taxes overseas but in Australia pay next to nothing for all the dirty energy they profit greatly from.

Indeed we taxpayers are subsidising them. Its so good to see the likes of Twiggy/Fortescue (and now Turnbull with pumped hydro) putting their money where they see the brightest future for Australia.

Greater Canberra blames the shortage of public housing on restrictive planning laws and wealthy community groups (which don't exist). News flash. In the new planning framework there are no mandatory rules.

The previous meagre rules protecting a resident's privacy and amenity have been removed. Greater Canberra don't believe that existing residents should have rights to protect their homes from over development next door. Next they'll be proposing no setbacks and building to the boundary. You can't get any denser than that.

The GC members should talk to government and make simple suggestions such as:

Stop selling off large chunks of well-located public housing and land (buying it back is too expensive);

Inject new capital into Housing ACT to grow the stock by 200 houses per year;

Being the monopoly land provider, the government should provide Housing ACT with free land in new developments to meet their own 15 per cent public housing policy;

Require all land zoned RZ3 being redeveloped along transport routes to have 15 per cent "ambitious multi-unit" public housing projects;

These actions would have a positive impact on the housing crisis without upsetting the neighbours. Besides, the market has shown that they are not interested in redeveloping existing RZ1 or RZ2 blocks for social or affordable housing.

Edward Smyth from Greater Canberra should have checked before he attacked the Griffith Narrabundah Community Association (GNCA) for opposing some development applications in Griffith by Housing ACT.

We only opposed those for supportive housing that did not comply with requirements to cater for disabled residents. There is an Australian Standard to address the needs of people with disabilities and the standard was not met.

The GNCA believes that public housing built for disabled people should comply with the Australian Standard and we feel sure all Canberrans would agree.

Otherwise, disabled people are being treated as second-class citizens and the GNCA would never support that.

The so called "price gouging" by Woolies and Coles is getting a lot of attention. They generate, before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA ), margins of 5 to 6 per cent. This is slightly better than supermarkets globally but hardly grand larceny.

The real "price gouger" is Telstra that commands over 40 per cent of the national mobile business market. It generates EBITDA margins of 47 per cent - the highest mobile margins in the world. There are two reasons for this outrageous figure: they index prices to inflation, so mobile prices are rising annually, and the more important reason is the feeble competition.

Let's have an inquiry into Telstra's monopoly like powers and it's price gouging.

Coles' and Woolworths' ability to offset profits in one grocery line against losses in another gives them a big gun in dealing brutally with competitors and suppliers alike.

This helps them to shore up their duopoly, and maintain profits for shareholders and exorbitantly paid executives. They could instead reduce the prices of fresh and healthy food-offset by lifting prices of the many junk foods they're pushing.

This would benefit struggling shoppers, pay farmers appropriately, and improve public health, all without a large impact on shareholders. It might also just turn around their flagging social licence. If, indeed, they care.

"Governments are extractive [ie we pay taxes] and often act more like bandits" writes Stephen Anthony. What an irony, in fact an insult to public servants, to publish this in The Public Sector Informant (February 26).

Then: "The first case is the takeover of the Calvary Hospital". How ludicrous. Even more so to write "if a brazen government can steal a large asset from the [Catholic] church/community of all people, what stops it repeating the dose on an industrial scale?"

The hospital was never an "asset" owned by, nor stolen from, the Little Company of Mary. They were the managers of a public hospital.

What Anthony says is that freedoms of religion, of expression, of contract, include the rule of law and, in his view, "very importantly", secure property rights. He goes on: "Certainly, the bar must be set very high where governments "interfere" with property rights".

But the rule of law in a democracy must regulate property "rights" when it reaches the stage (in USA) where "the one per cent own more than 50 per cent of the equity shares in both private and public companies".

Just watch what Anthony expects when Trump wins in November: "Rebellion by politicians and their hand-picked bureaucrats against basic [human] rights will lead predictably to tyranny and oppression for the whole".

For the "free and fair" society Anthony says he wants, vote for sensible government regulation of property ownership and control. Try not to be distracted by Russia or China. Whatever you do, don't vote against government, as I fear may be America's fate. And don't forget to vote for the freedom Anthony didn't mention; the freedom of the press.

Comments on Nine's Today show (February 27) by Nationals Leader David Littleproud, respecting Barnaby Joyce's decision to take a week off with his family were appropriate, and hopefully sincere.

Mr Littleproud should have ended his commentary there. Unfortunately he continued, gratuitously commenting that he hoped that Mr Joyce "went to church yesterday and all he had was altar wine".

As a public official, and aspiring deputy prime minister, Mr Littleproud has diminished himself. He would do well to learn that sometimes less is more.

Peter Dutton invites us to believe in, and take a punt on, small-scale nuclear's viability.

But unless he has experience with obtaining financial backing for large energy projects in Australia how can that be compared with Twiggy's withering assessment?

It is not just Twiggy but independent experts who are saying the nuclear option is too slow and way too expensive compared with renewables (even including the cost of firming the grid).

The person accused of the double murder in Sydney is both a gay man and a police officer. The Mardi Gras organisers have responded by banning all police from their march. If there is any logic behind that decision presumably they will now also ban all gay men as well.

The Coalition have been telling us that "no one makes an electric ute". This is demonstrably false. They also tell us that SUVs will be about $15,000 more expensive because of emissions standards. This is also false and based on the ridiculous premise companies like Nissan would sell high emissions vehicles in Australia.

Taxpayer largesse to private education should disappear. Private schools should stop being mendicant parasites, taking from the public purse, and instead live within their means.

It's misleading for the AFP to quote crime statistics in Canberra as proof that crime is down. The reality is that crime often doesn't get reported because there's little confidence of a police response.

If Felicity Chivas (Letters, February 27) thinks that socialism is the answer I will be happy to give her a lift to the airport.

It's remarkable how often a "defence" of Lake Burley Griffin (Letters, February 27) turns into a desire to prevent people from living near the lake, working near the lake, or drinking and eating near the Lake.

Contrary to Vee Saunders's claim (Letters, February 27) the term anti-Semitism was devised to define the hatred of Jews. That is all it has ever meant. Lately some have expanded it to all who speak Semitic languages to try to dilute the seriousness of this particularly noxious form of racism.

Vee Saunders has the history of anti-Semitism backwards (Letters, February 27). According to the OED the word dates back to the 1880s with the specific meaning "prejudice, hostility, or discrimination towards Jewish people on religious, cultural, or ethnic grounds". The belief it should mean prejudice against Semitic peoples more generally is not yet common enough to be recognised by the OED.

Watching Andrew Giles fumble, mumble and stumble while trying to answer questions about what the government is doing to clamp down on the released illegal immigrants, many with serious criminal convictions reminds me of Mr Magoo.

Rosemary Waters wonders where Andrew Barr's mowers are (Letters, February 27). I can't say no such mowers exist. I saw both of them hard at work at the Reid Tennis Club the other day.