Massive AWM redevelopment must be subject to close scrutiny

It was also forthright about the poor documentation and management of conflicts of interest, value for money assessments and fancy footwork concerning the project's large contracts, as well as the Coalition government's highly questionable handling of the project's original business case, its approval of funding processes and coverage of subsequent cost blowouts.

It is not only ministers who have been poorly served and informed; given the audit office's report, the public would be better served by regular audit reviews and updates on this project over the coming years.

The project management services company employed by the AWM requires improved overseeing too. Taxpayers can only hope that the new (now being sought) AWM council members will have the ability and gumption to ask hard questions about this massive redevelopment exercise.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong's mentioning a "two state" solution to the hostilities between Israel and Palestine has attracted criticisms from the usual suspects.

Peter Dutton as per normal, rushed to declare Penny Wong's remarks as being the worst he had heard in his 20 years in our Parliament.

A pretty big call considering his own record. Apparently, his inflammatory declaration during the last general election that a Chinese invasion fleet was waiting just over the horizon to swoop should Labor defeat the Morrison government has slipped his memory.

Not too unsurprisingly, the Australian Jewish lobby has also rushed to condemn any suggestion of a "two state" solution. So incensed was Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler about Penny Wong's comment, he inferred it would engender a climate of Holocaust.

What does he think Israel's Zionist "bullies" have been doing to Palestinians for the past 50 years. Peace in Gaza will never be attained while Zionism holds sway in Israel.

It would be wrong and counterproductive to recognise a Palestinian state, as our government is now apparently considering.

The sole reason there has not been a two-state peace to date is the intransigence of Palestinian leaders and their refusal to accept Israel's right to exist.

The Palestinian strategy has been to refuse all Israeli offers of statehood and other concessions, and to try to achieve statehood without compromise or negotiations, as required by UN resolutions and internationally approved processes such as Oslo, instead resorting to pressure and violence.

Premature recognition of a Palestinian state would only encourage and reward these tactics, making genuine peace so much harder to achieve, and leading to prolonged and further conflict.

A Palestinian state should only be recognised once it has met the actual requirements of statehood and, through negotiation and compromise, has been achieved in a way that can lead to sustainable peace.

Re. John Mason's letter (Letters, April 10).

John, you and I are the lucky ones that are still able to get on a bike at 80 and 85 plus. But don't forget that there are many thousands of much younger people that are not able to do this. I only use my bike for recreational purposes. For anything else I use my car.

Public transport is an essential service but in the ACT it sucks. Light rail is not going to solve the problem.

M Flint (Letters, April 10) asserts that Australia could cease to exist and there would be no effect on global warming or climate change. Mr Flint should know that although Australia's share of global greenhouse gas emissions is only about 1.2 per cent, we are high on the list of per capita emissions. There are also at least 90 other countries with a share of emissions equivalent to or less than Australia's.

The article "March marks another global heat record " (April 10, p11) reports that, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, 2023, the year up to last March, and March 2024 were Earth's hottest on record. If emissions from all those 90+ countries were ignored in mitigation efforts, much of Earth could be uninhabitable in the foreseeable future.

Yes, great cities are built on rail, but ignore buses at your peril says Ryan Hemsley (April 8). Really? I thought the quality of life of a city's residents made a city great and that particularly applies to housing.

Unfortunately, at $1.6 billion for 2A and up to $6 billion for 2B, light rail is a budget killer and someone has to pay for it. Our patronage collectively over that 30 years is annually less than 7 per cent - hardly a warm and fuzzy number for the bean counters aiming to produce increased fare revenue let alone those whose rates and other living costs are skyrocketing.

E-buses are a far better and cost effective alternative. They can be put into service very quickly. This light rail monster is out of control. Ask the 39,000 folk on the breadlines and the 2000 homeless if light rail will make them feel like they live in a great city.

Light rail just doesn't cut the mustard.

No more trams. More E-bus variants and more housing please.

It is time the government took a good look at a "plan B" for the defence of Australia. We should not depend upon the United States, particularly under Trump and the Republicans generally, to help protect Australia in the case of a major conflict. You only need to look at the Republicans holding back assistance to Ukraine as a case in point.

Australia needs to become more self sufficient, along the lines of Switzerland. Australia would have no hope holding off an attack by a major power that is seeking our resources, so the best we can do is to make such an attack more difficult and expensive for invaders so that they think twice.

Certainly one can have alliances with countries like the US. But to depend exclusively on such alliances when the Republicans are in power would be foolish in the extreme.

I refer to Bill Thompsons letter (April 11) on the acronym AWOL. While I agree with his sentiments about the Americanisation of our Aussie language, I must take issue with him on the use of that term.

I was in the ADF from 1968 to 1980 and I can assure him that the acronym/word AWOL was the only one used back then for someone who had scarpered. The reason is that, despite the word "without", in describing said absconder, is indeed correct and not "with out", AWOL is easier to say than Bill's AWL. The latter is a tongue twister and sounds like AWOL anyway.

Stewart Bath, (Letters, April 9), is probably right; electric cars might not result in a quieter traffic because some of them are being manufactured to sound and vibrate just like ICE ones. Expect more car manufacturers to join in this foolishness given our existing lax regulations allowing modified-for-loud ICE exhausts. If we want the era of electric vehicles to realise its promise of a quieter environment, we may need to start by disallowing the conversion of quiet ICE vehicles into noisy ones.

I could not agree more with John Skurr's suggestion "to convert the former sheep paddocks around Canberra into garden towns" (Letters, April 8) rather than reduce vegetation in inner suburbs for infill, increasing summer heat there.

These sheep paddocks were deforested for grazing and require revegetation. They should be sold as good-sized plots at affordable prices to people committing themselves to revegetate the land.

Turned into model eco-villages they would become a tourist attraction for the increasing number of people realising that change in our habitat is essential and be in line with Walter Burley Griffin's plan to create a garden city.

It is surprising and disappointing that so many letters in The Canberra Times come from people who appear to have accepted as true the information coming from either Hamas or the Israeli government. I stopped taking their statements at face value decades ago - both sides have full-time propagandists dedicated to distorting reality to suit their respective agendas.