THE ACT Labor government is misnamed. It would be more accurate to call it the Land Sales and Developers’ Consortium.

Concerning the sale of the Havelock House site, it was recently announced that they failed to reach agreement with the preferred tenderer because it was unable to meet the price demanded of them.

“Land Sales” smugly stated that in the interests of the people of Canberra they had to maximise prices. They then added that the developer was urged to make some low-cost housing available.

The actual contract phrasing of this requirement is that the developer may or may not make such low-cost housing part of the mix. Logically, these weasel words mean naught.

Realistically, any developer who is being put through the financial wringer by our rapacious government will not be able to do low-cost housing.

To put it more simply, the higher the reserve price for land the higher the cost of buying into a development will be, which is a primary reason for low-income, would-be homeowners having little hope of ever owning their own home.

I would love to say vote Liberal at the next ACT election but both our main parties sing from the same hymn book particularly when it comes to land.

Personally, I will vote independent at the next election. An independent might or might not be better, but definitely could not be worse than what we have at the moment. There is only one Legislative Assembly member with a social conscience and that is Caroline Le Couteur, and she is a Greens member who supports Labor.

Howard Carew, Isaacs

Trying to stop the earth from warming

IT makes me crazy when I see old men stating: “If we took all the cars in Australia off the road at once it wouldn’t make any difference to climate change.”

Can’t they understand the scientists are trying to stop the earth from warming any more in the future, not bring the temperature down now? If the warming continues to increase where will it be in 50 or 100 years’ time? I think the sceptics think the temperature is supposed to increase overnight or there can’t be any such thing as global warming

Yvonne Dickson, via email

Increasing the risk of psychosis

FOR various reasons the number of letters to the editor published on the dangers of drug use, especially cannabis, have recently fallen away remarkably in NSW and ACT.

When police make drug and gun seizures cannabis is almost always present and evidence linking cannabis to schizophrenia has been medically demonstrated. I write to try to help parents and our youth, and women in particular, to better understand the dangers of the drug.

A professional, multicentre study published online on May 16 found that risk of psychosis increases threefold with daily use of cannabis and nearly fivefold when cannabis has THC concentrations greater than 10 per cent.

Bills to legalise cannabis are in the Legislative Assembly and the NSW Parliament. About four years ago Prof Jan Copeland estimated there were 220,000 people in Australia dependent on cannabis, so if these Bills are passed they will be in conflict with section 109 of the Australian Constitution and move dependency nearer to 500,000.

Colliss Parrett, International Drug Watch, Barton