“Neither the opposition nor independents dare to oppose the white elephant responsible for Third World conditions in this wealthy city,” says letter writer ROBIN UNDERWOOD.

THANK you, Paul Costigan, for reporting on the rising opposition to the extension of the light rail to Woden at the Woden Valley Community Council public meeting (“Such is life with little transparency in government!”, citynews.com.au, March 5).

People elected a Labor/Greens government because Labor has a tradition of caring for those at the bottom of the income scale and the Greens for caring for the environment. 

Instead, this government is running down all essential public services to pay for the light rail, providing slower and, for most people, badly accessible transport, plus creating a large amount of greenhouse gases from building the infrastructure and importing carriages from Spain.

Hardly a week passes when we don’t hear of understaffing of essential services: the latest is the Auditor-General’s report that prison mental health care is “ineffective” due to a lack of psychologists. Our police force is so understaffed that it can no longer attend break-ins, teachers resign because they are totally overworked and we have the longest waiting time in the whole country for hospital emergency treatment, again because of the lack of medical staff. 

For those who can’t afford private health insurance, the wait for treatment of so-called non-urgent but often very painful conditions is well over a year, and the continuous rise of our rates is so exorbitant that pensioners have to sell the house they have lived in for most of their life because they can no longer afford these rates.

“But we have won three elections on the tram!” Labor and Greens argue and neither the opposition nor independents dare to oppose the white elephant responsible for Third World conditions in this wealthy city. 

The cost of the light rail extension to Woden has appeared in the media as $2 billion without the government contradicting the figure, but most experts expect it will be over $3 billion. 

The contract with the private, mostly foreign-owned consortium running the light rail is “commercial-in-confidence” and will never be revealed. But we can be sure that the consortium would only have signed the contract if a good profit for its shareholders was guaranteed, regardless of the number of passengers.

The answer of the Greens when asked about the massive greenhouse gases produced during this climate emergency by the infrastructure of the light rail extension and importing trams from Spain is that new roads and road repairs produce greenhouse gases, too. 

They conveniently overlook that no extra road is required for the extension to Woden or any other tram line, because they always run in the middle of existing main roads. To the contrary, placing the tram tracks and stations in the middle of these roads will damage them. And, of course, so will the 5,000 heavy trucks required to carry the soil for the raising of London Circuit from an as yet undisclosed location.

Since any half-way intelligent individual – which no doubt our MLAs are – must be aware that now we have electric buses, the expense for the tram is unjustified, some people are starting to wonder who is profiting from it. Surely, the very small percentage of Canberrans living within walking distance of a tram station doesn’t justify the expense all Canberrans have to bear.

Robin Underwood, via citynews.com.au

Here come the trucks, Minister 

IT was recently reported that the former federal Transport Minister, Darren Chester, when last year chairing “a broad-ranging Joint Standing Committee Inquiry into Road Safety”, drew attention to the “second stage of Canberra’s light rail project, which will bring thousands of heavy truck movements into the busiest part of the city”. 

So what does the ACT Transport Minister tell us about this quite critical issue? Nix.

Richard Johnston, Kingston

No complaints from the north

I NOTED this morning that the tram I saw pulling into Civic just before 9am was completely full, which is an impressive sight after the dread of lockdown. 

So it’s doing its job in a sleek and efficient manner. I’ve never heard anyone from the inner north complain about having this horrible transport option available to them.

Danny Corvini, Deakin

Who’s responsible for drones?

THE article “Drone grocery delivery takes off in Canberra” (citynews.com.au, March 3) makes Coles’ new partnership with drone company Wing sound like progress.

Not at all. On December 19, 2019, columnist Paul Costigan pointed out in an excellent article in “CityNews” (“Residents’ screams lost against noisy drones” – available online), that delivery drones are a serious intrusion into suburban ambience and character.

The highly invasive character of high-pitched drone noise was highlighted in the large bulk of submissions to the ACT Legislative Assembly Inquiry on delivery drones in 2019. These drones made life intolerable for many people in the trial suburb of Bonython, and led to the departure of wildlife including birds. Groups greatly concerned with the bad impacts of drone noise on horses and dogs also submitted to the inquiry.

The grocery delivery service by Wing for Coles will expand to include two new suburbs – Kaleen and Giralang. This is in addition to services already offered in Crace, Franklin, Harrison, Mitchell, and Palmerston.

This is exactly as anticipated by Paul Costigan in 2019. He stated that Wing, a subsidiary of Alphabet, the company that owns Google, is not a small start-up, but a serious player committed to being in Canberra long term. 

An earlier report done for Wing by economists at the AlphaBeta consultancy estimated that by 2030 there would be more than 10,000 drone flights daily in the ACT.

Adding to the sheer problem of numbers, is the fact that there is no government agency responsible for regulating the noise of these drones. Drone noise levels are well above noise levels allowable at community level such as an air conditioner next door. The Civil Aviation Safety Authority’s key role is the safety of air navigation, and it is not responsible for aviation impacts on general amenity.

As anyone who has tried to tackle aviation noise will know, drone noise is another case of “pass the buck” in terms of regulatory control. Canberra’s quality of life is now at risk, particularly if this trend is not checked.

Murray May, Cook

When the cab doesn’t come

I RANG Canberra Cabs on the Saturday to book a pick-up for the following Tuesday at 5am to catch a flight to Hobart. The person at the other end of the call assured me that “Priority” had been put next to my name and I would be first off the rank. But come Tuesday morning, nobody showed. 

I started to panic. Missing the flight would mean no fare refund and the hotel bookings were non-refundable.

At 5.15am I rang the company to be told in no uncertain terms that, yes, I was on the top of their list with priority, but I’ll have to wait as they were very busy as a lot of people were going to the airport. 

When I tried to explain that I was one of those wanting to catch the early flight, she hung up on me. At 5.20am, I took my own car and raced to the airport where, luckily, the flight was running late. Long-stay parking cost me $155. It is no joke.

I wrote to the cab company on my return. They replied with excuses galore and even had the cheek to offer me a $20 cab voucher for next time I use Canberra Cabs. 

I politely told them what they can do with their voucher and now have become an Uber user.

Errol Good, Macgregor

Totally agree with Sue

IN reply to Sue Dyer (“Planning contributes to Gang Gang Stress”, Letters, CN March 10). I totally agree with her letter. 

I was planning to publish a full page advertisement in “CityNews” in this edition. However, I decided to delay it until March 24 to, hopefully, give me a chance to get a photo of an extremely rare red robin that I’ve seen at Yarralumla Brickworks site. 

There are also gang gang cockatoos there and many other species of small woodland birds. Take photos before they get wiped out.They need bush biodiversity for food, breeding and shelter.

Michael Calkovics, Lyons

Why do we need to be a republic?

HERE we go again! The republican movement takes every opportunity to try to make Australia a republic, even though we have three failed referenda on the subject (Robert Macklin, “God save the Queen; she really needs the help”, CN February 24). 

Could anyone of the movement give me a logical explanation as to why they feel we should be a republic and what would it achieve? The usual answer is it would give us more pride in our country. But then, if we need to become a republic to have pride in our country then we are in a very sorry state and becoming a republic can’t fix that.

Has anyone thought of the consequences of becoming a republic or what would be involved? For a start, most other countries in the world that are republics end up as dictatorships, so why would this be any different? 

Becoming a republic would not be just a case of tomorrow we wake up as one, there will have to be a lot of very costly changes. The laws would have to be changed, the government and its workings would have to be changed, the public service would have to be changed, in fact everything that is based on the Westminster system would have to be changed. If it does not need to be changed then why become a republic? How do we transition?

In the Queen’s 70-year reign, how many times has she told us what to do or interfered with our government’s running of the country? None that I am aware of. Contrary to popular belief, she did not interfere in the Whitlam debacle (he brought all that on himself). 

Vi Evans, MacGregor

The monolithic toothless tiger

UNSURPRISINGLY, Russia as a permanent member of the UN , has vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have demanded the immediate withdrawal of its troops from the Ukraine . 

This begs the question: if a substantive resolution such as this can be vetoed, what is the point of the UN’s existence? 

Surely, it’s time for the farcical veto rule to be reconsidered or alternatively abolish the UN altogether, as in its present format it has become an undemocratic, monolithic toothless tiger not serving any real purpose in today’s world. Will this latest farce prove to be its death knell?

Mario Stivala, Belconnen 

Micro-forests keep suburbs cooler 

IN his column “Politics in small steps to suburban diversity” (CN, March 3), Paul Costigan described a “micro-forest” in Downer that consisted entirely of “shrubbery”. 

He went on to argue that the key to the biodiversity that the Downer “green thumbs” were trying to encourage was the preservation or planting of large tree species.

Mr Costigan is quite right about this, but he could, and perhaps should, have also argued that establishing micro-forests of large trees in Canberra’s green spaces is the key to keeping our suburbs and our city cooler as global heating progresses relentlessly and as our present federal government supports the burning of still more fossil fuels and the creation of still more greenhouse gases.

Dr Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin