“Please stop fining young families who are already struggling with the cost of living and instead, do your job and provide more short-term parking in this and other schools.” Letter writer DIANNE M DEANE bemoans the penalties for just picking up kids from school. 

On a recent Friday, at 3.15pm, at Telopea Park School, I saw again just how mean, cruel and desperate the ACT government has become in trying to deal with its disastrous $9 billion+ deficit.

Having deliberately or incompetently failed to provide sufficient parking for adults to collect children from this and most other schools, the ACT government times a run past of a parking-infringement van to coincide with the moment when parents parked in a “pick up and set down zone” have to briefly exit their vehicles to collect their child from behind the school gates just 10 metres away.

The school will not allow young children to leave without an accompanying adult. Cars also double park, but over several years I have never observed a problem with the way families are forced to deal with a problem created by the ACT government in the first place.

It is just revenue raising by picking on the most vulnerable, not a safety issue. So please stop fining young families who are already struggling with the cost of living and instead, do your job and provide more short-term parking in this and other schools.

Dianne M Deane, via email

Take advice when dealing with Trump

We are living in dangerous times with the leaders of the US and Russia having serious personality disorders.

While I have no expertise in the area, Trump and Putin seem to exhibit characteristics consistent with anti-social personality disorder (ASPD) including

• A strong belief in their own importance and a sense of deserving special treatment;

• Difficulty understanding or caring about the feelings of others, and a lack of guilt or regret for their actions;

• Use charm and charisma to control and exploit others, often through lying and manipulation;

• Use others for personal gain;

• React with anger and hostility when their sense of self-worth is threatened and 

• Pursue unrealistic goals and engage in risky behaviours. 

People with ASPD are sometimes labelled sociopaths or psychopaths. I’ll leave it to the experts for a clinical diagnosis. Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, a psychologist, has labelled him a narcissistic sociopath.

Their personality disorders could explain Trump and Putin’s heartlessness in relation to Ukraine and Trump’s attitude to the plight of Palestinians.

Sheer incompetence may also explain Trump’s economic, health, environment and social policies.

Those dealing with Trump should seek advice from psychiatrists on how to best respond to his complex and dangerous personality.

Mike Quirk, Garran

‘Deceit of politicians’ is spot on, Mike

In his satisfying excoriation of the Canberra light rail project, Mike Quirk uses a collective noun new to me: “a deceit of politicians” (“Bloody minded politics is what’s driving the tram”, CN March 6).

Although a Google search suggests that he is not its inventor, I commend Mr Quirk for using a descriptor that is justified in the context of his article, a descriptor that deserves to make its way into the Australian English lexicon.

Helen Jackson, Higgins

What’s the usefulness of servitude to survival?

Christina Vogels’ feature (City News Mar 6) about the emergence of tradwives concludes with a curiously bland statement about the uncertain costs of relinquishing the gains of feminism for a life of service.

Two costs spring to mind with crystal clarity: dependence, financial, social and emotional dependence on a husband, ie one person. 

It’s called putting all your eggs in one basket, an inherently risky situation.

And insecurity: the husband may well be a good person but he may die, become ill or disabled – and a wife, as servant, may simply be sacked. What then is the usefulness of servitude to survival?

Less certain but possible costs include unhappiness. My parents liked each other; my father was a reasonable, devoted man who strove close to his limits to provide for and support his family. 

Nevertheless, being a conventional wife did not suit my mother and she was often a pretty miserable individual. Exercising her talents outside the home – even just exercising her talents fittingly, instead of trying to force her creativity into home-making and child-rearing – would likely have made her happier; she may have lived longer; she and my father may have enjoyed their marriage more.

Besides, what real man wants to be served? Wouldn’t he rather the challenge and reliability of a mutual partnership, the comfort and fun of genuine companionship? Being solely responsible for a subservient and dependent household would be rather lonely and worrying, I imagine.

In discussing the column with others, increased vulnerability to domestic violence and the difficulty of escaping it from a situation of dependence, was the first cost that occurred to many.

A discussion of a social phenomenon ought to include more than a description of its characteristics; analysis makes a discussion truly useful.

Fiona Blackburn, via email

Humanity comes at a steep cost to other species

As a species, we could have chosen to evolve along many possible paths. 

We’ve chosen an industrial path, with every aspect of our lives increasingly governed by convenience and technology. 

But humanity’s development has come at a steep cost to Earth’s other species, and it astonishes me how few people consider this in their daily lives. 

Columnist Robert Macklin’s “aha” moment (“Giving a fair go to our fellow sentient creatures”, CN March 6) came when he transcended the mental gymnastics that allows so many people to blithely munch away on a steak but rebel at the notion of eating dog or kangaroo.

In Robert’s case, he stopped seeing his egg as “breakfast” and saw it for what it is: something that in another reality could have been a living, breathing, feeling creature – just like him.

I often wish that humanity had evolved down a different path. One where we had used our extraordinary mental faculties to make existence better for all – human and non-human alike.

Dr Georgy Falster, Griffith

Slogans and platitudes won’t win the election

While I admire Peter Dutton’s optimism, it will take more than just sloganism and platitudes to win the upcoming federal election.

Every time Dutton sounds off, all I hear is the ubiquitous Canberra bashing and the ever-popular pitches about national security, the cost of living and cutting the public service.

Dutton was super quick to exploit the Chinese warship stoush and announce an exorbitant $3 billion Defence spend to buy 28 additional F-35 strike fighter jets.

Manufacturing these planes has previously been beset with delays and cost blowouts and the current delivery date is not for at least another five years. Additionally, some Defence analysts have already called into question if these F-35s are in fact, fit for purpose.

As for cost of living: this is a global issue that is plaguing incumbent governments worldwide and Australia is largely at the behest of the world’s largest economies, principally America and China.

No doubt sacking public servants – as many as 36,000 – will be popular with voters outside of Canberra, but has Dutton guaranteed that essential services can still be provided with a reduced public service workforce? He hasn’t and he can’t.

Declan Mcgrath, via email

To lefties, anything right of the far left is hard right

Michael Moore in his weekly column (CN March 6) bemoans the fact that people are moving to the centre right globally in opposition to the far-left-wing parties of the last 15 years, even though lefties like Moore like to portray anything right of the far left as hard right. 

Maybe Moore is disappointed people are over the constant woke policies of the far-left governments.

They have been pushed through educational institutions, corporations, major businesses, the media, films and on our televisions. 

The Voice was a good example. People have finally had enough and are voting accordingly. 

The constant pandering to minorities, confusing patriotism with some kind of extreme nationalism, the push towards unproven climate change and the cultish morality that goes with it, is what the everyday person is now starting to see through. 

Without any proof, Moore in his final paragraph states that the swing to the right will serve the wealthy. It is under progressive governments that small businesses are more likely to fail, unlike the well-heeled public service that benefits greatly from the progressives at the expense of the poor taxpayer. 

I wonder if those progressives like Moore would be so inclined if they had to go out and find a job that doesn’t rely on the public purse and doesn’t have all the entitlements of the tax-funded public service. 

Ian Pilsner, Weston

Is a dragway next to get the nod?

Does the start of construction work on the Gungahlin community centre mean the new or refurbished Canberra International Dragway will be next to get the nod?

Genuine regional, national and international drag racers and hoons have been wanting to get off the streets for, wow, 27 years now.

That’s since the privately financed, constructed and professionally managed venue was forced to close due to dilly dallying, consecutive ACT governments deciding, well, the Very Fast Train and or the Parcel Flight Hub weren’t happening, leaving a desolate and destroyed location.

Michael Attwell, Dunlop

The black hole we may never escape from

I don’t often agree with Max Flint or his “Smart Canberra Transport” missives. Mr Flint also is owner and publisher of the Acquisition and Logistics Study Centre, which has become a source of climate change denial. 

 Mr Flint wrote that the majority of Canberrans do not want stage 2b to Woden, according to the Canberra Times’ March 8 Insider Readers Panel – in which there were a mere 552 respondents: statistically meaningless in a population of about 485,000.

However, I do agree with his opinion on the economics of light rail to Woden (letters, CN March 13). There is simply no viable business case, as has been pointed out on numerous occasions by several independent experts. 

Despite this rejection, the Andrew Barr-led ACT government is stubbornly taking Canberrans and other residents of the ACT into a financial black hole from which many of us may (and certainly we “oldies” will) never escape.

Dr Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin