Letter writer and new Mawson resident DAVID ROBERTSON has written three times to his local MP David Smith after being “badly burned by the housing market’s budget reaction”. But to no replies from the Member for Bean.
Columnist Michael Moore laid bare ACT ministers who go to ground when the news spotlight reveals their bad calls. (“Gutless’ ministers who don’t face up to bad news”, CN October 7)
I’ve learned it’s not just local government politicians.
I bought my new Mawson home in a buoyant housing market just weeks before this year’s federal budget.
I celebrated my move too soon. It’s taken me four months to sell my old place after the market collapsed following Anthony Albanese’s budget call to ditch his hands-on-heart promise not to change negative gearing and CGT.
I’m not a property investor and I was just moving house after 35 years, but got badly burned by the housing market’s budget reaction. I have lost many thousands of dollars from the much-reduced sale price of my old home and the cost of bridging finance in a painfully slow market.
I wrote to my new (Labor) local MP, David Smith, to complain. Nothing.
Maybe it mistakenly went into his spam folder, I thought optimistically. So I tried again, politely asking for a reply. He is, after all, my only local MHR. Same result.
Never say never, and the third time I detailed the loss I suffered from his government’s deceit.
I now know I have the Invisible Man as my local member, and the only consolation I have is knowing that his service can’t get any worse. It wasn’t worth the price of finding out.
We have been living in Gungahlin since late July to be closer to our daughter, her family and our precious grandson.
We love the beautiful views, convenient light rail, shops, cafés and restaurants.
However, it saddens us to see so much rubbish around the town centre, from takeaway cups and straws to cigarette butts.
Can we all take responsibility for keeping our beautiful Gungahlin clean? Let’s use the bins, respect our environment and teach our children to do the same.
Come on, Gungahlin! Let’s be proud of our city and keep it clean, green and welcoming for everyone. After all, first impressions matter!
I struggle to understand the noise being raised about the banning of credit card surcharges in Australia.
I have travelled overseas with both Australian and UK credit cards and have never been charged a surcharge for their use. This practice was banned in the UK in 2018, and obviously firms rolled up the price structure of their cost of doing business.
Any increase in the CPI would be one-off, and lo and behold we’re back to normal.
In fact, I have been offered discounts for cash both here and overseas, so I wonder why this practice doesn’t become more common now. Disappointingly, I went to a nearby coffee shop the other day, and they refused to accept cash. The gentleman in front of me, expressed his thoughts and walked out, so they lost custom. What sort of business can survive doing that?
Anyway, the sun will come up tomorrow morning and life will go on!
Columnist Dr Andrew Hughes exaggerates when he claims that Bob Hawke “used anger of the union movement to become PM” (CN October 15).
In truth, even before he entered Parliament, Hawke championed consensus over confrontation. Conflict, if it did occur, required peaceful resolution. It was his left-wing critics and opponents who were driven on by anger.
Stephen Holt, Macquarie
Leadership failure remains contested
Alan Schroot (letters, CN October 15) suggests that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is the fault of Palestinian leaders who have rejected Israel’s “generous offers of statehood.”
That characterisation is incomplete. The 2000 Camp David summit and later talks did involve significant territorial proposals, yet the offers differed in detail and were never accepted as a final, mutually agreed settlement.
Responsibility for the failure remains contested, with Israeli, Palestinian and third-party accounts differing on who bears primary blame and how generous the offers truly were.
Continuing areas of disagreement included Israel’s proposed borders, the status of Israeli settlements, control of East Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees’ right of return, and the extent of real Palestinian sovereignty from Israeli control.
Clive Williams, Forrest
Horse racing is not a sport!
Why does the news on Freeview channels reference horse racing as a sport?
It is not a sport, it is gambling and animal cruelty. It is whipping horses to make them gallop fast.
And why is it fine to show drunk people showing off their alcoholic drinks at these horse racing venues? Alcohol advertising has been banned from television for years.
Maybe these so-called news items should be followed by gambling and alcohol support services hotlines or banned altogether as news items. You win some, you lose more!
Francine Horne, via email
NCA may have problems with a bulky stadium
The late Terry Snow’s company’s latest foray into major development is a large multi-purpose rectangular stadium in Commonwealth Park, under National Capital Authority control.
It involves a church residence that the developers feel can be acquired. The ACT Chief Minister reportedly claims the church’s presence would preclude a stadium there. His government has spent millions investigating a new or refurbished stadium in Bruce.
The concept and spectacular graphics of Snow’s stadium have received widespread praise from stakeholders, including federal politicians.
An independent NCA may have problems with the inherently bulky stadium being in the National Triangle, very close to Commonwealth Avenue, a side of the triangle physically and visually joining Capital and City Hills.
The Chief Minister wants to replace Civic Pool with a conference centre, and build a new pool in Commonwealth Park.
A better overall scenario could see the much-loved Civic Pool retained and refurbished; Commonwealth Park left alone, sans the residence; the existing conference centre sold for redevelopment; a new conference centre built in the south-east sector of City Hill; Bruce Stadium restored for athletics and events; Manuka Oval for cricket and AFL; and, reflecting Canberra’s important dispersed town arrangement, a new, medium-sized, roofed, steeply tiered, rectangular stadium for rugby codes, soccer, concerts, etcetera, located on the west side of Athllon Drive, Tuggeranong Town Centre, on vacant land mostly zoned for the purpose in a spectacular Canberra lake, riparian and mountain setting.
How do you measure the liveability of a city state? Not by building part-time stadiums, but surely how you treat the most vulnerable in our city. On that metric we do poorly.
As the territory has recently bought that CSIRO land, it should be a village for homeless and those waiting for public homes, perhaps in the form of Tiny Houses, not 15 per cent but 100 per cent with on-site services and transit vehicles.
We would really be a city to be proud of, measured by how we treat those who could potentially be working and contributing to the economy, rather than importing more Uber drivers and dog walkers.
What a shining example we’d be to the rest of Australia; only those that want to be homeless need be.
We’d follow in the steps of some Scandinavian countries that have virtually eliminated homelessness. That is greatness and compassion on a grand scale!
As we are overflowing with debt and we have to be imaginative about it. Replace Stage 2B with either electric buses or better value bus rapid transit at half the cost or better than the tram. We must rid ourselves of those old diesels.
If we are to have a stadium (I am neutral sportwise), I think we need to be imaginative about it and find ways to make use of it seven days a week.
Divert part of the $11 billion likely cost (Australian Logistics Study Centre), but also do something else that would make us proud to be the city we are and look after those less fortunate to most of us.
I would just like to express my complete agreement with the editor’s comments on the column “No slop here, it’s all my creative direction” (CN September 30).
Keeping Up the ACT is the only true and accurate account of the abject failure of the ACT Government to govern the territory in the interests of the residents of Canberra.
"Those who want to froth about the inadequacy of this sentence would do well to note that there is no rehabilitation in our ACT prison system. That is the fault of the current ACT Government," writes legal affairs columnist HUGH SELBY.
"Jim asks his acolytes to swap their livery for Nick Cave T-shirts and their rung on the ladder to be shared by those with fewer opportunities." writes Kindness columnist ANTONIO DI DIO.
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