Letter writer JANINE HASKINS, of Cook, has trouble accepting what she believes is a disparity in sentencing for driving offences. 

SURELY, it was a typo regarding the sentencing of Mitchell Laidlaw, after he mowed Sue Salthouse down as she travelled on her wheelchair-accessible motorcycle on Commonwealth Avenue in July 2020?

Surely, the sentence imposed by Chief Justice McCallum was three years, not three months?

A media article stated that Laidlaw had entered guilty pleas to charges of culpable driving causing death and drug-driving, admitting he had methamphetamine in his system at the time of the crash.

Following his release on bail (conditional liberty), Laidlaw failed to attend appointments with ACT Corrective Services, as well as receiving fresh charges of drug-driving and driving while suspended. He was released on bail again.

Third time “unlucky”, Laidlaw re-offended again, and finally, his bail was revoked in July 2022.

This also resonates with the sentencing of Jayden Mann on August 31. Mann was sentenced to a 14-month, non-parole period for the offences of dangerous driving, failing to stop for police, drug-driving and two counts of driving while disqualified. Yes, his offences were serious and could well have been life endangering, and the sentence appears appropriate. 

However, no one died, unlike Sue Salthouse; Laidlaw will be a free man in a matter of weeks. Sorry, I simply do not understand.

There appears to be absolutely no consistency in sentencing (ie stealing a car or two can equate to a lengthy prison sentence). However, killing a woman while having illicit substances in your system appears to be deemed at the lower end of objective seriousness.

Further, this lenient sentence does not lend itself to “deterrence”, a word often used by members of the judiciary when sentencing convicted offenders. Deterrence should be just that; a strong message sent to members of the community that offending behaviours will result in appropriate sentences. Pfft.

My heartfelt condolences to Sue’s family and friends following the loss of such an outstanding woman. I am truly sorry that justice, in this instance, does not appear to have been delivered in an equitable manner.

Janine Haskins, Cook

I don’t trust hygiene to fellow shoppers

COLES’ trial commencing in SA for shoppers to bring their own containers to the deli was something I wasn’t sure I was reading correctly at first. 

If shoppers are handing their own containers over the service counter, then they are clearly introducing an item which must be considered contaminated, in this case directly around open displays of fresh meat/seafood/salad (including uncooked). 

I view this as very different from bringing a bag to other open-display areas such as fruit and veggies.

Coles requires shopper-provided containers to be “clean and intact”. Begging your pardon, but I do not consider any container supplied from a shopper to be clean. I don’t trust the average shopper to maintain the same level of hygiene as service personnel do. 

At no time should a foreign object be introduced into a designated hygienic location that involves the service or preparation of food – period.

No thanks, Coles. If it comes to the ACT, I’ll still have to shop, but I’ll revert back to buying the prepackaged plastic-wrapped range. I won’t risk increased exposure to potential food poisoning.

The more cynical would suggest that Coles just had the simple idea to sell containers to shoppers rather than include them as part of the purchase. What next? Pay to rent a shopping trolley by the ¼ hr?

Bjorn Moore, Gowrie

Light rail a higher priority than health

A THANK you to Jon Stanhope and Khalid Ahmed for identifying how light rail was prioritised over public housing (“Public housing money lost to funding light rail”, CN August 25). 

The government should inform the community how this outcome is consistent with its social justice objectives and why light rail is a higher priority than education and health.

It should also provide the evidence indicating why light rail is superior to transport alternatives.

Surely, a responsible and transparent government has such information and will make it available.

Mike Quirk, Garran

Millions shovelled into the tram

THERE has been quite a bit of coverage recently in the media about public housing money lost to funding light rail, eg “Public housing money lost to funding light rail” (CN August 25). 

In the Smart Transport Canberra newsletter of July 26, 2017, I wrote: “There have been a lot of objections recently from various communities, especially from Weston Creek but elsewhere, too, to the rehousing of over 1100 public tenants from Northbourne Avenue to many locations around the city. 

“To save costs, the government is resuming community spaces for this purpose. However, a government official has recently said that the cost of this program will be $600 million (about $500,000 per tenant), before the end of 2018, all in the name of selling Northbourne Avenue to help pay for the Gungahlin tram. 

“The government has never revealed how much it expects to claw back from the sale of Northbourne Avenue, assuming it knows itself, but even if it does, it still leaves the cost of the Gungahlin tram at $1.79 billion (auditor-general published figure).”

From the “CityNews” article, it appears that most of the $600 million has been shovelled into the tram instead of re-housing tenants.

Max Flint, co-ordinator, Smart Canberra Transport

High time to sanction Myanmar

IT’S high time the government, first under Morrison and now under Albanese, stopped sitting on its hands about the situation in Myanmar, particularly after the recent executions carried out by the military junta. Sanctions should now be imposed and extended on supplies to the military and its cronies and restrictions on international travel by its military personnel and supporters.

It is obvious that the Australian professor, Sean Turnell, will not be released, even after our wimpy reaction to the military takeover, nor that Myanmar will turn away from support by China and India (shades of the Solomon Islands). 

Corruption is endemic, slavery and human trafficking commonplace and the use of child soldiers a regular practice. Genocide, hostage taking, torture and crimes against Rohingya people, are also the norm. 

The ASEAN nations, of which Myanmar is one, seem powerless to exert any constructive influence and, of course, China and Russia veto any attempts to improve the human rights situation. Even South Africa voted with China and Russia. It is time Australia toughened up its response to what is happening on our doorstep.

Ric Hingee, Duffy

Skilled migration push will disappoint many

IN what I consider the golden age of immigration (1946-1980), I recall having conducted about 14,000 migrant interviews in five different countries involving more than 12 nationalities.

In my view, the idea of opening our borders to about 200,000 new arrivals with the accent on “skilled” will disappoint many.

I estimate between 4000 and 8000 only will arrive eligible as skilled to Australian standards. 

Mind you, an unforeseen outcome may be that a majority of the new arrivals, skilled or not, may vote for the party that let them in.

Colliss Parrett, Barton

Cruel, misguided faith in false facts

WHEN I started working in a regional office of the old Department of Social Security in the late 1970s, I was shocked to discover that many staff, rather than seeing their role as ensuring social justice in a compassionate society, saw themselves as ruthless custodians of the public purse.

The Robodebt debacle was the inevitable end result of that exact same culture of callous penny-pinching. All it took to go exponentially, was the advent of information technology.

Many Canberrans do not know that the ACT government has its own first cousin of Robodebt, which is just as wildly inaccurate and even more cruel. It is a legislated and automated calculator of the number of kangaroos to be killed here every year.

This year, it was revealed that the government’s kangaroo-killing program is gut-wrenchingly cruel, and routinely estimates that there are four times more kangaroos than are actually present on Canberra reserves. 

Consequently, the kill calculator requires that kangaroos are killed much faster than they can possibly replace themselves. It will continue to do so until the calculator is ditched and repealed, or until the last kangaroo is dead.

The relationship between cruelty to humans and cruelty to animals has never been clearer than in the relationship between Robodebt and the ACT’s “Robokill”. Both are offspring of the same unholy marriage between a culture of cruelty and misguided faith in poorly constructed information technology.

Frankie Seymour, Queanbeyan

Roo slaughter just a numbers game

WELL, I’m glad letter writer Michael Collins (“The roos are fed and out bush”, CN August 18) can sleep peacefully at night and not hear the lives of Canberra’s kangaroos being blasted away by the ACT government’s hired guns every year over winter.

With one squeeze of a trigger the so-called “conservation cull” changes the kangaroos’ gene pool diversity and population dynamics forever. The slaughter of these gentle animals is just a numbers game and it has nothing to do with environmental damage but killing them does. One only has to walk on Canberra’s urban reserves to see the vast number of invasive weeds.

The ACT government has admitted there is a fundamental flaw with fencing the Tuggeranong Parkway. That is there is no overpass to allow wildlife and people to pass safely around Canberra’s Nature Park system. 

Instead, they push the cost of accidents with wildlife back to people in the form of increased insurance premiums and claims.

The kangaroo is one of Australia’s unique icons found nowhere else in the world. In “the bush capital” kangaroos have always lived here and should remain free to continue to do so.

Robyn Soxsmith, Kambah

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