Heritage listing Canberra may do more harm than good

The minister claims that a listing won't mean nit-picking and bureaucracy that prevents us from meeting the needs of our community, and will instead mean a boost to tourism. I hope she is right, but I am unconvinced.

The benefit to tourism will likely be marginal - visitors are attracted by the great qualities of our city, not the fact that those qualities might end up heritage-listed. On the other hand, a fast-growing, dynamic city needs urban planning that is adaptable, with infrastructure, housing and urban forms changing as required. Heritage constraints that restrict this too tightly could end up undermining the very community that they are supposed to benefit.

We already have the NCA guarding the nationally-significant elements of Canberra's planning. We don't need to invite another Commonwealth authority - one that is not democratically accountable to the citizens who live and work here - to take even more control over Canberra's destiny.

Heritage laws make sense for protecting Canberra's many individual sites of significance. Canberra's vibe, on the other hand, is best protected through constant adaptation to the needs of our community, maintaining what we love while allowing the continued evolution of Griffin's ideals for the city of tomorrow.

It's time Chris Steel changed his title to "Minister for Terrible Ideas" following his genius move to force ACT ratepayers to endure fortnightly rubbish collection rather than weekly ("Waste collection set to be changed to fortnightly", March 26, p4). For those Canberrans who don't want to have rubbish services they rely on forcibly halved we are told not to worry you can pay an extra $116 a year for a new Godzilla-sized bin.

I thought the idea was we wanted less plastic? Once again, the ACT Labor-Greens government are demonstrating how out of touch they are with average Canberran families. Canberrans are already compost queens and kings. We don't need a new bin tax because Chris Steel wants to play behavioural economist.

I am surely not the only resident asking the question if essential services are being halved why does my rate bill keep going up? Maybe it's time we put this lot in the bin, although apparently that's no longer a guarantee they'll end up at the tip.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that the ACT government has ignored the evidence from its own trial as to the unsuitability of fortnightly bin collections ("Waste collection set to be changed to fortnightly", March 26, p4).

This is the government doggedly pursuing the tram extension despite it failing a benefit-cost analysis and denying its policy of high-density infill contributes to dwelling price rises. Even for this government it borders on incredulity that, instead of reducing rates commensurate with the reduction in service, it proposes to charge households extra for a poor substitute.

Under pressure to do something to relieve the housing affordability crisis, the ACT Treasurer Andrew Barr announced that the stamp duty waiver for off-the-plan dwellings would be raised from $500,000 to $600,000 from April 1.

The budget review released a few days ago reveals that for the remainder of this financial year it will apply to just 23 dwellings, or around 100 dwellings for a full year. That is about 5 per cent of all dwellings purchased in the price range.

Abolishing stamp duty at the rate of 100 dwellings per year it will take between 120 and 150 years to finish the job.

Meanwhile, anybody opening a rates bill will know that the ACT government is on track to "replace" stamp duty revenue well inside its 20-year plan.

The Greens' transport proposals outlined by Jo Clay, the Greens' spokesperson on transport and active travel, to introduce car free days and zones for each ACT electorate, asserted that "everyone uses active travel, and walks or wheels to their final destination".

These Greens' proposals discriminate against disabled Canberrans who may rely on vehicle based travel to transport themselves and their mobility aids.

Not all Canberrans are able to cycle and walk long distances. Shame on the Greens for not thinking that such a proposal might affect the wider community.

The article "Extra protection for Canberra's old beauties" (March 27, p4) reminded me of when, about 30 years ago, I lived in a house in Chapman with a huge old yellow box (Eucalyptus melliodora) in the rear garden. One of the many pleasures I was given by this tree was the abundant bird life.

For most of the year, but especially in spring, that old tree was like an avian apartment block, with various species of birds at different levels. My fondest memory was a family of tawny frogmouths lined up on a large branch: mum, dad and four youngsters, seemingly posing for a photograph.

At times like that I have a photographic memory, and memories like that are precious. Canberra's grand old trees are also precious. They must be protected.

Desperate politicians will go to desperate measures to secure an electoral advantage ("Canberra to get crime-funded museum", canberratimes.com.au, March 26). On the eve of an election a National Police Museum is announced, presumably to appeal to the conservative "law and order" constituency.

But it is not so simple. Unless we are to embrace a totalitarian hagiography, museums need to present a balanced view of history.

Will the museum have a display of the murder of the gay Dr Duncan in Adelaide? The rampant corruption in Queensland under Jo Bjelke-Peterson? The role of Roger Rogerson et al in NSW? Or the astonishing case of Tuckiar v The King in the NT?

More controversial still, will it show the endemic racism against Aboriginal kids revealed by the current arrest statistics for minor drug offences in all jurisdictions?

Police do a difficult and, at times, dangerous job, and should have their historical role displayed. But let's make sure it's the whole truth and not a pastiche that belittles the role of the good, honest cops in a unique profession of great power and great temptation.

There is a critical shortage in Australia of affordable housing for young first home buyers who have limited resources - and that is before we even get to the shortage of public housing for people and children in poverty.

Your recent editorial stated this crisis cannot be resolved "until governments, both state and federal address [housing] supply which would likely drive down property prices and alienate existing property owners" (ALP regional housing pledge has issues, March 26, p40).

Is this how politicians view us and themselves? The property-owning class would rather see young couples forced into years of wasteful renting than suffer the prospect of a few grand off the notional sale price of a house they are not going to sell anyway, and if they are, it would be to buy another one with a few grand already off its purchase price for the same reason?

Is this the kind of an "alienated" people we have become?

Would we beggar our neighbours' children even as we beggar our own?

Vlad says the west hates Russian culture and wants to cancel it. This is nonsense. I love Glinka, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorki, Mayakovsky, Nabokov, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn and Yevtushenko.

Only uncultured Westerners hate Russia itself. What the rest of us hate about it is the fact that it is not a real democracy, and that its government imprisons, tortures, poisons and otherwise murders its opponents and critics.

All Russia needs to become a thriving, prosperous modern country is to be a real democracy where elections are free and fair and sometimes produce a change of government.

Perhaps it is on the basis of their shared literary and musical culture that Russia and western Europe can finally unite as a Eurasian Union. If Russia remains isolated from the west it can only become weaker.

Another brilliant policy from the Greens ("Greens push for car free days", canberratimes.com.au, March 25) suggesting Canberrans can ride their bikes without helmets. I hope the Greens also have a policy to pay for the insurance that will cover the increase in head injuries, so the public purse isn't expected to cover that as well as their other genius policies.

Peter Dutton has been thumping his chest about a war with China over Taiwan for sometime whilst being apparently blissfully unaware of the draft agreement between China and the Solomon Islands doing the rounds. Can we afford another three years of such national security ineptitude?

Your front page picture of the Treasurer tossing a football in the air (canberratimes.com.au, March 19) contains two visual ironies. The ball is clearly under-inflated; not what is needed to accurately kick a goal. The second and synonymous irony is that if the ball was over-inflated, a metaphor we're well acquainted with from this government, the result could be worse. It might just blow up when the boot, ie, the election, is applied.

How does Rebecca Vassarotti square her "tree change" ("Extra protection for Canberra's old beauties", Sunday March 27, front and p4) with her Green party's advocacy for destroying the beautiful Himalayan and Atlas Cedars on Commonwealth Avenue to make way for their light rail to Woden? Is this a case of government saying do as I say, not do as I do? And politicians wonder why people distrust them.

The air is redolent with the scent of pork. After years of neglect and mismanagement, the government suddenly promises us all manner of shiny things providing we re-elect them. What's the be done? The answer's obvious: we need to hold elections every six months.

The name of the country is "Solomon Islands", not "the Solomon Islands" or "the Solomons". Maybe the Chinese are welcome because they get it right.

Actually, P McCracken (Letters, March 23) drivers tracking behind a vehicle at 80km/h on highways should thank the leader at petrol bowsers, while passing speed cameras (called FartKontrol in Europe) and on reading accident and death notices.

Jenna Price wrote that "defining bullying is tricky". Not so. Bullying is when conservatives are accused of doing it, especially by a left-wing woman. It's then #believeallwomen #metoo.

Can somebody please advise us on the difference between "branch stacking" and "handpicking" of candidates by our PM and the Premier of NSW in the forthcoming federal election in some NSW seats?