“Comfortable houses and mature trees, lawns and gardens would be bulldozed over a 3.5 kilometre stretch. Internal streets would lose much of their winter sunlight, pushing up residents’ heating bills and cutting the output from their solar installations.” Letter writer SIMON SCOTT is concerned about rezoning on the western edges of Watson and Downer.
The budget-busting tram has now become the government’s excuse to try to rezone all the blocks on the western edges of Watson and Downer.
It wants to allow 18-metre-high buildings along Northbourne Avenue, and 12-metre-high buildings behind them.
This area is quite unsuitable for such dense redevelopment. Most of it is more than a kilometre from the nearest school or shop and the narrow internal streets were never designed to take the volume of traffic that would result.
If the proposed zoning amendments, called “DPA-09”, went ahead, decades of destruction and disruption would follow.
Comfortable houses and mature trees, lawns and gardens would be bulldozed over a 3.5 kilometre stretch. Internal streets would lose much of their winter sunlight, pushing up residents’ heating bills and cutting the output from their solar installations.
Remaining residents would also lose their views and their privacy as tall, new buildings overlooked their front and back yards.
The justification for picking on this unsuitable area for redevelopment? The tram, which is already packed at peak hour and will never take residents anywhere but Civic, Gunghalin and (maybe) Woden.
Given how far the area is from basic local facilities, the new residents will in fact have to have cars and use them on a daily basis.
The government’s planning document has the effrontery to claim that “the amendments are not anticipated to generate significant negative impacts”, which is nonsense.
I urge all affected residents – and others opposed to the government’s blind commitment to “densification” at all costs – to submit their comments on this proposal to terrplan@act.gov.au by the deadline of 4 November.
Simon Scott, Downer
Nothing valiant about Ben Roberts-Smith
Further to Ross E Smith’s letter of 16 October, columnist Hugh Selby, has my full support.
There is absolutely nothing valiant about Ben Roberts-Smith or his actions. His behaviour was not about kill or be killed – it was killing, for killing’s sake.
I witnessed a presentation by this person and was physically ill by his “antics”.
Nothing funny, humane or anything positive to say about this man keeping any medals. This “great nation” is lessened by such base action.
I thank all the good Defence personnel.
Margaret Freemantle, ACT
Ben Roberts-Smith is an Australian hero
Thank you Ross Smith (letters, CN October 16) for your defence of Ben Roberts-Smith.
Since the Vietnam War, Australian service men and women have been sent to theatres of war where there is no “visible” enemy. Correspondents such as Sue Dyer perhaps don’t understand the associated dangers of these situations. I strongly believe one must walk in their shoes to understand the pressure and danger our ADF personnel face in such theatres.
There have been situations where women have sacrificed their children to assassinate allied soldiers for Jihad. Therefore, one can understand why and how the incident that Roberts Smith is accused of happened. To fight an “unseen” enemy must be the worst situation any person can face. Who is your enemy? The Viet Cong started this trait with friends during the day and became enemies at night. The Taliban have continued it, but have made it a fine art.
Ben Roberts-Smith and his SAS compatriots are Australian heroes, and we should never forget it. For more than 120 years, Australian service men and women have allowed us to sleep soundly in our beds at night. I am glad I served in the Royal Australian Navy and was not tasked to fight such enemies face to face.
Dave Jeffrey, Farrer
Only fools will keep spending borrowed billions
The Barr government is creating a financial disaster for Canberra ratepayers with ridiculous tram borrowings now approaching $7 or $8 billion if the Woden line is built.
Letter writers waffle on about “draft environmental impact statements” and similar bureaucratic time wasters, while the ACT’s credit rating is already downgraded and it must pay higher interest on borrowings. More borrowings will exacerbate that.
The fact is public transport patronage has declined since the Gungahlin tram was built for the simple reason that commuters have better, quicker, more direct travel by private car.
If the Barr government continues multi-billion borrowings for ill-used trams, rates will escalate to the point of unaffordability.
The Barr government must stop costly tramline building and use the existing bus system. Only fools keep spending borrowed billions to replace an affordable transport system.
Anthony Hordern, Jamison Centre
Labor’s failures with finance has failed us
Robert Macklin asks the question in his column (CN October 16), is it time to admit self government has failed?
I would suggest that it’s not self government that has failed, but the 24 years of ACT Labor financial mismanagement that has failed.
Since self government in 1989, the early Kaine, Follett, Carnell and Humphries governments had a fair go, but it went downhill in the early Stanhope years, when not only were parking meters popping up everywhere but so were public artworks such as a concrete owl, a crash-landing Bogong moth and bizarre roadside steel works.
With the ACT government borrowing money to pay the interest on the $13.6 billion debt, it won’t be long before an IMF-style intervention is warranted, as occurred in the then bankrupt Greece.
Paul Temby, via email
Up pulls a truck and off goes the sign…
Apropos my letter (letters, CN October 23) about unnecessary roadworks on my street in Monash, I can report that on the very day the print edition of CityNews hit the stands a truck pulled up at the end of the street and removed the sign announcing the impending resealing.
I hope that will be several thousand dollars saved, and that perhaps a few more people on the months-long public dentistry waiting list in Canberra get the letter they are waiting for.
Ross Kelly, Monash
Time the axe fell on those wrecking our city
The report card is in on our government’s woeful economic/financial performance and its ineffectiveness with infrastructure and laughable understanding of cost benefit analysis.
It’s a pitiful “fail” ripping the rump out of the tax/ratepayer of this place.
It’s time the axe fell on those wrecking our beautiful city so they need to be told to politely move on and find somewhere else to create mayhem.
Where’s Mark Parton when you need him? Muted in the Speaker’s chair.
John Lawrence via e-mail
Little recognition of the Japanese invasion
Interesting in his column (CN October 9) Robert Macklin mentions what he calls the British invasion, but only labels the Japanese invasion as Japanese invaders.
Not sure how you would call a flotilla of 11 old wooden sailing ships with very little weaponry and more than half of the passengers being struggling convicts, who had spent eight months at sea on top of many more months or years in crowded hulks on the River Thames in England, as invaders.
They also had orders from the King of England at the time to make peace with the natives, which Governor Captain Arthur Phillip carried out as much as he humanely could even preferring not to retaliate to being speared in the shoulder by an Aboriginal, as well as cohabitation with Aboriginals at his Government House, just up from Sydney Cove.
Unfortunately, in this country very little recognition is given to the Japanese invasion of northern Australia and its East Coast. Nineteen merchant ships were sunk by the Japanese off the NSW coast with around 214 deaths, seven of these vessels off the nearby south coast, with Pooh Bear’s corner on the Clyde Mountain being used as a mine to detonate explosives if the Japanese landed and made their way to Canberra, the nation’s capital. Midget submarines made it into Sydney Harbour sinking the HMAS Kuttabul killing 21 sailors.
If it wasn’t for the assistance from the US military Australia could be a very different place today.
Ian Pilsner, Weston
Tempted by a six-year senate term?
At age 58 a muzzled yet bristling MP is craving more attention and populist adulation (“’One Nation is not barking mad’: Joyce weighs up future”, citynews.com.au, October 20).
It is clear that Joyce would be tempted by the chance of winning not a three but a six-year senate term with its regular and well-indexed high salary and other employment benefits.
Co-habiting with a few lacklustre and equally unpredictable One Nation colleagues would be tolerable since they would be forever in debt to a right-wing warrior and firebrand who could help ensure their own political survival.
In the meantime, it is hard to believe that this mercurial MP, who is still a member of the National Party, will be able to operate effectively as the taxpayer-funded political representative for New England over the next two and a half years, without distraction or delivery of highly misleading anti-climate action and net zero rants, and other out-of-touch claims and scenarios that do nothing to help the opposition parties gain broad electoral support.
This MP now faces more forward pathways that already promise to create more political mayhem, volatility and prioritisation of self-interest objectives.
But given his navigation skills to date, we are highly unlikely to ever see Barnaby Joyce anointed again as a deputy or acting prime minister, or even as a government-endorsed perambulating envoy. For this we should be eternally grateful.
Sue Dyer, Downer
Powerful mental health initiative
We write to your readers to ask them to make a stronger connection between themselves and people facing mental health issues.
The not-for-profit Mental Illness Fellowship of Australia says it is deeply alarming that there are now 460,000 people who have no access to much needed community support for their mental health conditions.
The numbers, sadly, are continuing to grow.
Our latest campaign highlights that the neglect of people in your area who have a mental health issue is on a very significant scale. Put simply, thousands and thousands of Australians with mental health issues are ending up in hospitals and emergency departments because they believe it is their only option.
People with a severe mental illness die 23 years earlier than the general population. Obviously, this is shameful.
We are calling on all governments to start taking meaningful action to help people with severe mental illness.
We are also calling on your readers to be aware that we have a powerful not-for-profit initiative that they can be part of. The initiative is called Finding North.
This project connects people with mental health issues with others in similar situations and it is an ideal place to go to if you need support.
To get more information, go to findingnorth.org.au
Tony Stevenson, CEO, Mental Illness Fellowship of Australia
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