“Am I the only CityNews reader from the real world of public transit construction, industrial production and electricity generation,” asks letter writer ANTHONY HORDERN.

Some correspondents’ proposals for an alternative lifestyle in Canberra are out of Flash Gordon comics (letters, CN June 26).

Am I the only CityNews reader from the real world of public transit construction, industrial production and electricity generation?

Science fiction is entertaining, but autonomous electric door-to-door public transport is an ephemera. Telecommuting is okay for clerks, but impossible for builders, plumbers, electricians and trades that make clerks’ lives comfortable.

So-called “renewable” electricity is intermittent, unreliable and weather dependent. High-speed broadband is great for games and movies, but can’t put groceries in the pantry.

Let’s shuffle Canberrans into the Shanghai Towers being built everywhere, climbing the stairs to work (unless we are a bricklayer), shopping in the basement wet market, as they do in Beijing.

Our children can play outdoors on the one metre by four metre balcony (who needs a backyard – millions of Chinese don’t). This would eliminate the need for public transport or climate-catastrophe motor cars. The Labor/Green government has the skills, knowledge and experience to make this work (giggles and titters).

Being housed and employed in the one place would also simplify personal social credit rating. The block wardens could monitor residents consistently. Welcome to the brave new world of woke.

Anthony Hordern, Jamison Centre

Carbon dioxide is ‘off the chart’

It is a common argument against human-induced climate change that carbon dioxide is a good thing because plants need it for photosynthesis. Anthony Hordern takes the argument to a different place when he says, CO2 is essential “for our skeletons” (letters, CN July 17).

While carbon is a fundamental building block for all living organisms, including bones, the carbon in bones primarily comes from the food we eat, not from atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Fortunately, such arguments are in decline. Griffith University has been conducting a longitudinal national climate action survey since 2021. While 2024 results are still pending, it is heartening to note that the percentage of respondents classified as “deniers” or “sceptics”, based upon their answers to the survey questions, decreased from 7 per cent and 9 per cent in 2021 and 2022 to only 5 per cent in 2023. 

If Mr Hordern views the graph at climate.nasa.gov/evidence he will see not only that carbon dioxide concentrations are the highest in 800,000 years, but they have gone off the chart.

Ray Peck, Hawthorn, Victoria

Fond memories of Peter Russell-Clarke

News of Peter Russell-Clarke’s death caused me to reach into a bottom drawer to resurrect my now-tatty mid-1970s Melbourne University Athletic Club T-shirt emblazoned with Peter’s naughty cartoon of the Melbourne University crest. 

The cartoon features a stylised drawing of the university’s emblem of Nike, the goddess of victory. 

Here she appears, very well proportioned and nude, bursting from her long gown as she runs past a smug but wise Melbourne University male athlete wearing spikes, his strategically placed right foot planted firmly on the back of the gown.

Peter was a common sight jogging around the university track in the 1970s. He donated this artwork to the athletic club to assist with fundraising. 

Vale, Peter, your life bore out the university’s motto, Postera Crescam Laude (Grow in the esteem of future ages).

Denis O’Brien, Adamstown Heights, NSW

An electric bus is still a bus!

If it looks like a duck and swims like a duck, it’s probably a duck. Similarly, if it’s got rubber wheels and drives on tarmac, it’s probably a bus. I don’t care how it’s powered: an electric bus is a bus.

So can we please stop calling them “trackless trams” (Letters, Richard Johnston, CN July 17)? It’s like vegans calling it “vegan bacon”: nice try, but I still don’t want to eat it.

John Noble, Saigon, Vietnam

Warm houses, clean air, low heating bills

Nobody wants a cold house. Neither does anyone want health damage from wood-heater pollution that’s linked to up to 63 premature deaths per year in the ACT (Medical Journal of Australia, January 2024).

We can have the best of both worlds. The Warm up New Zealand project measured electricity consumption after 1973 wood-heaters were replaced with upgraded insulation, if needed, and efficient heat pumps (the NZ name for reverse cycle air-conditioning). 

Electricity use increased by just one per cent – less than the cost of petrol to cut and transport firewood, let alone buy it!

Modern, efficient heat pumps deliver over four times as much heat to the home as they use in electric power, averaged over Canberra’s cold winters. 

NZ researchers hypothesised that new, highly efficient heating reduced the need for expensive radiant heaters in other parts of the house, and for short periods when it wasn’t worth lighting the fire.

Participants had warmer homes, lower heating bills and better health from breathing less pollution inside and outside their homes.

Under normal household operation, wood-heaters satisfying the current Australian standard were found to be almost as polluting as the ones in use 20 years ago.

The ACT Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment provided extensive evidence that wood-heater pollution damages our health.

With new heaters almost as polluting as those in use 20 years ago, it’s time to heed the commissioner’s recommendations and phase them out, in favour of new clean, efficient heating, that the NZ study showed is much cheaper and healthier than burning wood.

Dr Dorothy L Robinson, Australian Air Quality Group

More important than we really are?

Given Australia is so obviously at the bottom of the AUKUS food chain, perhaps a more appropriate acronym should be USUKA, or was the original plan devised to make us feel more important than we really are?

Ian De Landelles, Murray’s Beach, NSW

The Chief says he’s not killing kangaroos

Our chief minister, when asked at the Haig Markets why he is killing kangaroos, flippantly replied that he is not. 

What a truly callous reply when his government has been spending yet another $350,000 enacting its cruel annual “kangaroo management plan”, this year killing 2981 adults and many 100s of joeys.

I can only assume that he is not woken at night by the horror of assault rifle bullet noises – like many Canberrans are – as yet another sentient animal loses its life and its joey is bludgeoned to death.

I can only assume that he also does not walk in the reserves distressingly seeing the blood and remains of the slaughtered animals – like many Canberrans are. 

And for what? The chief minister seems to want to clear the bush capital of our kangaroos for more development. 

Jo Kirwan, via email

We have to plan to live with the wildlife

John Murray (letters, CN July 17) rails against those opposing the annual kangaroo cull, citing the danger kangaroos pose to motorists and the animals themselves as they try to cross busy roads.

As someone who has lived and driven in the ACT since 1974, I have never once hit a kangaroo. 

That is because, instead of blindly racing along the roads seeing the speed limit as something to reach, knowing there are kangaroos around, I drive below that limit and am always watching for kangaroos that might be grazing the edges, particularly in dry times.

It’s high time for the government, instead of spending some half a million dollars shooting kangaroos and bludgeoning joeys to death, to trial virtual fencing, plan underpasses in new suburbs, and install “kangaroo crossing signs” on all major roads near the reserves.

There should also be mandatory lower speed limits in those higher-risk main arterial roads around reserves.

If we want the bush capital then we have to plan to live with the wildlife and slow down. There are far too many hoon drivers and lowering the speed limit will catch them and maybe reduce our current budget deficit as well reduce injury and death to us and our much maligned furry macrapods.

Jennifer Macdougall, Farrer

Government indifferent to safety during cull

The government’s contracted shooters’ bloodlust was on full display over this year’s kangaroo cull with numerous large blood puddles not only left inside urban nature reserves but also close to the houses that back on to these reserves for walkers to witness the following day.

This suggests that the kangaroos were incompetently shot, most likely due to the adverse weather conditions Canberra experienced over June and July. 

Dead animals do not bleed. The wounded kangaroos would have been in excruciating pain, intense fear and panic. 

Ricochets from high-velocity bullets can travel over a kilometre and are more common than you think. 

The question is would people whose houses back on to a reserve be safe going out their backyard at night during the “cull”?

It is clear that the ACT government is sacrificing public safety by shooting kangaroos up to the rear boundary of the houses. Something Canberrans may be unaware of.

Reserve watches stationed around various nature reserves have noticed people using walking tracks outside the boundary fences of reserves while kangaroos are being shot. These walking tracks are constantly in use by walkers, dog walkers and runners all year round.

One reserve watcher has commented that the shooters’ behaviour is the worst that they have seen in the entire 16 years of killing kangaroos

Robyn Soxsmith, Kambah

No scientific evidence to support the cull

John Murray (letters, CN July 17) seems to be suggesting that, but for the cost of vehicle repairs, killing kangaroos with cars would be a viable alternative to killing them with guns, but his premise still seems to be that kangaroos need to be killed.

It is blindingly obvious to anyone who has read the ACT government’s Kangaroo Management Plan, and the various other documents that the government alleges support killing kangaroos with guns, that there has never been any actual scientific evidence to support the government’s assertion that kangaroos ever have needed to be killed.

Some people who believe the government just haven’t had the time or energy to read the documents. Some don’t have the intellectual capacity to question assertions that are couched in scientific-sounding eco-babble, and stuffed with meaningless tables. Some like to believe it, because that way they don’t have to think about the indisputable and inexcusable cruelty of the slaughter.

Thankfully, many people in Canberra are starting to wake up.

Frankie Seymour, Queanbeyan

It’s Japanese trip that deserves the criticism 

Sue Dyer (letters, CN July 10 ) in paragraph one is critical of the Barr government for the health levy, hike in rates and charges and the delegation to Japan.

The next three paragraphs call on a Liberal opposition “if serious” to cause a detailed account of the trip to be provided to the Assembly. 

The criticism of the government is by far outweighed by the criticism of what the opposition may or may not do in their response to the Japan junket.

Paul Temby, via email

Labor’s government peas in a deficit pod

What’s the difference between the federal ALP and ACT governments?

There is no difference, they are like two peas in a pod, both are spendthrift governments racking up record budget deficits.

According to the Treasury, there will be an estimated $1 trillion debt by September this year at the federal level. In the ACT it was recently announced by treasurer Chris Steel that a $1.1 billion budget deficit is predicted for 2024/2025.

Predictably, Steel is defending the budget and its plethora of revenue-raising taxes, rates and levies by saying it was necessary to invest in “emergency measures”.

He then goes on to say that the government will offer high-quality health

services without the need for cutting public services, yet he’s allegedly planning to reduce the health budget by $4 million compared to last year’s budget!

The proposed $250 “health tax”, hastily downgraded to $100 per 

household is still highly inequitable, as everyone benefits from healthcare, not just ratepayers. Scrapping the ratepayers’ tax would be the practical, equitable thing to do, as it was an ill-thought-out proposal, and still is.

Mario Stivala, Belconnen

Predictions have a habit of coming true

When reflecting on the world we live in, those with a memory only need to recall back to ’80s when the late, former leader of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, told us that Australia was in danger of becoming the “white trash” of Asia if changes were not made.

Few at that time would argue with that assessment in the face of high unemployment and inflation. Hawke and Keating are on the record of successfully delivering many overdue reforms to correct the downwards fall. In the intervening years though what have we really learned?

On the national level, Australia still does not have a world-class communications network despite wasting millions on a NBN street dig-up that went nowhere, leaving our friends in China in hysterics.

A similar stumble can be seen with Snowy Hydro-2 as critics line up hammering it for its questionable progress, or the negative press Transurban and state governments receive over monopoly toll roads across Australia.

On the local level, the state of Canberra’s economy is worrying with a predicted budget deficit of more than a billion dollars, plunging many into financial stress and homelessness. Plus a light rail black hole project receiving endless unfavorable comment and a once beautiful planned city showing signs of stress by a succession of challenged, third-tier governments.

I’d argue Lee Kuan Yew’s cautionary warnings are coming home to roost. 

John Lawrence via email

Time to reflect on Gaza death tolls

Those who argue Israel’s activities in Gaza are justified should reflect on the findings of a recent analysis, Violent and Non Violent Death Tolls in the Gaza War: New Primary Evidence (Michael Spagat et al).

The study, yet to be peer reviewed, estimated some 75,200 violent deaths and 8540 non-violent deaths in Gaza between October 2023 and early January 2025. 

More than half of the people killed were women aged 18-64, children or people over 65. The findings align with 64,260 violent deaths up to the end of June 2024 estimated by research by a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Both estimates are higher than the often derided estimates of the Palestinian Ministry of Health which as of June 25, had reported 56,200 deaths.

Prof Spagat also observed the claim by the IDF of 20,000 deaths of Hamas fighters has no independent verification and is likely to be an overestimate.

The IDF is willing to kill scores of civilians in the pursuit of a Hamas fighter. The extreme anti-Palestinian attitudes of Jewish settlers in the illegal settlements in the West Bank and the Israeli government’s tolerance and even encouragement of such settlements, as exposed by Louis Theroux documentary The Settlers, reflects poorly on the state of Israel.

The horror of October 7 should not be forgotten but the appalling treatment of Palestinians should not be downplayed. Countries continuing to arm Israel have lost their moral compass.

Mike Quirk, Garran