It’s a good time to be corrupt and this is why…
It’s a good time to be corrupt, says legal affairs columnist HUGH SELBY arguing that the nation's slow and failed integrity and anti-corruption bodies should be abolished.
Opinion
Views on the news from Canberra’s top columnists
Political polling must seem like a roller-coaster ride – the ups and the downs – for those being rated, says cartoonist PAUL DORIN.
"The increasing electrification of the car and bus fleets will reduce the need for work-related car parking and the road and public transport capacity required. Light rail may no longer be justified," writes planning columnist MIKE QUIRK.
A neologism is a newly coined word or expression and Whimsy columnist CLIVE WILLIAMS shares some of the latest ingenious ones.
Letters
When will the minister get police to police their own?
Letter writer JANINE HASKINS has been following the case of a violent assault of an Aboriginal man, allegedly by police, and wonders why the police minister isn't demanding answers.
Opinion
How quickly decency and fairness in public life have fallen
"Two matters in the legal arena illustrate how secret decision making is now suspect: that distrust has replaced trust." Columnist HUGH SELBY laments how quickly expectations of probity, decency and fairness in public life have fallen.
Opinion
How the obsession with growth holds us back
"As another financial year begins, the national conversation should move beyond the assumption that bigger is always better." CLIVE WILLIAMS says the question is not how to make the economy bigger, but how to make Australians better off.
"I come not to bury Shane, but to compost him". New Greens leader Jo Clay shares her cure for the Rattenbury hangover with KEEPING UP THE ACT.
Labor's “Aquatic Strategy” promises that “options to deliver a new public 50-metre outdoor pool in Woden will be progressed”. But progressing options differs from a commitment, says BEATRICE BODART-BAILEY.
With tenders called, with 'indecent haste', RICHARD JOHNSTON says we’re back pretty much at square one again, after 15 years of fruitless effort around the moribund Kingston Arts Precinct.
"The ACT Government can break the law, give false information, not listen to the community and all’s good." Letter writer PENNY MOYES, of Hughes, challenged a government minister.
He should be so lucky, says cartoonist PAUL DORIN.
Sardonic, but is this a sad sign of the times, wonders cartoonist PAUL DORIN.
"Younger people need to ask, is this how I want mum and dad treated? And what awaits me when I reach a ripe old age?" BRETT HEFFERNAN, CEO of the Australian Private Hospitals Association,
Fear not about the Woden Pool corruption accusations, the ACT Inactivity Commission's snails have swung into action!
"I was taken aback by a Canberra Times article that paints our former DPP, Shane Drumgold, as a victim of each and all of Murdoch media, Walter Sofronoff, local politicians and the ACT Bar Association. He was not a victim," says HUGH SELBY.
"Surely the ACT Government isn’t going to be allowed to plough on in its usual arrogant fashion," asks letter writer PENNY MOYES, emboldened by the Auditor-General's damning report on the Phillip pool.
LAUCHLAN McINTOSH says the public is entitled to ask a simple question: if the government collects more than $1m from a road safety levy, why suspend a $200,000 community road safety grants program that directly supports prevention work?
MIKE WELSH, drivetime announcer at 2CC in 2012, dreamt up a stunt to boost his ratings that may have changed the destiny of Australian politics, for which he apologises.
