School staff in ACT public schools are striking, but why is it so often only teachers who are making the headlines? It seems teachers are often the only job highlighted in articles or social media posts. But they are not alone in their fight for better conditions and better education.
School assistants are in all of our ACT schools. We undertake crucial roles - supporting education, feeding, personal care, co-regulation, social skills, and advocacy - while being sidelined by unfair working conditions and often being forgotten about by the wider community.
For the first time in the ACT, school assistants are striking alongside their cohort, because we also want the best education for ACT kids. School assistants need community support more than ever.
The government will happily ignore the plight of improving conditions for school assistants if the community doesn't even know we exist. Please don't forget about. The best education possible for students happens through the work of school assistants too.
The government's announcement ("Barr hits the brakes on ACT infrastructure pipeline to save $700m", June 7) is welcome and demonstrates it is finally showing some financial competence and focusing on addressing real community needs.
It confirmed no decision will be made on light rail stage 2B to Woden until 2028. Regrettably, the financial discipline came too late to stop the reckless, disruptive and cynical development of stage 2A, the main objective of which appears to have been to make it difficult to prevent the development of stage 2B.
The main beneficiaries of stage 2A, as Leon Arundell (Letters, June 8) has observed, were the six companies that own Canberra Metro who received $577 million. The community suffered from the billion dollars added to the territory's debt and the disruption caused by its development.
The timeline for the approval of 2B is sufficient for a review of its efficacy to be undertaken and be informed by data in the 2026 census on work patterns, housing and transport choices.
The review would evaluate its cost; if it should be developed as a busway and stage 2A repurposed as a busway; the implications of its high travel time to Woden when compared to existing rapid bus services; establish if it is really sustainable given the greenhouse emissions produced in its construction and the extent of any city-shaping benefits. Savings identified could be used to fund the increased provision of much-needed health and housing infrastructure.
Gwenda Griffith (Letters, June 6) raises an important question about the cost of kangaroo culling in the ACT. It becomes even more relevant when considered alongside the money spent killing dingoes, one of the region's natural predators.
Too often, our response to environmental challenges is to reach for lethal control. We kill kangaroos because there are too many. We kill dingoes because they may affect livestock. We then spend more money managing the consequences of removing native species from ecosystems.
A better question is whether public funds would be better spent on learning to live with native wildlife rather than continually trying to control it through culling. Investment in non-lethal management, improved fencing, habitat restoration, wildlife corridors and better scientific monitoring may deliver better environmental outcomes at lower long-term cost.
The ACT prides itself on being a leader in environmental management. Leadership should mean working with natural systems wherever possible, not defaulting to killing native animals whenever conflicts arise.
Good news for struggling potential home buyers, in all markets, would see the Commonwealth taking over the ongoing acquisition, sensible planning, and development of land for new suburbs and satellite towns, replete with all necessary transport, services, and social infrastructure.
There'd be decent-sized (say, 600 square metres minimum) family blocks for simple-to-build single dwellings, always in good supply, for sale direct to homemakers, at publicly ascertainable cost, plus a small variable margin reflecting the site's characteristics. The good-sized blocks would enable a return to steeper land being successfully used. Natural soils and vegetation would be preserved. Later house alterations and additions would be actually achievable. Our reported urban tree decline would be reversed. Part of the land sales revenue should rightly go to First Nations organisations.
Regarding finance for that program and any negative equity issues, with profiteering banks and corporate lenders unlikely contributors, the government could operate an ongoing nationwide lottery. Rates, and land sale taxes, currently feeding off ballooning land prices and spurious up-zoning, would be replaced with a modest increase in the GST, with distribution extended to local authorities.
A very sad story about the young woman who died as a result of a single-vehicle accident in Canberra. The Canberra Times (June 6) reported that the coroner recommended the review of restrictions for P-plate drivers using high-performance cars. This struck me as curious as the vehicle in question was reported to be a Nissan Navara ute which would be one of the least powerful vehicles in terms of acceleration and speed available.
Indeed, the rest-to-100kmh acceleration for the Nissan is around 11.0 seconds. Compare that with the acceleration that many family electric vehicles available now are capable of; for example, some Tesla 3 and Zeekr models can reach 100kmh in under four seconds and there are many more brands capable of this potentially lethal performance.
These cars have supercar performance and yet they are often driven by complete novices young and old. Imagine in a few years' time young people buying a cheap Tesla 3 Performance as their first car. This is a foreseeable risk that needs to be addressed for the benefit of us all.
Rod Smith (Letters, June 2) lives in a confused and scary world full of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Beware! Rod is alerting us to the dangers of being "woke". He confuses sex with gender; relies on "common sense" that is only common when it agrees with his beliefs; and views immigration as "they're taking our jobs" (yes, they are because we don't have enough qualified people to fill them).
It must be terrifying to feel under attack by ideas of diversity, equity and inclusion when the beliefs of your own position become so shaky you have to blame someone who is not you. Rod, you're not under attack when trans people use the bathroom that matches their gender.
You're not under attack from immigrants filling the job you're not qualified to do. And while you might feel attacked when people don't share your idea of "common sense", it's neither common nor sensical.
I quote from the opinion piece by Jackie French (June 3): "The third requested that we find our own care, but pay 15 per cent of any wages to their company, and that our employees also pay 15 per cent of their wages. They exist purely so clients can obtain government subsidies by being listed with a provider."
Once you obtain a care package, you must choose a registered provider through which to access the funds for services. The practice uncovered by Ms French, quoted above, should be utterly illegal - or, some appropriate version of it should be integrated into the existing system. As described it looks like extortion. Trouble is, humankind being what it is, dishonest and unsuitable people will find a way to extract the care package funds using it.
Care of the ageing in first-world societies is a universal issue. Surely those innumerable international study tours our bureaucrats are so fond of elicited some practical wisdom for our country's practice. No? Oh.
The acting vice-chancellor of the ANU estimates the reputational damage of recent administrative antics to be in the order of $100 million and counting.
Readers of The Canberra Times may be pleased to know that the young School of Music students failed by the ANU "leadership" (not their teachers) have found better in Melbourne. They are too musically sophisticated possibly to reference Gloria Gaynor, but their mothers aren't. Sing along with us former chancellor Julie Bishop and former vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell. You might learn something.
"And you see me, somebody new / I'm not that lonely little person / Still in love with you / Now you come droppin' in / Expectin' me to be free / Now I'm saving my lovin' / For someone who's loving me"
Malcolm Whyte was everything and more as covered in the obituary in The Canberra Times (June 6). He was indeed a humble man of major achievements. He was a leading global expert on the effects of fats on heart health, making this relationship a matter of much greater understanding with his popular book, The Fats of Life. Notably too, I believe he was the oldest Rhodes Scholar in the world and the oldest professor emeritus of the ANU before his death.
Congratulations to the ABC on the excellent program Ground Up, which covers events which never happened. An excellent follow-up would be based on non-events in the ACT. Andrew Barr could play himself in a cameo role, and it could be filmed on-site at our now-ruined city centre. Our planning minister and Treasurer could provide hours of entertainment. Please hurry up Aunty, the location shots may be impossible in 20 years, when the fences come down in Civic, revealing the empty shops.
I think Richard Marles should quickly return to the US. I hear they have the Sydney Harbour Bridge for sale, which would be nice to go with the subs when they eventually arrive. And I am sure Richard can find a few more billion to buy plenty of anti-rust paint as well, if he asks nicely. He should take the defence top brass with all the omelette on their caps (leaked from their brain?), they may as well work over there.
On Saturday I dined out with friends. We entered one of Canberra's finest restaurants and ate and drank our fill, on the basis that the bill would be split between those participating. But when the bill arrived I advised everyone that "I had changed my position". I left without paying. Ah socialism, you have to love it.
Pete Hegseth's D-Day speech basically equated today's boat people and refugees heading to Europe with the Nazis of World War II. He clearly has no idea of what World War II was about, of what Hitler was about, and he is so ideologically and religiously driven that he can only speak with aggression in almost everything he says.
Why is it that most media paint a jolly picture of great excitement around Australia's 47 per cent population explosion over the past 25 years without reflecting on the environmental degradation and pressure on infrastructure and resources that comes with it?
Government leadership is disgracefully lacking on this front. We need informed and balanced journalism to call out this failure and to drive environmentally sustainable planning and development.
The AUKUS change from two to three older nuclear subs, and Richard Marles' explanation that this is what Australia really wanted all along, raises an interesting question. Is this an attempt to spin the AUKUS difficulties, or is it an admission that Australian governments dare not say boo to the US? Neither alternative casts a positive light on the AUKUS process from our perspective.
