Dear NBN, I never wanted you anyway but you said you were cutting off my phone line, including my broadband internet, so I was forced to join you, I had to buy a new modem and get an ugly box with lots of wires retrofitted rather than using my neat old phone connection or existing modem plus I had to find a new internet provider contract. Now that I have slower internet with a lot more drop outs since you arrived, I am wondering if I can either have my old broadband back with appropriate refunds or else can you move me into one the Coalition Members' offices where no doubt they have very fast "Fibre to Premises" instead of my slow, fickle, out-dated "Fibre to Node" via copper wire system? I'd prefer Malcolm Turnbull's office if you don't mind and he and all his Coalition colleagues would be welcome to move into my place to get the real NBN experience.
Bernadette Earl, Parkville
Michael Leunig
Assurances aren't always guaranteed
Before buying my new house near Castlemaine I checked to see if the NBN could be connected. Having good internet service was crucial for my internet-based home business. According to the NBN website it was available, so I went ahead and signed up with a provider who arranged for the NBN to come and make the connection to the house, and for one of its own technicians to come and complete the connection. Four weeks later the NBN technician came and made what he said was a connection that "passed" the NBN's test for minimum download speed; two weeks later the provider's technician came to complete the connection. He checked the download speed I could expect to have and said it was below the minimum, and he refused to make the final connection until the NBN corrected its part of the bargain. Some weeks later the NBN advised that it couldn't provide a viable connection. I now use the 4G mobile network through my mobile phone and everything works fine. The connection is reliable and fast.
Graham Smith, Campbells Creek
An exercise in how not to do things
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's claim that in hindsight the National Broadband Network project was a mistake, and then blaming the former Labor government, represents all that is wrong with this government and why Australia ranks so low when compared to the rest of the world for infrastructure investment. This is the Prime Minister who launched, with great fanfare, his innovation agenda and yet baulked at investing properly in a mammoth infrastructure project that if done properly could have seen Australia as a world leader for internet speed and provided a basis for companies investing in Australia.
Kurt Elder, Port Melbourne
No innovation to see here
I have to award Malcolm Turnbull with the "it-wasn't-me" award of the century. A tech savvy guy, Turnbull succumbed to Tony Abbott's wish to kill the NBN by coming up with a pig's breakfast of a compromised network. Four years on he has the temerity to blame Labor for the muddled and inferior system that he introduced. By canning the total fibre to the premise system that Rudd et al introduced he has allowed the wireless network companies (including the G5 network by Telstra and others) to threaten and probably kill off a system which in any other country would have been implemented years ago.
Innovation Malcolm? – I don't think so.
Roger Leslie, Pakenham
FORUM
Lesson in love
Reading Michael Ashford's obituary ("Special soul faced challenges with a smile", The Age, 24/10), I was brought to tears by the love shown to him by his family – the selflessness and compassion and closeness. Also Micky's acceptance of his disability and his obvious enjoyment of life was wonderful to read about. A lesson to us all about families and love.
Margaret Collings, Anglesea
A powerful light
Thank you Aileen Ashford for the moving tribute to your brother Michael. It is a powerful story of family love and how a disability does not define a person, but can enrich the lives of others. A light to shine on the darkness of this world.
Charlotte Chidell, Eltham North
The absurd fuel
The federal government should stop pretending that an energy policy that has no carbon price and no subsidies for renewables is technology neutral. As long as fossil-fuel generators can dispose of their waste greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for free, they are not paying all their costs. The NEG tilts the playing field in favour of fossil fuels, which in 2017 is just absurd.
Richard Fone, Camberwell
Simple maths
It has been confirmed that Australia will continue to pay Papua New Guinea $250 million a year after the refugee facility shuts and Australian personnel have left. Here's a suggestion: give every remaining refugee about $250,000, ask them politely to leave and save $1 billion over the next five years. Too simple?
Evert de Graauw, Wantirna
Another question
Indeed, Jan Wilkins (Letters, 24/10), "most of us have grown up with a mother and father". Unfortunately, for the 150,000-250,000 people who were forcibly adopted as newborns and the unknown thousands of donor-conceived people in Australia, they were not our natural (that is, biological or genetic) mother and/or father. Your question, "Would we be different people if we'd had two mother or two fathers instead?" is rhetorical, because it can never be answered. A more meaningful question may be, "Why does Western, including Australian, society continue to facilitate the conception of children to be intentionally separated from their biological/genetic parent or parents and raised by another parent or parents – whether heterosexual, homosexual or single?"
Penny Mackieson, Richmond
Make a plan
The Age's excellent coverage of the voluntary assisted death debate has in my view only one shortcoming. Great detail to palliative care and VAD but no mention of that other resource in the grand troika available to us all at death: the advanced care plan.
It presents itself as an effective legal antidote to the fear some have that bullying will push some to speed up their dying when it is not what they want. I say sign one when fit and healthy in mind, at least by the time we reach our 40th year. After all we draw up a legally binding document at that age regards our physical assets so why not concerning the way we want the end phase of our most valuable asset to be managed: our life. These plans are a pre-emptive strike against dominant or paternalistic others at our death bed, and an invitation to self-care, self-determination and one way to minimise for loved others the trauma that can accompany our death. How beautiful death control can be – for us and others. And how undesirable gross passivity.
Kenneth Ralph, retired minister, Uniting Church, Belmont
Sugar-coating
The boasting by the Australian Beverage Council that it has managed to stop a "sugar tax" by "strengthening our profile with various politicians both in Canberra and in state parliaments" (The Age, 23/10) highlights the parlous state of politics today and the urgent need to reform rules governing parliamentary lobbying.
The uncontrolled use of sugar as a filler in most foods and beverages condemn hundreds and thousands of Australians to suffer diabetes, obesity, dental decay and other illnesses. The cost to the taxpayers in health care is astronomical and rising.
Yet the sugar growers and owners of associated industries are only interested in their own profits and have no regard of the health consequences and cost to the community and even the health risks to their own families. And to that list add the compliant politicians. Have they no conscience?
Meg Paul, Camberwell
Inhumanity the enemy
Just as some doctors resented the introduction of modern palliative care in Melbourne 37 years ago saying that they were already caring adequately for dying patients, so now palliative care services are saying that the community doesn't need the assisted dying legislation because they can meet the needs of the dying and are already caring adequately for them.
Those early doctors often failed to address the psychological anguish and distressing symptoms of their patients, condoning nurses relegating these patients to distant side wards where many felt abandoned and like misfits. Some patients were denied the knowledge that their death was imminent, the extent of their pain was not always believed and their loved ones were often left to face their impending loss without support.
Despite the difficulties they faced, palliative care services grew. They specialised in relieving the distress of those in their care, but there are times that this cannot be achieved.
In 1979 leading up to the establishment of our first palliative care service by Melbourne City Mission at North Fitzroy, I wrote that palliative care work was too important to allow its integrity to be jeopardised by the blind acclaim of its objectives that preclude appraisal of problem areas. Intractable suffering in all its forms is just such a problem area. The ultimate kindness we can show another who is enduring profound suffering is to allow them to know they can dictate when it will end.
Palliative care has earned the high respect in which it is held and is now included in main stream health services as an integral provider of excellent end of life care. I respect patient autonomy. I support this legislation.
Death is not the enemy, inhumanity is.
Katherine Kingsbury, OAM, Inaugural Director of Nursing, Citymission Hospice, North Fitzroy
Protect vulnerable
Regarding "My life, my choice", (Letters, 24/10) you are not the only one affected by your choice. Your doctor, your family and the vulnerable people, who will be pressured by your example to follow suit, are all affected. No man is an island and the law needs to protect the most vulnerable.
Helen Fuller, Mulgrave
Not about profit
Malcolm Turnbull and the government still don't get it. The NBN is basic infrastructure where the indirect benefits accrue to the whole economy, not just NBNco. Their corner-cutting fibre to the node approach and attempts to make it all about profit just mean that the benefits will be smaller and slower.
We don't expect our national road system to generate a profit, but the nation could not function without it. Similarly, the benefits from an improved rail system, including high speed rail, would provide huge economic and structural benefits, opening up regional Australia to the benefit of the affordable access.
Simon Westfold, Bittern
Wrong tax target
Scott Morrison puts forward the suggestion that "urgently needed" company tax cuts will increase productivity and that this therefore is the solution to the nation's economic woes. That would only be a plausible argument if savings from tax cuts were channelled back into the economy by way of increased innovation, production and genuine employment in Australia, but too often the benefits are sent off-shore.
Many companies' priority is to improve their own bottom line to the benefit of directors and shareholders only, with little concern for the Australian economy provided their own enterprise is doing OK. Implying that reducing tax rates to align with those of some other countries will also ensure Australia is competitive globally is both a dubious and flawed argument; tax cuts neither deliver nor guarantee the true makers of competitiveness: innovation and efficiency.
Emma Borghesi, Mount Eliza
Greedy capitalism
Regarding Malcolm Turnbull's assertion that the NBN may not make money, I find myself asking why a public company should be in the business of making money in the first place? Are we so consumed by capitalism that we can't see the societal benefits of something without that thing giving a return on the dollar?
Daniel Verberne, Croydon
AND ANOTHER THING
The NBN
Malcolm backpedals again. NBN is wonderful, oops it's costing too much – Labor's fault.
Kaye Jones, Nagambie
NBN – Not Bloody (good enough) Network?
Lauryn Plant, Jan Juc
Do it once. Do it right. Do it with fibre. Tony Windsor was correct.
Gretel Lamont, Aireys Inlet
Furthermore
Scott Morrison declares company tax cuts as urgent. As for the rest of us? Stiff!
John Cain, McCrae
Did the lost security manual have a section on how to keep your security manual secure?
Greg Curtin, Blackburn South
There is no guarantee that cutting company tax will lead to more productivity and jobs. More likely to lead to bonuses for the executives.
Marie Nash, Balwyn
So Sydneysiders are moving to Melbourne in the thousands. Finally conceded that we are No.1, at last?
Tris Raouf, Hadfield
Apparently the Victorian Rail Authority has 80 communications officers. It doesn't take that many people to say: "It's a stuff up."
Dennis Fitzgerald, Box Hill
Shouldn't a tax reduction be offered to businesses that actually pay their full rate of tax?
Joan Peverell, Malvern
Unlike so many other "pretentious wanna be famous so-called stars", Michael Ashford (Obituaries, 14/10) was a genuine Aussie hero.
Len Fagenblat, Elsternwick
Of course our consumption of antibiotics will decrease if we stop giving them to the animals we eat (Letters, 24/10). How's this for another brilliant solution? Stop eating animals.
Linda Fisher, Melbourne