G'day Don, maybe the ABC has some useful footage (probably a few years old now) that can be leaked out, stuff showing minors in detention being flogged and abused by AFP staff. Pity they "kept Mum" on the other territory until after the general election. So much for the right wingers alluding to the ABC being a nest of Loony Lefties.

All elections in recent years have been very, very usual and ordinary, considering that we are voting for rats in Armani suits...nothing changes. The electorate on the whole are more interested in the footy scores than whether their superannuation is going to be annexed by stroke of legislation to fill the governments coffers.

Most Australians know very little, if anything about our constitution and when asked, go off sprouting references to the US constitution...Second Amendments etc.

The only thing of note in recent years is the ACT Human Rights Act (2004) and Amendments (2008 -2009), something of a first in this country. One can only hope the incoming ACT government once formed, do good works in the spirit of those days, because Labor, Liberal, Green at the Federal level have been singularly unimpressive and boring to say the least.

South Australia will have had a Labor government for 16 years by the election next year, and look at the mess we are in.

As you say Don, Of very small moment to anyone living outside the A.C.T.

That said, Canberra is an example of very well thought through decentralization! That would likely benefit from light rail as would almost any other community! Except say every small rural hamlet or village, still large enough to support a general hospital and a couple of schools? Like here, where our only local public transport option is a single taxi service that allegedly doesn't run after dark?

I was surfing the web yesterday and spotted something that would work in most small country towns? A stretched limousine as long as a bus, with gull wing doors. This rechargeable all electric vehicle could be recharged at every stop, (schools, supermarket, newsagent, hospital, RSL, sports venues?) via an under bitumen magnetic interface.

The incorporation of driverless technology, (tesla's?) would make it inherently safer as public transport that almost any competent C class driver could pilot? As would GPS tram track technology that ensured near perfect lining up with all the magnetic recharging interfaces?

This very unusual vehicle is dutch design and could be trialled in a few rural communities like ours, where unlike Canberra that wants for very little public amenity, our options are limited and few! Gull wing doors adjacent to every seat, (about twenty?) allows exceptionally easy entry and disembarkation?

Light rail Don? I'd settle for a service that just ran around four or five time daily, that just wasn't an antiquated very second hand diesel bus, like that which ferries the out of town kids into our schools? But refuses to take the odd adult into town for almost any reason, (Dr, Hospital?) even when running half empty! And paid at the same annual rate whether packed or half empty?

I'd just like a domestic public transport service!
Alan B.

Canberra's voters are relatively coddled, lefty and precious. Their tummy's hurt about, for them, two major local issues:

1. the mere thought of Kangaroo culling. They prefer individual birth control for roos instead, and

2. they insist on calling a Tram project the environmentally precious name "light rail".

As I see it if the Can Tram is built there'll be a lot of economic refugees leaving Canberra.

Do Canberrans deserve all these "issues"?

This is because Can Tram (Civic to Gungalin, Civic to Woden) will cost $Billions causing steep rises in property rates.

I hear its the one Green, Rattenbury, who, with the balance of power in the Assembly, wants to duplicate a perfectly good bus system with his "light rail" train-set.

plantagenet,

> As I see it if the Can Tram is built there'll be a lot of economic refugees leaving Canberra.

Like they've been leaving Sydney these past few years? :-)

Aidan

Sydney is different - The Big Smoke. Its regularly topped with brainy Hong Kong Chinese and industrious Indians.

Meanwhile Canberrans are cut off from the real Oz and dependent on we taxpayers for their way too inflated average wage of $86,791 http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/act-offers-the-top-average-advertised-salaries-on-seek-20160519-goytb4.html