Defence Housing Australia the target of a disgraceful vendetta A proposal to privatise defence housing was controversial.
The Department of Finance has bypassed the management of Defence Housing Australia to refer a matter involving DHA to the Australian Federal Police. Defence service lobbyists fear this is a step towards privatising DHA. It also prolongs a bout of expensive bureaucratic road rage on the part of DoF.
First raised by the National Commission of Audit in 2014, the proposal to privatise DHA is naive ideology that the property industry itself would blush to support. Neither the Property Council of Australia nor the Real Estate Institute of Australia included the suggestion in their submissions to the NCOA. The proposal was conceived by the commission's DoF advisers, fuelled by the delusion that DHA received $1.2billion from the budget annually.As many know, this money comes primarily from property investors. DoF shelved the proposal after a scoping study lasting six months and costing millions. Without irony, DoF indicated it would review DHA's business systems anyway, to improve the transparency of its cost reporting. 
Unfortunately, DHA's managing director, Peter Howman, had the bad taste to expose the delusion underpinning the proposal, by correcting it at Senate estimates and, unforgivably, in the media. He took the opportunity to explain that DHA should remain a government authority to ensure service people get quality housing whenever they move. Fast forward one year.
Howman has been sacked and replaced by a DoF executive, and the DHA board's newest DoF-sponsored member is ... Robert Fisher, one of the national commissioners of audit.
Truly a vendetta, Canberra- style.
Paul Feldman, Macquarie First-class hypocrites It is a surprise to hear our Prime Minister lecturing the European community about security ("Turnbull warns of 'perfect storm',   March 24, p1), as if they should, after all, adopt Tony Abbott's rejection of refugees.
Civilised societies can live with porous borders. Criminal conduct, whether by people called terrorists or criminals, occurs in every society to varying extents, and borders are easily breached.
Australia's mostly white Anglo-Saxon population and its initially England and English-based governments have waged war on the Indigenous people of this country since Invasion Day 1788, and treated them with contempt since Captain Cook in 1770. We are the invaders, and have conducted the longest-ever campaign of terrorism, which has, at times, included what would now be called attempts to wipe out an indigenous population, also known as genocide.
Perhaps this is the source of our expertise.
Australia joined in the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, without United Nations approval or authority. We are no better than Saddam Hussein who invaded Kuwait in 1990, or Daesh (wrongly still called Islamic State in Australia), which has invaded Syria and Iraq.
The Western coalition has bombed hospitals (even those of friendly doctor groups), schools and markets. We ignore the Refugee Convention, which is part of Australian law; ignored the absence of United Nations authority in invading Iraq, and its requests not to proceed, and we tell other countries such as North Korea to observe international law and to observe UN requests.
Hypocrisy your name is Australia.We are no better than Daesh, Hussein and Kim Jong- il. A lawyer prime minister and foreign minister, both intelligent competent thinkers, should do better.
Warwick Davis, Isaacs Give women a break Surely, it is not beyond the wit of someone in this hapless government to view women having babies as the fundamental economic service to society that it is, rather than just an excuse to avoid paying HECS debts ("Budget eye on student debt",   March 29, p1).
The possible proposal by Andrew Norton's review to penalise women graduates by making them repay their HECS debts earlier at a rate higher than that required of male graduates, who already have the advantage of higher salaries throughout their working lives and generally uninterrupted work patterns, seems unworthy of any society in 2016. While having children is definitely a private good, it is also the most basic economic activity in society.
As only women can have children, they should be supported in every way possible to have a family and a career without being punished at every turn for fulfilling society's expectations and needs.
That may require some creative thinking to develop a system which is fair to women, encourages them to return to work (thus allowing them to repay their debt), and doesn't constantly treat them as some form of problem.
If that entails some leeway for women in repaying their HECS debts, it seems a small price to pay for the continuing free reproductive services that women provide to society. It would also send a long overdue message of recognition of work seemingly currently still much undervalued.
Julia Roberts, Weetangera Bigger not better Martin Tye (Letters,   March 29) is absolutely correct about our obsession with a bigger Australia. We all know that our current obsession with a perpetually "bigger" economy (a growing GDP) is nothing more than a mish-mash of: asset sales, bigger debt levels and an ever bigger population and is not delivering benefits to ordinary Australians.
We see evidence every day that it is a miserable and rapidly failing economic ideology.
We need to do better.
Geoff Buckmaster, Cook Martin Tye correctly points out the failure of our current obsession with economic growth by any means. For too long, economic growth has been fuelled by unproductive debt, sale of productive assets, and a population Ponzi that artificially inflates an otherwise mediocre GDP.
Our poorly thought-out growth concentrates wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many, producing per capita decline in many of the things that matter to ordinary Australians. There are better ways to achieve a prosperous and sustainable Australia, that leaves a secure future for our children.
Lindsay Penrose, Bruce