Neither Turnbull nor Shorten can offer correct advice for Australia Malcolm Turnbull's Coalition is bereft of good policy capabilities.
Amanda Vanstone ("Why the PM choice is clear", Times2,   May 9, p1) makes a case that Malcolm Turnbull is a better financial adviser than Bill Shorten. But why would we want a financial adviser in charge?
Those guys caused the global financial crisis by marketing garbage dressed up as opportunity. They lied and colluded to hide their misdeeds so that the corrupt, unsustainable profiteering reached mammoth proportions and delivered a crushing blow to the global economy and people's faith in it. And they apparently never saw it coming. It was like watching Nigella Lawson cook something up out of the old leftovers at the back of the fridge then gaze in perplexity at the guests running for the bathroom. 
Why would we want one of them?
S.W. Davey, Torrens Amanda Vanstone has clearly been got at by her Liberal Party mates. Characterising the forthcoming (unnecessary) double dissolution election as a contest between the personalities of Turnbull and Shorten is a ploy to distract from the fact that the Coalition has very few policy offerings of any substance and is showing no real leadership about Australia's future.
For example, the 2016 budget reverts to disproved and hopeless trickle-down economic ideology from the Reagan/Thatcher era. This shows the Coalition is stuck in a time-warp and is bereft of good policy capabilities.
Keith Croker, Kambah I ask Vanstone to ask herself "Imagine you are not a former politician living on a life-long pension vastly more generous than the majority of Australians will ever receive but paid for by the majority of Australians: who would you trust to make sure you weren't getting shafted?
"A multi-millionaire who cast aside his principles to become PM or a former union official?" The choice is clear and it is not Turnbull.
Rory McElligott, Nicholls Amanda Vanstone makes a strong point in her opinion piece, but not the one she thinks she does. I don't want either Bill Shorten or Malcolm Turnbull as a financial adviser, and certainly not as the next PM. Ms Vanstone appears unable to countenance this possibility.
The "economy" Ms Vanstone waxes lyrical about is a wholly owned subsidiary of the natural environment, and the current economic settings are bleeding the planet dry.
This has occurred under successive Liberal and Labor governments and will surely continue under any future Shorten/Turnbull variety. No jobs on a dead planet, Ms Vanstone.
No Liberal Party, no financial advice and certainly no imaginary lottery wins. Climate change and the collapse of life-sustaining ecological systems are the single greatest threat facing all humanity, yet Ms Vanstone wants us to talk about where Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull went to school. She makes clear that the Liberal and Labor parties have abandoned Australia at the hour of greatest need. Vanstone, Shorten and Turnbull; all fiddle while Rome burns.
Logan McLennan, OConnor Earth burns, we fiddle The sight of Canadians desperately releasing more carbon to combat climate-driven wildfires in the heartland of mega- carbon-polluting tar sands says something about so-called Homo sapiens. He's as thick as two bricks. Next summer it'll be Australia's turn again, to see if we can turn a disaster into a catastrophe.
The only thing the rest of the world will remember us for, in the long sweep of history, is for wrecking the Great Barrier Reef, extinguishing our native fauna and flora and contributing disproportionately - out of greed alone - to climate suffering for all humanity. And our governments don't give a toss.
Julian Cribb, Franklin At least balance right Congratulations on the balance in your choice of letters. For example, Paul Feldman (Letters,   May 6), not for the first time, asserting that the so- called 50 per cent capital gains tax concession is an undesirable " incentive for speculative borrowing" - immediately followed by a letter from George Beaton showing that he in fact paid more tax with this so- called 50 per cent "concession' than he would have paid under the old system of taxing the full capital gain but allowing for inflation.
What a "concession"!
The reality is that house values have to increase by more than twice the rate of inflation before you benefit from the so- called "concession".
R.S. Gilbert, Braddon Beware categorising G. Charles (Letters,   May 6) argues that it is wrong to victimise people who make a lifestyle choice "to live frugally, saving for a deposit, paying off a mortgage and then perhaps diverting surplus funds into an investment property".
In doing so, G. Charles categorises people into two groups. Those quoted above and the other group who "spend their money on other things, such as rent, alcohol, smokes, pay TV, footy, pokies and the horses".
G. Charles's argument is that taxing people (I presume) in the first category is victimisation.
It follows that taxing the people in the second category is acceptable.
What arrant nonsense.
Firstly, people cannot be categorised into two groups.
Secondly, the activities of one group of people cannot be adjudged to be inferior to another, even if there were just two groups. In truth, I didn't think that people like G. Charles still existed. I thought attitudes like this disappeared in the 19th century.
G. Charles implies that the nature of the activities of the people in the second group is profligate, indulgent and unrestrained; thus justifiably taxable.
How arrogant, especially concerning the payment of rent, which if you lease property is not an indulgence, and which, I presume, G. Charles is charging for the "investment properties".
I once paid rent, then obtained a mortgage, paid the mortgage off and invested money. Also, I drink alcohol, have pay TV, watch the footy, played the pokies (occasionally) and I used to bet on horses.
However, my sins extend further.
I subscribe to Netflix, I play chess, I'm a carer for my aged parents, a member of the National Library and in the process of writing two books.
I'd like to know into which category G. Charles thinks I should be; victimisable or no?
Craig Gamack, Holt