Australia needs more than slick smoke and mirrors, Mr Shorten Readers have responded to Bill Shorten's budget in reply speech.
At a time when our nation pleads for at least a semblance of statesmanship, the last thing we need is ideological divisiveness and class warfare.
In his budget in reply speech, Bill Shorten plied us with platitude after platitude, many devoid of facts, interspersed by innuendo and personal attacks on the Prime Minister. It's hard to think of one possible golden promise that he missed in his address, thus conjuring up the suspicion of a slick con job. 
Yet when he was then put under the hammer by Leigh Sales on the ABC 7.30 Report he seemed uncomfortably lost for definitive answers - reverting instead to those repetitive platitudes!
Sorry Mr Shorten but Australia needs more than slick smoke and mirrors. Nor do we need to revert to union style brawling, rather reasoned debate aimed at uniting all facets of our diverse national identity.
Soap box oratory and playing the man is in stark contrast to Professor John Warhurst's incisive article pleading "Let's be best civil in campaign" (Times2,   May 5, p1). Should be mandatory reading for the Opposition.
Len Goodman, Flynn I've been trying to find an apt comment on the wake of Bill Shorten's post-budget electoral undertakings. I then remembered my favourite words of wisdom from a great man that I liked quoting when I was a young and foolishly risk seeking student of socialist political economics under Ceausescu's regime: Here they are: "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." The author? Winston Churchill.
Mario Moldoveanu, Frankston, Vic Australia left behind Eight years ago the CT kindly published a letter in which I criticised Wayne Swan's first budget. It lacked incentives to create a low-carbon Australian economy. I gave three examples of the kind of budgetary initiatives that would contribute to this necessary transition: discontinuing subsidies to fossil fuel industries; creating green jobs by mandating increases in the efficiency of energy usage; and prohibiting the clearing of native forests to safeguard their vital role in carbon capture and storage.
Successive Australian Treasurers have ignored these and other low-hanging fruits.
Scott Morrison is no exception.Australia still has one of the highest per capita CO2 emissions in the developed world, over 17 tonnes per person per year. Meanwhile, 500 million people in the European Union have halved their CO2 emissions per capita, from 12 tonnes per annum in 1990 to 6 tonnes today. China, the US (the world's largest emitters) and many other countries are now following their lead.
If this were a sporting contest we might take it seriously and lift our game. At the moment we are not up with the pack in reducing emissions.
What's at stake here is crucial for our future.
David Teather, Reid Electoral advertising Malcolm Mackerras (Letters,   May 3) makes an important point in criticising the Australian Electoral Commission for concentrating its advertising about the new arrangements that abolish group voting tickets on the false assertion that the Senate ballot-paper instructions must be complied with when savings provisions will accept as formal votes marking just one party box or six candidates' names in sequence.The information campaign would be much more effective if its starting point was that the marking of Senate preferences is now just an instruction about the order in which candidates can have access to anything still unused of an individual's single transferable vote.
Once electors grasp that fundamental point, they will either decide to maximise their chances of having a fully effective vote by numbering as far as they actually care about what might happen, or declare that they are supportive of only a small subset of parties or candidates come what may, and risk wasting all or part of their vote.
That's the point at which the ballot-paper instructions or the actual requirements for a formal vote can usefully be brought in.
Nothing is gained through advertising that deceives electors while failing to empower them.
Bogey Musidlak, convener, Proportional Representation Society of Australia (ACT Branch) Business taxes In presenting the proposed changes to company tax rates and thresholds last week, federal Treasurer Scott Morrison claimed that "this will mean 870,000 businesses, employing 3.4 million Australians, will have their tax rate reduced, including a 2.5 percentage point cut in the tax rate for up to 60,000 businesses with a turnover between $2 million and $10 million, employing around 1.5 million Australians."
Yet an examination of the latest published Taxation Statistics, for 2013-14, shows that of the 887,349 companies lodging tax returns in that year, only 363,325, or 41 per cent, paid any net tax.
The other nearly 60 per cent have already found a way to pay no tax, and so will not need the assistance offered by the Treasurer.
Either the Treasurer didn't bother to check with a competent public servant, or else he is guilty of grabbing the biggest number that would make himself look good.
Let's get rid of the spin cycle!
Chris Mobbs, Torrens Nuclear concern I learned last week that a nuclear waste dump in South Australia is a near certainty. Can we be assured that this dump will only be utilised for Australian waste and not become a depository for overseas waste?
Garry O'Gorman, Binalong, NSW Budget bashing It is disappointing to hear people complain that they didn't get something out of the budget. To quote John F. Kennedy: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
Col Tennant, Gordon Medicare freeze How is it that an independent tribunal feels that politicians' salaries must go up in line with inflation (or even higher) while those same politicians can freeze Medicare rebates? Maria Greene, Curtin