How can ordinary investors obtain better information about the arcane practices of the big banks? We have been told repeatedly by the banking sector that risky lending practices in the US have not been employed in Australia. We have been told that Australian banks have very little bad-debt exposure in the Australian mortgage sector.

While both these statements may be true, they seem to have been used to paper over significant problems. At least two of the major banks now disclose that they have engaged in speculative practices in the US subprime market, only to be badly burned.

Shareholders in all the banks have already been hit for six and it is inevitable that Australian bank customers will pay a heavy price. It is difficult not to be angry at the incompetence and poor decision-making of the banks.

Some chief executive officers are now admitting, not for the first time, that they knew little of the practices of some of the investment units inside their own organisations. Others are shifting the blame to ratings agencies, asking us to accept that the banks have little responsibility to look behind a rating assessment given from elsewhere.

So much for the value of senior management, bought with big-time, globally benchmarked remuneration packages. We need much better disclosure so that investors and advisers can understand in clear terms both the practices and risk exposure of financial institutions. Banks and finance houses should initiate this as best-practice reforms, but no one should believe it will be done willingly.

It is almost certainly going to need much-improved government regulation and rigorous oversight.

Keith Croker, Kambah

Urban neglect

It has been reported that over the last five years 15,000 drought-affected trees have been removed in Canberra.

Of these, 4500 plus 3000 shrubs were removed in 2007-08. This is alarming for anyone who had thought of this city as a garden and was proud of it.

If one adds to those figures the trees and shrubs that have been lost by private owners, a quiet devastation of our city is being wreaked upon it with active government participation.

The desolation is attributable without doubt to the ACT ALP Government whose leaders are presuming that Canberrans will automatically vote them in again because that was the way the federal election went. Being confident, therefore, of being returned, the ACT Government does not seem to care how drab and neglected Canberra suburbs become, with desiccated roadside grasses and vegetation, arid nature strips, debris-cluttered gutters, graffiti, and litter.

The Government's priorities seem far removed from the expected municipal care of a large city. The ALP Government will, of course, blame the drought but was it wise of the Chief Minister to decide not to build an extra large dam at Tennent as recommended seven years ago by Actew?

Lately, the Chief Minister has agreed to cap, that is to cut, ACT water for human use in Canberra and Queanbeyan by 68 per cent to an annual 40 gigalitres, regardless of whether the drought breaks. Stanhope is on record stating ''the cap is designed as a limit on water use, not water capture''. This means a continuation of the degradation of the city with permanent water restrictions for our region whose total water resources on average are about 494GL, without the Murrumbidgee.

It also means that water will in time be priced at government-created scarcity prices for householders.

After the two terms of this Government, Canberra is showing the results of severe suburban neglect and the burden of water restrictions.

It is as if Nero fiddles while Canberra dehydrates. Municipal services policy and priorities need the fresh approach a change of government can bring.

Greg O'Regan, Farrer