Crispin Hull apparently believes (''Leading all roads to Civic is dense policy down fiasco drive'', July 26, pB7) that at some time from around the 1980s, because ''big developers'' detested the decentralisation of the National Capital Development Commission's 1968 general policy plan for metropolitan Canberra (the ''Y-plan''), they hatched a plot to force a succession of limp-wristed ACT regimes to starve Gungahlin of development, so that they could force up land prices and rents in Civic.

According to Hull, the plutocrats embarked upon this strategy because, as we all know, ''Big rents and the big parking fees come from cramming people and jobs into the centre.'' And the mandarins of the ''Big Commonwealth departments'' played along because they were all a bunch of selfish bastards with free parking who wanted to eat in ''classy'' Civic restaurants while not giving a toss for the ''wage slaves'' forced to ''pay through the nose'' for Civic parking. The idea of such a plot particularly such a big one can, I respectfully suggest, most charitably be described as quaint.

However, I do concede Hull to be half-right in pointing the finger at the unwillingness of the federal departmental secretaries to move their agencies to Gungahlin though I suspect that rather than the meagre smattering of classy restaurants in Civic in the 1980s, it was more likely the resistance to moving to Gungahlin was (and is) based on the prevailing view that proximity to Parliament House is a strong indicator of the level of one's prestige. The Y-plan was always a high-energy plan that was only ever going to be cost- and energy-efficient with much higher population than is even now foreseen for the city.

I'm tempted to say that Hull's solution of dividing the Gungahlin workforce into ''five or six town centres'' is also quaint with everyone milling between home and work in a nice tight radius. But really it is just ridiculous modern people are not so readily agriculturalised.

A second, predictable, solution from Hull is light rail. I suspect light rail has merit in certain designated corridors, but if Hull is relying on the fact that ''80,000 people [at Telstra Stadium] can be cleared by trains in about an hour'', he needs to ask himself how often this would be required in Canberra to justify the cost when the trains weren't packed at other times.

Then, finally, there is the policy of the wall. Why, asks Hull, doesn't the ACT have a population policy? By which he means why doesn't it put up a wall to stop people from coming here? Well, in fact, the ACT has given a lot of thought to population policy it is just that, as a small island in NSW, we have little control over developments going on all around us.

Programs such as the Live in Canberra campaign and the development of Molonglo, both of which Hull excoriates, are both in fact informed by realistic considerations about population. The former on the realisation that severe shortages of people with key skills have emerged in areas crucial to just the normal (let alone future) functioning of our economy and society. The latter on the realisation that only by making available alternative housing opportunities within our border can the ACT mitigate some of the more debilitating financial and environmental impacts of unremitting housing growth outside our border (which NSW has no interest in stopping).

So if Hull doesn't want development in Molonglo, I suggest he get on the blower to Morris Iemma to get him to stop development in Tralee, Environa and Googong.

And if, failing in this mission, he wants federal departments to relocate to Molonglo, he should have a word in the shell-likes possibly over lunch of a few those mandarins.

Greg Ellis, Griffith