A TIMELY REMINDER
Every Year Anzac Day is within itself a living history lesson by those Australians who went forward to make a difference to the World as it was then, and how it is now. Our Armed Forces are still on the move to this very day, fighting against those of this world who would try and take away our Australian way of life if given just half a chance.
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Now we are all under threat from North Korea and its missdirected collection of Looney Tunes, who vent their hatred of a free world by informing us that we are now in range of their nuclear weapons. Kim Jong-Un would be better off getting himself in range of a brain, instead of in range of the free world.
David Cox, Corrimal
ECONOMY v ENVIRONMENT
Mr Turnbull I don’t like you spending taxpayers’ dollars visiting Mr Adani and promoting his mine. If the Adani mine proceeds, Australia will be responsible for over 10 per cent of world CO2 emissions. I don’t want that.
Scientific research says the Barrier Reef is dying due to warming and pollution. This project would add more warming and pollution. The reef is a beautiful thing which employs many more people than the Adani mine ever will. The Indians don’t damage the Taj Mahal. We should not damage our Barrier Reef.
I don’t like you creating an “independent custodian” of taxpayer funds (the NAIF), then Government minsters loudly saying that this body should subsidise Adani, then pretending that there is some sort of rational evaluation happening. I don’t like taxpayers subsidizing a man who tax shifts to the Caymans and has a track record of corporate misconduct.
I don’t like gifting a whole Sydney harbour’s worth of Artesian water to Adani and waiving groundwater safeguards. Risking groundwater is stupidity. This water should be kept for our farmers and the environment.
You claim that this project would create tens of thousands of jobs. But Adani submitted in court that only 1464 direct and indirect jobs would be created.
You ignore the loss of employment in farming, fishing and tourism that damaging the reef and artesian water will cause. The finance would be better spent on creating jobs in agriculture, manufacturing and research and development.
I don’t like you pretending that it is somehow good for the Indians to develop a power system based on expensive imported polluting fuel when they could have a cleaner cheaper renewable power
This is not a tradeoff between the economy and the environment. It is a tradeoff between a modern clean economy and large old vested interest.
Rowan Huxtable, Mangerton
AN UNFAIR ASSESSMENT
Mr Ross Taylor (Illawarra Mercury, April 13) believes that expensive goods made in Australia are due to penalty rates, but this is an unfair assessment. I worked for BlueScope, mentioned in Ross Taylor’s letter and I spend many months in Indonesia and Malaysia in factories, where I learned that the basic wages paid to the workers over there ,are far below Australian wages. Also there are no public holidays ,except the Ramadan
No Australia Day, Queen’s Birthday, Anzac Day, “flexi” days, long service leave and “super” is unknown.
Chucking a “sickie” or two would be unheard of as they have no sick leave payments that we enjoy in Australia. As far as I know, the only workers that receive pensions are police and army personnel. I did not ever hear of compensation payments for workers over there either, so to believe that Australian goods are expensive only due to penalty rates is very marginally true. We are an expensive lot to employ and that is the reason companies are going Asian countries to make big profits.
John Pronk, Wollongong
