SHELLHARBOUR’S AIRPORT
Firstly, many congratulations to all of those who have put in the hard yards, to finally get a commercial flights schedule out of Albion Park. Indeed the hard work of Shellharbour Council, and the foresight of JetGo have been primary movers. I suspect there are other players that have also made a significant contribution. So a couple of points: Why Wollongong Airport as opposed to Shellharbour Airport? Was it not Shellharbour council that made most of the running?
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Secondly, and this is extremely valid: I, like many others in this region, do have to travel to the main hubs to conduct business, i.e. Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Now with this new service, it will take me as much time to travel to Melbourne of Brisbane CBD, as it does to Sydney.
This will have a significant impact on our business capably and costs - (2 hours to Syd airport, 2 hours back- parking costs, airport charges etc)
Has there been any discussion as to how this sort of service could in fact contribute to make Shellharbour a business hub for East Coast Australia? I have watched with great interest the development of Newcastle airport, and believe that Shellharbour could become bigger.
Christopher Brown, Flinders
SEEING REASON
Common sense reason tells us that human beings are, potentially at least, rational beings.
Which is a work in progress for us, not open to inanimate creatures. That’s something we can know with certitude. Upshots of that certainty are other certainties – the reality of God, the immortal soul of man and the actuality of natural moral law. Rational certainties – not just probabilities or hypotheses.
Science and revealed religion are, however, in a different league – offering probabilities, useful enough, but never 100 per cent certain. What price the idea that science is the one way to truth? It’s self-contradictory wishful thinking. Is it the same for revealed religion?
Perhaps there is a difference – due to God himself being necessarily real and rational, which the objects addressed by science are not. Does that make one’s religious experience trustworthy in a way that scientific knowledge can’t be?
Arnold Jago, Nichols Point
WHAT HAVE WE DONE?
What have we let our past and present politicians (and others) do to this country?
I am still reeling from statements I heard Arthur Sinodinos, Federal Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, make in response to a question he was asked on The ABC’s TV program The Insiders. In a context of national security, he was asked to comment on the Pauline Hanson’s wearing of a burqa in the nation’s Senate during the past week.
In reply and references to the need of an ongoing trouble-free existence with Australia’s Muslim community he felt he needed to include a “touch wood” utterance along the way. A very, very brief summary of his response was: we (the parliament, I presume) “have to worry” about the actual integration of the Muslim community in Australia and “have to worry” about the provision of intelligence and co-operation from Muslims that will allow our security and intelligence agencies “to minimise the number of bad things that have happened here.”
Forget terrorism. Forget Pauline Hanson and her burqa or One Nation politics. Instead, heed Sinodinos’ repeated statement of “we have to worry”. Isn’t it bleedingly obvious that the existence of a large and growing Muslim population, apart from threatening the Australian way of life and its freedoms, will blow the desirable concept of multiculturalism to kingdom come. Instead we could easily see the creation of separate, unfriendly, and religiously opposed Muslim states.
Richard Burnett, Wollongong
