Sometimes smell the roses
Dear sir's, Devlin, Swan, Ryan, whilst I do love politics, unions and such some times it is good to look at the little things. Let me tell you a little story about a place I live in called Wollongong.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Over the past couple of months I have had the chance to taste what a wonderful place it is, on while watching my son play cricket a stranger asked me if I dropped $50 in the car park I said no, he replied that he did not have time to find the person would I mind doing it and gave me the money, I could not find the person but I did give it to the church to purchase goats in Africa.
The second I had bought a fit bit for a present, two actually and when I got home I relied I had lost one! I rung the bus company the next day, and, sure enough some one had indeed handed it in.
The third was at Coles Fairy Meadow where I used the cash out facility to withdraw $40 from it in my haste I left with out taking it, the next day I went back to Coles and asked about the money and again it was handed in. My point is sometimes it is good to smell the roses.
Stuart Leslie, Fairy Meadow
Safe working places
Morrison’s power plan spiel continues the energy propaganda that falsely posits energy as a choice between coal or jobs.
Overlooked by Morrison is the fact that each worker will receive an average redundancy payout of $330,000 largely thanks to their union and state government. Later, Malcolm Turnbull trashed his earlier commentary to lash Dan Andrews’ Victorian state government for doing the dirty on workers in choosing clean renewables over brown coal.
Turnbull contradicted his earlier rebuke of Abbott that the closure is a hard-nosed commercial decision by the plant’s joint private owners, Engie and Mitsui and Co Ltd. Hazelwood has been privately owned since Jeff Kennett sold it in 1996 for $2.35 billion. Had it not sold, it was set to be closed by the State Electricity Corporation of Victoria in 2005. Omitted from Coalition memory is the uncontrolled fire in Hazelwood’s lignite mine, a fire which burned for 45 days near Morwell in 2014 and which led to its owner being charged with 10 breaches of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
Don Kelly, Kanahooka
Tax free overtime
Scott Morrison will go down in the history books as the Only Australian Treasurer who never combined Brains with Reality.
All he needs to do is to make all overtime totally tax free, and he could sit back and watch productivity take off.
Forget all about lowering penalty rates, just give workers real incentives to get stuck in.
The only way to get Australia out of the Dunny Dump is to increase work output. Working longer hours and paying higher tax is not any sort of incentive.
Dave Cox, Corrimal
More secure workplace?
Reg Wilding in ‘Good on you Sally’, Mercury March 29 was spot on! Democracy and its Rule of Law; relies upon the people accepting both democracy and its laws as being both fit for purpose and equitable. Since 1215 with the Magna Carta, history has countless instances where the legal status quo has been amended solely as a consequence of public opposition. Australia has some significant examples of this; including, the Eureka Stockade and the Women’s Suffrage movement of the 19th Century.
Again in 1938, when Port Kembla wharve labourers refused to load pig iron onto the vessel S.S Dalfram for use by Japan in its military expansionism against China. Each of these actions, were deemed to be against the Law by the conservative establishment of the time. History was to prove the correctness of challenging what were patently “bad Laws”! Hopefully the statements made by Sally Mc Manus indicate a change of emphasis from the ACTU.
Barry Swan, Balgownie