MARIJUANA should be legalized in order to reduce alcohol consumption.

There is an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence to suggest that it is less harmful to individuals and society than alcohol.

This would result in fewer incidents of alcohol related assaults and less acts of vandalism.

Marijuana users also do not steal shopping trolleys from supermarket car parks.

— LEON COOPER, St Leonards.

Hutchinson

I AM reminded of the response to unpopular federal issues from the public by Lyons Liberal MHR Eric Hutchinson.

His attitude that they are not in government to be popular is about the only thing they have got correct

The backlash against the now dropped GP fees is sublime.

You cannot blame the greenies for this mess, it's all of your pals' making.

— PETER M. TAYLOR, Midway Point.

Tourism

IT MAY have taken 40 years, but honesty has finally prevailed.

For that period of time, the green movement has continually stated that Tasmania's future lies in "tourism".

Today, the (elected) Tasmanian government has proposed a viable compromise between industry, tourism and recreation.

But, surprise, the Greens are against it.

— LEIGH CLARK, Burnie.

Highways

DURING the Christmas period, driving from Launceston to Scamander, I intercepted a very, very long line of cars doing between 60km/h and 70km/h on a 110km/h highway.

Thinking there was an accident ahead, I joined the queue and it wasn’t until we got onto a passing lane that I saw the problem.

The small white car wasn’t being driven by an elderly person, nor by a P-plater, the driver was a learner on a major highway during the holiday period.

I didn’t blame the driver, I blamed the idiot sitting next to her.

Surely driving instructors know this practice causes major accidents?

— BARRY MILNER, Ravenswood.

Insults

MY Chinese wife and I have just returned from our first trip to beautiful Tasmania.

Everyone was welcoming and polite and everything was enjoyable except for vulgar insults from a couple of yobbos at a service station at Perth on our way back from the Lavender Farm to Hobart.

Their sexual and racist comments were the first we have encountered in six years of travel around Australia, Asia and Europe.

Keep Tasmania beautiful.

— TERRY HOPKINS, Western Australia.

Tennis net

HUMANS have grown taller since the invention of tennis.

This has made the net relatively lower, and has led to more emphasis being placed on a fast serve.

I think the net height should be related to the average height of humans.

A ratio of say 60 per cent would mean an increase in net height of about 15 centimetres.

This would place more emphasis on strategy rather than service speed, giving us more interesting tennis.

— TONY IMISON, Exton.

LPG St Helens

ALONG with many other Tasmanians, I express my great disappointment with BPs decision to cease selling LPG at St Helens during the peak of the tourism season.

I wrote to BP in early January on behalf of that community imploring the company to maintain supply for just a few more weeks while the construction of another service station, which will have LPG, is completed.

I appreciate that companies have to make commercial decisions but BP made one extension and I believe it was fair and reasonable to make another extension to cover that region until the end of February.

The nearest LPG supply will now be Bicheno, nearly 80 kilometres away, which will significantly disadvantage many East Coast residents.

Perhaps it is not too late for BP to show fresh community spirit and grant a late extension – a gesture that would be gratefully received by St Helens and the surrounding district.

— GUY BARNETT MP, Lyons Liberal MHA..

GP Fee

WELL Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley will have to swallow the venom now she had earned.

The disgraceful statements saying that the public backlash against the proposed GP fee was due to an orchestrated misinformation campaign by GPs and pollies is simply ludicrous.

This is why Prime Minister Tony Abbott passed on the poison chalice to her in the first place.

— MAX WELLS, Sorell.

Heritage

SOUTH-WEST Tasmania is a place of essential naturalness, Aboriginal custodianship and heritage, and remoteness from modern technological society. Mystery, wonder, serenity and beauty live here.

The south-west is valued globally as a rare and special place.

The government has just deleted the Wilderness Zone from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

Their new draft management plan reflects an aggressive agenda for logging, commercial accommodation, bike tracks, helicopter pads and a welter of use and access designed to deliberately diminish wilderness values.

Aboriginal people have looked after the south-west for tens of thousands of years.

Its qualities are timeless.

The visionary conservationists of the 1970s were not aiming to keep colonial and modern technological society at bay here for a few decades.

They were saying 'let's keep the spirit of this place forever'.

Natural values and Aboriginal cultural values will shift and change through time- neither nature nor culture is fixed.

But in Tasmania's south-west these values rank as World Heritage.

If the values, the remoteness and the mythical wonder of this place are lost, the world will lose one of its last great wild places.

— CHARLIE SHERWIN, Environment Tasmania chief executive.

Penalty rates

THE conservative push to “re-examine”— code for “abolish”— penalty rates is gathering pace.

Last week The Examiner reported federal Lyons Liberal MHR Eric Hutchinson calling for them to go and now we have conservative Western Tiers Independent MLC Greg Hall wanting a review (January 15).

The fact is, penalty rates exist for a good reason: they compensate workers for working hours considered by society to be unsociable.

And it is galling that the Liberals want to cut people’s pay at the same time they launch a sustained assault on Tasmanians’ cost of living.

How on earth can workers in low-paid jobs afford a pay cut when they’ve got to find another $20 to visit the doctor and dread the prospect of GST on fresh food?

Mr Hutchinson suggested that abolishing penalty rates helps young people find jobs: if he was really interested in jobs for young people he wouldn’t have supported the $950 million cut his government made to Labor’s trade training centres program, a decision that robs young people of the chance to gain work skills.

You can’t say you’re serious about jobs for young people when you’re stripping away the tools they need to prepare them for the workforce.

Our young people deserve better than being treated as a source of cut-rate cheap labour: and history tells us that if you cut wages for one sector, those cuts have a flow-on effect to other sectors.

And of course, when it comes to penalty rates we’re not just talking about young people.

Thousands of Tasmanians with families to support work weekends and nights in hospitality, retail and tourism. Nurses, paramedics and aged care workers work all hours, away from their children.

Labor believes people deserve fair pay for working unsociable hours, at times when many in the community spend time with family and friends, attend sports events or get to sleep.

And we recognise penalty rates are, for many workers in low-paid jobs, vital to making ends meet.

The attack on penalty rates is nothing less than a direct assault on the take-home pay of thousands of Tasmanian workers.

— BRIAN MITCHELL, Federal Labor candidate for Lyons.