Foxes
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HOW stupid does Mr Rockliff think we are to accept their story of foxes in Tasmania.
Everyone knows there are no foxes in Tasmania, so where will the money go and who will benefit from it?
— KEN, West Launceston.
Same-sex
RESPONDING to Veronica Davies (Letters, November 17), I do ask: What right do people have to say that all Christians are against same-sex marriage?
Not all are against same-sex marriage.
The Australian Christian Lobby have kept the idea they represent all Christians, but do they really?
They should stop believing that and stop denying people a right to love each other because of their beliefs.
Maybe if they, along with other like minded people, stop shoving their beliefs down people's throats.
I'm sure God even had something to say about his followers showing grace and respect to people instead of forcing religion on them.
— DANIEL DRYDEN, Mayfield.
Spraying
I NOTICE the Meander Valley Council spraying three to four metre high gorse bush at "their Deloraine gravel depot" (November 17).
I wonder why they allow it to grow so high and become so well established before doing anything about it?
I also wonder if they realise that spraying alone won't get rid of it?
— A.R. TROUNSON, Needles.
Liberalism
LIBERALISM, when boiled right down, is the philosophy that provided you are not harming anyone else, you should be able to do whatever you want to do.
Isn’t it odd, then, that the Liberal Party is the only major political party actively attempting to prevent people from acting liberally?
They are trying to stop homosexual couples from getting married.
They are trying to prevent women from choosing to abort unplanned pregnancies.
They are against people with terminal illnesses choosing to end their own suffering.
Classical liberalism is all but dead in the modern Liberal Party of Australia.
If you are someone like me who wholeheartedly subscribes to the principles of liberalism, then the Liberal Democratic Party is the only real hope for the future of genuine liberalism in this country.
— CODY HANDLEY, Hadspen.
Tragedy
WE ALL feel grief stricken and outraged by what has happened in Paris and what is happening in places like Lebanon.
When will we learn that we are all part of the human family, all sharing this wonderful blue globe of ours.
If we could only learn this, then' events such as Paris and Lebanon will become a bad dream.
I pray that it won't be too far away.
I pray we learn to respect and care for each other and our Earth...before it is too late.
God help us all.
— ELLA MILLER, Exeter.
Pensions
THE Tasmanian Association of State Superannuants is very angry about their treatment under legislation passed in recent months by the Commonwealth Government and coming into effect on January 1.
The bill limits, and in many cases removes, the right of recipients of defined benefit superannuation pensions to receive part age pensions.
This bill was passed with little debate and no consultation with people or groups affected.
Its timing differs from other legislation affecting pensions in that it comes into effect almost immediately rather than in 2017.
According to media statements by the then Minister for Social Welfare, Scott Morrison, the legislation was aimed at closing loopholes available to “retired judges and public service fat cats”.
The average defined benefit pension of those affected by this measure is about $30,000 and the average decrease in their part age pension will be more than $2200 a year or $86 a fortnight.
This will impose genuine hardship on elderly people of quite low or modest means.
It does not affect the relatively few on large defined benefit pensions as they do not draw part age pensions.
TASS hopes that our federal parliamentary members will revisit the legislation with a view to better targeting it to those for whom it was presumably intended.
— MURRAY HARPER, President, TASS, Rose Bay.
Gorge
REFERENCE Gorge Water Flows, Jim Collier and/Dick James (The Examiner, November 17) and (Editorial November 12), while I encourage the community to continue to lobby for a solution, increasing Hydro flows down the Gorge, while improving the aesthetic presentation of the Gorge for our tourists, does nothing for silt deposition and water turbidity in Home Reach, except in the one in five years we have moderate flooding which tops the Trevallyn Dam anyway.
This also applies to the extreme case of closing the Trevallyn Power down and redirecting the full South Esk river flows down the Gorge.
All this does is decrease state green power revenue that we can sell to the national grid at premium prices.
To illustrate this, I would ask the gentlemen to cast their minds back to the pre-Trevallyn Dam days (and pre WW2) when the Ponrabble dredgers were flat out busy in Home Reach trying to keep the Port of Launceston open to shipping.
With the raking program, and talk of increased flows down the Gorge, we are just going around in circles.
It is time to break that circle.
— ROBIN FRITH, Launceston.
Power
JIM Collier, M. Fisher and Dick James all seem to infer that the current state of the Tamar River estuary can be blamed solely on Hydro Tasmania in general, and the Trevallyn Power Scheme in particular.
The Tamar River, and its tributaries, has existed for thousands of years.
All the material gouged out of the landscape by rivers throughout the Tamar catchment area, is now in the Tamar River estuary.
That is what rivers do.
White settlement over the past two centuries in the same catchment areas, long before Hydro existed, has affected the evolution of the Tamar estuary.
Would it be preferable that none of this development had occurred?
Hydro development has affected the evolution of the South Esk River and particularly Cataract Gorge.
It could be argued that Trevallyn Dam acts as a silt block on the South Esk River. And more water than ever now flows through the South Esk River system due to Hydro operations at Poatina.
If Trevallyn Power Scheme had never been built, or was removed completely now, would the Tamar estuary look much different?
Hydro is authorised to store and use water to generate electricity for our benefit.
Is water in the South Esk River more valuable to us flowing through Cataract Gorge, producing an un-quantifiable and intangible benefit, or flowing through Trevallyn Power Station generating a known, tangible benefit for our State?
It can get very dark and cold in a cave.
— ROSS WARREN, Devonport.
Tamar estuary
YOUR newspaper continues to provide extensive coverage of the Tamar estuary and the existing environmental challenges and issues.
I hope you continue to do so as the Tamar estuary and the two important rivers feeding into it are the life blood of the city and surrounding region.
What happens upstream on farmland for example affects the freshwater rivers which in turn flow into the estuary?
One important point though, we have to stop calling the estuary a river.
It is a misnomer.
The waterway is tidal up to the basin beyond the road bridge.
The ecology therefore is different to the freshwater systems.
The invertebrates, fish species, aquatic flora etc that live in the tidal (estuary portion) of the system are different to many of the species in the river system.
The mitigation programs, healthy waterway practices, education programs, newspaper articles etc therefore need to recognize these fundamental difference otherwise we don't even have the basis right for moving forward.
Mostly they do because it is the scientists, environmental experts etc that develop and implement programs to improve the health of the entire waterway system.
However many people in the general public space, not involved in the river/estuary health work as the aforementioned, need to understand that from the road bridge at the basin in the city to the outlet at Georgetown/Greens Beach, the system is an estuary not a river.
Historically the estuary has been called a river but if not by name change, then at least by an understanding of the differences between a freshwater system (river) and a marine system (estuary) can we make real progress.
How do we hope to change public opinion, educate our young people, educate farmers etc if we keep on calling the estuary a river?
There are very few references to an estuary that one sees, an exception being the excellent publication put out earlier this year in regards to the health of the Tamar estuary.
— GREG INGHAM, Greens Beach.