If they keep bickering it will become another debacle like the CH Smith building.

Just a suggestion, but the car park could stay where it is for the moment while an underground car park was built with the entrance in Howick Street.

There was an earlier suggestion put forward to put the entrance there anyway.

My previous letter that supposed that some government members might have ancestor's ghosts still under the park was meant as a joke.

As you probably know the existing hospital and park was a cemetery many years ago.

Cecil Neil Guy, Youngtown.

ENERGY Minister Guy Barnett asserts (The Examiner, January 5) that providing low power prices to Tasmanians is a priority for the Hodgman Liberal Government.

No doubt it is yet, perversely, it seems the most important impediment to low power prices may be that same government – through the demands it makes of TasNetworks, Hydro Tasmania and Aurora.

The 2017 annual reports of those companies reveal that through dividends, income tax equivalents and guarantee fees TasNetworks paid the government just over $126 million, Aurora paid nearly $37 million and Hydro Tasmania paid around $5 million.

In total the government was paid nearly $168 million.

In this context dividends and income tax equivalents are euphemisms for state taxation.

While ever the government imposes such a tax regime on the electricity companies Tasmanians are more likely to see a Tasmanian tiger than they are to see low power prices.

Bernard Lee, Deloraine.

LIKE a cracked record, the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is once again calling for a review of penalty rates.

Its call for an apolitical approach is the ultimate in hypocrisy.

A couple of brief historical facts.

The abolition of penalty rates was a central tenet of Workchoices, the failed IR policy that resulted in the coalition loss in 2007 and John Howard becoming the second sitting prime minister to lose his seat.

Before the 2007 election, the National Party's submission to the government on industrial relations called for a legislated minimum wage, nothing else.

Nick Minchin, the then government leader in the senate, in an address to the H R Nicholls Society, called for the "total abolition of all awards".

Workchoices, and these aspirations, are still very much alive withing the TCCI.

Peter Carroll, East Devonport.

IN REPLY to Gerry Kite (Letters, The Examiner, January 17), my father came from England at age nine, my mother’s parents were Scottish, my mum was born in Tasmania.

I doubt any  of them ever re-signed their citizenship.

My father served in armed forces in World War II, both his and his husband’s family - ex Scotland - World War I.

As a descendent does that make me also ineligible, to vote even though I was born here?

The sooner Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is gone, the better, he is serving no-one’s interests.

I would like to know how many in parliament are Catholics or Masons.

We all know the disarray in Catholic churches and the Masons secretiveness.

All in parliament seem to be career politicians, in there to line their pockets.

D Stewart, Devonport.

I LOVE roundabouts.  I don’t understand the confusion that some drivers seem to have when navigating them. 

I treat them the same as ordinary intersections, I give way to the right, and I only indicate left or right if I am going to leave the roundabout in one of those directions. 

I don’t see any need to indicate if I’m going straight ahead. It’s discombobulating when people use the left indicator for a few seconds, then switch to the right one.

Val Clarke, Kings Meadows.

HAD it not been for Dr Keith Barnes (The Examiner, December 29) having the foresight to wean me off neuroleptic drugs (major tranquilisers) I very much doubt that this letter or the many others over the years would ever have been written.

My story did matter and the time freely given to  show compassion, kindness, care and support I shall never forget.

Thank you Dr K for believing in me as a person and treating me like a human being who was worthy of respect and of being heard.

Sincere good wishes for a very happy retirement.

Enid  Denman, Beauty Point.

JACQUI Lambie derides the activities of minority groups (Should ‘let go and forgive’: Lambie (The Examiner, January 23). 

Like most if not all politicians, she forgets that all political parties are themselves minority groups. She and her fellow politicians also fail to recognise that a significant number of these other  minority groups have a considerably larger membership than any political party. 

Graeme Lindsay, Deloraine.

IF THE Newstart payment was increased and the unemployed were not forced to look for work, the number of people clogging the health system, claiming to be mentally ill or having a bad back, would drastically reduce. If there was no work for the dole, there would be more real jobs to lift people out of poverty. Most job active providers could be shut down.

Leon Cooper, St Leonards.