They are hard-core smokers who have already halved their smoking habit, but have failed with patches and resist medications that may cause suicidal ideation.

Like many children, I was sucked in by the advertising campaigns aimed at me and now I’m being punished.

At least people on a pension should be tax exempt for their weekly minimum need so that they can afford to eat well and participate in normal community and personal activities, and they are already over $200 better off than those on Newstart.

It’s like being put into a ghetto by the very parties that took funds from big tobacco for decades.

It seems to me that the National Disabilities Support Scheme will be paid for by the very people that it is supposed to help.

David Brimble, Scottsdale.

Surgical access

ONCE again we have the Labor Party and the Greens attempting to push for widespread abortion in Tasmania.

Abortion is not an illness nor is it an emergency, therefore, it should never be provided in a public hospital.

We hear frequently about women having to spend thousands of dollars to go to the mainland for abortions, with much criticism of the government and demands that they make abortion freely available in the public health system.

It is obvious that Labor and the Greens don’t understand that our public hospitals are acute care centers, designed to treat the seriously ill.

It is even difficult at times to find beds for very ill patients as wards are often full.

We have long waits too for elective procedures as surgeons and hospital bed availability are stretched to capacity.

This push for abortion is an indication that women and girls need better education, that if they have sex there are consequences, which is the responsibility of the couple.

In rape cases the woman or girl needs support to go through with the pregnancy, give her baby life and consider adoption.

There is never an easy answer to unwanted pregnancy, except to say, exercise self control and avoid sex.

It would seem that girls/women with unwanted pregnancy, must be pretty well off if they can afford to go to the mainland for abortion. 

Mary T. Bates, Exeter.

WINDERMERE MLC Ivan Dean is correct.

Traffic lights are nonsense on the Launceston’s main northern outlet, the East Tamar Highway at Mowbray.

As it is, traffic banks up (and stops) to almost the Australia Maritime College during afternoon peak hour.

If you try and forcibly stop that flow for minutes at a time cars will line up to Landfall Farm.

The only long term solution is flyover overpasses like at the Don in Devonport on both connectors.

Just as important is a bridge across the Tamar, from Alanvale to the Legana end of Riverside.

People then needing to get to the other side of the river can avoid the city.

What we see happening (and it appears more prevalent in Northern Tasmania) are quick fixes to long-term problems.

Three-lane highways that, at great expense and waste of taxpayers’ money, have to be ripped up a few years later when four lanes could have been built at minimal extra cost in the first place.

Will we get the correct outcome in this instance?

No, not while we have short term, narrow thinkers at State Growth working to a budget that only focuses on this year, and not the next 20.

Lester Willoughby, Launceston.

I QUITE agree with Barbara Brozek's comment in The Examiner (June 24).

I can't quite remember when but I wrote a letter regarding the ignorant people from across Bass Strait trying to say that we are all related.

There was a woman on the TV show Gogglebox who said that all Tasmanians were all related to each other.

How they can all be so ignorant is beyond belief.

I assume that if they even went to school they didn't study history.

To show them how clever we are, Launceston was the first city in Australia to have electric street lighting.

We are not amused by their ignorant comments.

Cecil Neil Guy, Youngtown.

LIKE many of us we have received a Liberal communication signed by Nick Greiner, pointing out that Bill Shorten is up to his usual pre-election tricks of misleading the electorate with mendacious statements. 

Shorten obviously believes that the electors of Braddon, Mayo and Longman are as thick as two planks.

That is, to say that they will swallow his double talk along with his version of "The Captains Call" threatening their businesses and the futures of their children like gullible idiots. 

If one does not misread the good people of these electorates we might see the end of this small "l" puppet leader and an end to Labor's fiscal incompetence in Tasmania leading us into a brighter future. 

Len Langan, Longford.

SO, Sarah Huckabee-Sanders, Donald Trump’s press secretary and main spokeswoman, was asked to leave a Washington restaurant the other day, simply because the owner knew who she was, and what she does for a living.

Ms Huckabee-Sanders left, with her family in tow.

So much for the world’s largest democracy, and its continual boost of free speech for all its citizens.

What a load of hogwash that claim it.

Carmen Frelek, Launceston.