Applying to the council for permits, all necessary boxes ticked and voilà, a new home is made. A happy home, a safe home. Every ounce of effort and care is put into this dream, and the days of reaping the rewards, eagerly anticipated. What happens when the ground below this dream becomes unstable and your world is literally crumbling around you? You suffer. Devastation, loss, frustration, financial burden, physical exhaustion, and so on. Life is put on hold. This is the case for many living in the Tamar Valley.

The Deviot Landslip Project based on the commonwealth funded natural disaster funding guidelines is hopefully going to deliver some life back to the community. We now eagerly anticipate a happy, safe home once again. However, until talk turns into plans and plans are put into action, we are still on hold. 

Rani Wells, Deviot.

LOOKS like stupidity has a longer shelf-life than sense, judging by the repeat of that sad old furphy of a Melbourne-based AFL club playing eight games here, equally split between South and North (The Examiner, Sport, November 10).

Tip for the deluded - imagine the president, GM or CEO of such a club telling its AGM something like this: ‘Oh, by the way - nearly forgot, ha, ha - our club, your club, will be playing eight of our 11 home games down in li’l ol’ Tassie next season’.

Exit, back door, pursued by 10,000 members as angry as any Shakespearean bear exiting stage left. Surely nobody at the AFL are as silly as to still be talking such a scenario - the eight games, not the bear - seriously? But then, the same AFL still won’t let members of the grand final clubs in for their ‘one day of the year’ at the MCG.

Leonard Colquhoun, Invermay.

WOW those Ravenswood kids are sure lucky, fancy having a “brand new skate park” after “the community” asked, on their behalf, the City of Launceston council for a new skate park (The Examiner, November 16).

Legana’s kids must surely be spitting chips after asking West Tamar Council, through the Legana Community Group, for just such a facility well over five years ago; a request regularly repeated in the intervening years with all sorts of excuses being offered as to why it is impossible to provide this much needed recreational facility for Legana’s youth. Meantime Legana’s kids wishing to skateboard have the choice of enhancing their skills in dangerous shopping and service station forecourts (as many currently do) or taking the bus in to Launceston to take advantage of skate parks such as that at Ravenswood. Well done City of Launceston Council for responding to community needs, shame on West Tamar Council for procrastinating on the issue.

Jim Collier, Legana.

A SINGLE-STOREY warehouse adjunct to the War Memorial in Canberra for $16 million. You must be joking, dear members of parliament. A glorified junkyard for old war machinery. Far better to give out a decent amount to the servicemen who survived, without their having to “apply” for it. 

Mary Gillard, George Town.

I AM not convinced that teachers need a pay rise, the touted $60,000 to $70,000 already in place seems a decent wage.

Considering the hours worked and the paid holidays, taking into account the increased teacher numbers needed, the taxpayer does not have a bottomless pit of money. But I am in favour of increased wages for nurses who are asked to work ridiculous stressful overtime at all hours caring for life or death situations.

School teachers are also a hugely respected and needed part of our society, but the above wage is not a bad reward for services rendered. Governments have miserably failed to control the costs of living causing low-income families to desperately struggle.

Their pathetic attempt to control energy and petrol prices is an example of failure causing hardship for all.

If the cost of living was controlled the need for wage increases would subside.

Peter Doddy, Trevallyn.

I’M SURE  that I'm not the only one sick of hearing about nurses strikes over pay and overwork. Our Treasurer claimed that nurses were the second highest paid in Australia.

Not believing every thing said by a politician, or a union, I decided to check online with salary.calculatorsaustralia.com.au

The Treasurer is correct, the only state/territory to pay higher is the NT, no doubt because of isolation etc.

Tas is quoted as $70,940 pa, Vic at $62,674, Qld $61,124 with the Australian average being $63,784. I know that the unions campaign aggressively when an election is on the horizon, but as it is a federal election they would be better off to campaign in Victoria or Queensland where there are more votes and the pay is lower than Tasmania, but then again those states are Labor.

As a self-funded retiree I would be glad of a 2 per cent increase in income.

The political game being played by the unions is only making recruiting staff harder and thus placing more pressure on staff and there are likely to be no winners.

Graeme Barwick, Riverside.