How wrong they were. 

One of the rewarding sights we now see each summer are green paddocks and thriving crops of an ever-increasing range of plants with hemp being added to the mix of potatoes, grains, poppies and various vegetable crops.  

And, of course, the fruit growing industry, particularly cherries, has thrived.  

The government’s initiatives, now dating back some years, have added to the solid work of the farming community with water storages dotting the farming landscape.

My dad and his 1945 dam in order to grow a range of vegetables would be chuffed that his efforts have been so widely expanded.

CONGRATULATIONS to Bill Shorten, Tony Burke and the Australian Labor Party for initiating their ‘Urban Rivers Project’ along with $200 million, if elected to government, to restore Australia’s rivers and waterways.

It is particularly pleasing their website shows the highly degraded Tamar River as one of those rivers listed for attention.

The Tamar alone could easily absorb most of that $200 million by upgrading the existing archaic sewage systems which allow untreated sewage to escape into the river never mind restoring Cataract Gorge flows.

Over many years of campaigning on Tamar degradation, I have heard many fine words from politicians of all political persuasions about how they will solve the river’s dilemma with very little real on the ground action ever occurring.

Despite this, I am an optimistic person and live in perpetual hope that, as far as the Tamar is concerned, one day something will actually happen; will the ALP’s Urban Rivers Project be the answer?

The recent Victorian electricity blackout shows just how far the energy professionals and politicians are out of touch with reality.

If during the peak heat wave-induced demand for power, every household that had its air-conditioning on, also had rooftop solar panels installed, they would have put no load on the system and would, in fact, have been producing peak power into the grid.

Even my modest 3.8kW solar system will produce enough electricity to run my air conditioning unit and this is in Tasmania. 

So much for the experts who say solar systems in Tasmania are inefficient.

If Victorians also had installed solar hot water systems that produce plenty of hot water in heatwave conditions it would have taken some demand out of the system, because these systems use solar energy not electricity to heat the water.

The link between heat wave-induced demand for electricity and the capacity for solar units to mitigate this power crisis, need to be exploited.

It can be done by inducing more households to install solar systems.

This will not happen if feed-in tariffs are kept low.

I ARRIVED in Australia as a migrant nearly 50 years ago, and it is plainly obvious every time I open my mouth, that I was not born here.

I don’t think a week has gone by in that time when someone hasn’t said to me where do you come from?

So far I have had people attach my accent to four different countries. I’ve been here so long, that when I visit my country of birth they inevitably asked where do you come from?

I’m stuck in a kind of weird no man's land.

My accent is now a scrambled mix, which causes people I meet to suggest I’m Irish or English or American (usually Boston) or Canadian (the last guess).

It’s pretty simple, society is so obsessed with attaching some sort of offence to everything, that they can’t see that people are just curious, they want to know your story.

Ninety-nine per cent of people are good, they just want to know your story - simple.

Take a group of original people, place them on land that nobody else wants, pack them like sardines into shabby houses that would be unfit for anyone else then strip away their language and cultural heritage. Remove their children so their family life disintegrates. Don’t allow them a fair education and push them onto the dependant “welfare train” that will ensure poverty for the rest of their lives while still accusing them of being lazy and taking handouts.

Make access to good health care almost impossible but make self-harm, drug abuse and crime appealing because no other options are left. Incarcerate them and subject them to violence and more discrimination before returning them home to the unhealthy conditions that they came from.

Don’t worry that their life expectancy is short or that their infant mortality rate is high and do not accept that they are more likely to suffer a disability, carry more diseases or suffer more trauma than others.

Don’t give them a national day of recognition to promote reconciliation and healing and certainly don’t make a statutory public holiday of it so we can take the time to learn more about their unique and beautiful culture.  

The soul of our Indigenous community has been destroyed but Australia has the ability to advance with pride into the future by giving care, respect, equality to our first Australians even if it requires a budget deficit to do so.