THERE'S been a staggering amount of donations pledged from around the world to help restore Notre Dame cathedral to its former glory.

Yet let's face it, rebuild they may, and possibly it may even look just as grand, but you cannot with any amount of money and restoration replace 850 years of workmanship and history.

Even the bell ringers of Notre Dame Quasimodo would say "you can't beat the original".

Sadly, Paris has lost its heart and we all feel the French indeed.

National crisis? National disgrace! How many women must die?

Another week, another woman has been violently killed by her partner while their young children slept nearby.

In the same week we finally confirmed what we already suspected, that another woman's life was ended at the hands of her husband although he doesn't feel like talking about it, so let's reward him with a manslaughter charge and give him a pathetic six years?

On average, one woman dies at the hands of her partner every week, with many more abused and violated on a daily basis.

Make no mistake, domestic and sexual violence has become a crisis of national proportions so why isn't it getting the attention it demands? Why is a shark attack more shocking than the death of a woman?

Have we seriously become so desensitised due to the frequency of occurrence that incidents pass with a little head shaking or, so we accept the dreadful reality that a woman's life is simply not valued?

This issue must be prioritised and I welcome any politician to come to speak to the dedicated counsellors at Laurel House if they need a cold hard reality check.

Luke Martin's intemperate comment about sewerage at Freycinet ignores one fact. The single largest point source of sewage on the peninsula is Freycinet Lodge.

Its sewage is pumped to a Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service sewage lagoon system at the back of Richardsons Beach.

Any meaningful rain as needed to top up the town's drinking water supply causes the system to fail, resulting in contamination of Ranger Creek, closure of the day area and erection of warning signs on one of Tasmania's most beautiful beaches.

With facts like these, it is easier to shoot the messenger. But what a responsible industry should do is take care of its own mess and not push the burden of a sewerage system onto other peninsula homeowners.

THOSE on the left should be asked what happened to "I disagree with what you say but defend to the death your right to say it".