The Launceston General Hospital is running on an oily rag with doctors and nurses going over and above duty.

When we've been unlucky enough to be in the emergency department, we haven't been able to fault the staff and their cheerfulness in the face of overwhelming odds.

Now we hear that our state government, in their wisdom, wants to cut $50 million from the health department - please.

It would be a good idea if Health Minister Sarah Courtney spent a month as a paramedic, another in the emergency department and another on 5D.

Then they would know exactly what it's like working at the LGH and what the staff have to put up with.

Guess it won't happen though, it would be too tough.

WHILE Tasmanians will be happy with the relief of the housing debt negotiated by Jacqui Lambie, the power of minor parties in the Senate must be a cause for concern.

It seems to me that legislation presented to the Upper House is either good or bad and happens time and time again but does not improve because of unrelated concessions offered to literarily buy a senator's vote. I fail to see that this is democracy as many senators are in the Parliament only as a result of surplus preferences from other parties.

ABOUT 65 per cent of the population ride or are interested in riding but the number one reason stopping them is the lack of safe places to ride.

The North East Rail Trail is the kind of infrastructure that encourages people to get back on their bikes. The relatively small amount of money the government has invested in cycling tourism has paid off in spades.

The Tasmanian Visitor Survey shows that cycling tourism increased by 12.5 per cent between 2015 and 2019. In the 2018-19 survey, tourists who rode a bicycle outnumbered those taking trains 43,259 to 41,956.

And the increasing availability of electric bicycles means more people can ride well into their older years and others can ride much further than they would on a standard pushbike.

Investing in shared paths like the North East Rail Trail will attract tourists but has the added benefit of being able to be used by Tasmanians every day of the year.

I AGREE with the Environmental Defenders Office's Nicole Sommer, the government should provide more time to comment on the Environment Legislation Bill (The Examiner, September 9).

While only four weeks is provided for this very complex legislation, more than two months is provided for comment on the short simple Draft Waste Action Plan.

Two months is provided for the changes to the Cat Management Act, ironically due on the same day.

The EPA's Explanatory Paper makes it clear what is being proposed and why with changes such as regulation of clean fill, criteria for non-assessment of proposals and offence of conducting a level 2 activity without authorisation, etc. On the first read, they also look positive.

When it comes to finfish farming the description is disturbingly vague: "Various drafting, legal doubt and administrative efficiency issues have been identified" and "Relevant amendments are scatter throughout the Bill". Is the government included one stone among a lot of gems in hope the community doesn't notice in its haste?

WHILE the Prime Minister spouts a belief that he and his government has a mandate for any policy it stands for after the last election, he is deluded.

As anyone who watches the internet and global politics closely understands that his victory was more about a shift away from the world Labour movement and its socialist agenda, building around the world at this time.

As Scott Morrison is, in reality, a lightweight caretaker at best and only interested in a police state as he has demonstrated, he now wishes to in effect place a yellow star on the chest of the unemployed who have carried the weight of the globalisation idea that he and his failed past leader Malcolm Turnbull stand for.

Put your money where your mouth is Mr Morrison and put the jobs on the table before stigmatising Australians and stop sucking up to China.

There's a new phenomenon in Launceston.

The humble supermarket trolley has developed a life of its own.

I have begun to see it much more in unusual places around town.

I've been wondering how it manages to escape its overnight cage, and if indeed it has its owner's permission to be roaming around suburbia well after its usual bedtime.

Last weekend I saw a group of them keeping each other company in a park.

How could this possibly happen?

Maybe some members of the public see them as substitute dogs and enjoy taking them for a walk?