I drive past so many empty shops around Tasmania that I wonder why we are building more houses that many low-income earners cannot afford?

Instead, these buildings stand empty, devoid of businesses that long since closed and are looking more and more unloved.

Why can't they be turned into housing?

There is a bigger need for houses so turn the empty business premises into homes. Secondly, Anthony Galvin makes a valid point about the Spirit of Tasmania.

It isn't cheap and I'm constantly confused about the pricing. I would take the ferry from Dover to Calais or Liverpool to Anglesey quite often while living in the UK.

They charged per vehicle, not per person.

Some ferry crossings take all night and you sleep on chairs.

It should be an option if you're opting for a chair that you just pay for the vehicle, rather than per person and vehicle.

I'm sure that would encourage more visitors to use the state. As to motorbikes, I know many years ago there was a business just outside Launceston who hired bikes out for tourists to travel the state. Maybe there is a new business opportunity.

THE repugnant, brutal Robodebt scheme has now been fully exposed for its illegality with the commonwealth making a last-minute decision to settle out of court. The concerning issue is the same as with the Ruby Princess, no one in authority will be held to account nor lose their job, such incompetence needs to be made accountable.

THERE has been recent talk in the media lately about changing one word in our national anthem Advance Australia Fair to make it more inclusive or having a new anthem completely. Rather than write a new song we should adopt the song I am, you are, we are Australian.

It covers everything, from the Indigenous history going back before white settlement, the arrival of the first fleet, the country and its weather, being a multicultural country, all that is needed to be an inclusive historical anthem about Australia that no-one should be able to find fault with.

I am sure Bruce Woodley of the Seekers fame would be proud to have his song adopted as our national anthem.

LABOR leader Rebecca White has released plans for the Labor Party to put millions of dollars into the TAFE system.

One wonders why Labor, when last in power cut millions out of TAFE, are now seeing where they went so wrong. And it was the same story with the health budget.

Labor and the state's purse just don't seem to go together.

JULIAN Assange's right to publish is our right to know and our ability to hold power to account.

His persecution is an affront to democracy, a free press, and the public good.

Free Assange, no extradition.

MANY inconvenient truths were avoided by Adam Holmes (The Examiner, November 14) in his failed attempt to reject balance in favour of environmental alarmism.

Shellenberger whom he seeks to summarily dismiss is inconveniently a Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment" and a Green Book Award winner beside his 30 years of environmental activism. Because Shellenberger blew the whistle, whilst also identifying that government grant money delayed him from doing so, he is now vilified.

The attacks on him were led by Peter Gleick who accused Shellenberger of using "strawman arguments", "cherry-picking facts" and "logical fallacies".

Sound familiar?

Exactly the words and phrases used by Holmes against me. Coincidence?

Modelling of the likelihood of that occurrence might show a correlation greater than the climate alarmism so effectively debunked by Shellenberger who by the way is joining an ever-growing list of scientists who reject the sensationalist alarmism in favour of sensible environmental stewardship for which the Australian people voted at the last election.

IT would appear that as the number of deaths in the US passes a quarter of a million, with a million new cases in just six days, that Donald Trump is prepared to sacrifice thousands of his fellow Americans to soothe his bruised ego.

Thanks to the crazy system that they have over there pretty much nothing will be done until if and when he stops sulking.

Thank God our people (and those over the other side of the ditch) are on the ball and prepared to stamp on any outbreak.

AS a member of our family he was always uncle Noel. A pivotal person in my brothers and my growing up.

A true gentleman and great uncle who helped us to grow into adults. I am now 68 and not a day goes past without me thinking about mum, dad and uncle Noel.