In 2009 a Legislative Council Select Committee, chaired by retired Legislative Councillor Kerry Finch, investigated the management of the Tamar Estuary and Esk Rivers.

The select committee ultimately recommended a statutory authority be established to manage the Tamar Estuary and Esk River, their catchments and be responsible for the environmental management, flood mitigation and health of all waterways within the catchments.

The government of the day chose to ignore the recommendations of the select committee, and continues to do so today, hence the reason the upper reaches of the Tamar/kanamuluka estuary are in the mess they are. No-one wants to accept overall responsibility for the problem.

THE Resource Management and Planning Appeal Tribunal's decision to override council and community concerns about the noise associated with the Veolia development in Churchill Park Drive is a slap in the face for Launceston residents.

If this plan goes ahead, the impact will be felt by all who access Heritage Forest, the levee bank and the sports grounds from Churchill Park Drive. It is time to stop referring to the development as a recycling centre.

It is a waste transfer depot. No recycling will be done on site. The work carried out will be noisy (can be crushing and glass breaking) and involve daily washing and refuelling of waste collection vehicles (up to 70 daily).

The noise of truck movements alone exceeds an acceptable level for a depot adjoining a residential area, especially as the heavy vehicles will be starting from 4am every weekday. The council recognised the concern of residents expressed at the meeting in September and refused the application, but they now seem to be obliged to accept the RMPAT decision. This clearly represents a conflict with the council's stated purpose of representing residents, as well as being an outrageous paradox given the council's development of the recreational, cultural and educational hub of Inveresk.

How can this happen? What sort of process is it that ignores the voice of the community and its elected council representatives? I urge all Launceston residents to help stop this development from proceeding further by voicing their dissatisfaction with this decision.

IF it is such a threat, why would you take the chance of spreading COVID-19 by relocating all those already in quarantine to other hotels when a tiny cluster of four is found amongst them in a single hotel?

Wouldn't it be wiser to keep them all there in a single isolation until the threat was over? Not much common sense or stability in this whole silly saga from one day to the next.

SENATOR Helen Polley berates the current government over the withdrawal of superannuation funds. It was in 19755/6, that the liberal treasurer, Phillip Lynch, proposed a national superannuation fund. This was howled down by Labor as utterly unnecessary as we had a world class, government funded, pensions scheme.

We now have, de-facto, exactly the scheme proposed by Phillip Lynch. Employees are making compulsory superannuation payments, from their salaries, into various national schemes. This has come about through first, the Superannuation Guarantee, then the inclusion of superannuation by employers into salary packages, and finally by wage increases being awarded as increases in super contributions. Without such compulsory schemes, the average wage earner would not contribute one cent of their pay into superannuation. The government has allowed some withdrawals as a result of known, extraordinary economic circumstances, brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, but this does in no way warrant a "rigorous independent inquiry".

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