The amazing increase in positive cases in both New South Wales and Victoria are frightening and horrific and could so easily have been avoided with the continuation of compulsory mask wearing and compulsory check-ins to facilitate contact tracing.

With recent opening of Tasmania's borders similar horrendous increases will soon be reported in our island state where it is the people (especially the aged and vulnerable), who could have been so easily protected by keeping the borders closed, especially to travellers from states such as New South Wales and Victoria, and permitting mass gatherings for New Year celebrations, will pay the price; absolute stupidity and so avoidable!

READ MORE: COVID vaccinations for children to start

I THINK this would be a great idea, myself being a motorbike rider. A public motorbike track where people could go to ride and be amongst other riders would keep everyone safe and off the streets.

DEAR Premier Gutwein, you've changed the definition of "close exposure" from the medically advised 15 minutes in close quarters to Scott Morrison's preferred four hours. (Although South Australia and Western Australia have both kept to the medically advised rule, I note. So it's not like you absolutely had to give in, is it?) You've also stopped updating the COVID exposure website.

I'm now asking exactly why we are still required to utilise QR code check-in apps. Can you explain? Most of us don't spend four hours in one particular place when we go out.

I could sit through the entirety of a feature film without reaching your "close contact" limit - and that's ridiculous.

Without good information coming back to us, and with an utterly irrelevant time limit in place, your QR code check-in system is nothing more than a backdoor surveillance system of very questionable legality.

You're no longer acting in our best interests for our health and safety. Why, exactly, must we continue to report our whereabouts to you when it clearly no longer has any bearing on the response to COVID?

I look forward to your reply, Premier. I expect it to be interesting.

READ MORE: Travel-hungry tourists finally make it to Tasmania

MUST congratulate the City of Launceston council for its fantastic decision to support the aptly named Party in the Apocalypse.

It's an apocalypse, all right. It's a super-spreader event with at least 25 cases identified. Well done council and organisers. So, we copped two days of loud "music" that blasted into our home for hours on end and as a bonus you've put me and my family at greater risk of catching COVID. And the benefits were what? Answer: Money in the pockets of the promoters. Such stupidity defies belief.

THE Sunday Examiner on January 3, recounts the life of a true Tasmanian motoring hero and legend in Geoff Smedley, often referred to as "Smeds", by those who called him friend! I met him in the early '60s whilst punting a "Simca Aronde" around Longford till the engine gave up.

Having moved to Launceston in '66 and then moving to Western Australia in '75, we never reacquainted until my family and I returned in 1980 and purchased the BP Legana service station, at which time Geoff was at Rosevears, where he rebuilt my Jaguar engine.

Geoff and I were not bosom buddies, but shared a passion for a clean-up of the Tamar. Rest in peace, "Smeds", a great man and engineer lost.

READ MORE: Lap of Tasmania fundraiser raises nearly $15,000 for Magnolia House

THERE'D be a lot less confusion if our National Energy Market, NEM, required all suppliers, intermittent or continuous, to contribute their fair share of costs towards maintaining a base-load supply. After all, without it our economy would collapse.

In order to encourage lowering of emissions then again all suppliers should pay a fair share of an appropriate emission levy.

This would allow intermittent renewables to be welcomed up to the point where they would become an unacceptable threat to our economy.

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