Letters To The Editor

Hostilities suspended

As Mark Latham acknowledged, the people have spoken. While I have allowed some reaction to the federal election result in letters this week, I am announcing a ceasefire until the end of the month to allow everyone a respite from the ideological trench warfare of recent months.

No more letters on the federal Government - good or bad - until November please.

The Editor

Bike paths needed

My name is Grace Cain and I ride my bike all the time in Lismore, but it's very hard because Lismore has no bicycle paths and me and my friends would like to get some all around Lismore.

We always wear our helmets but we would feel a lot safer riding if Lismore had bicycle paths. Younger kids don't have enough road skills and we can't ride on the footpath because we get harassed. My brother and his friends were riding their bike on a weekend afternoon though Magellan Street when he was stopped and questioned, his details were taken and he was warned because he was riding on the footpath. If there were good bike paths this would not happened.

Bike riding is fun. Bike paths would encourage people to ride more, which would be good for the environment and healthy exercise for everybody.

If Lismore had good bicycle paths it would encourage tourists and families to ride bikes more in Lismore, especially if they joined up with the Riverside Park bike track.

Grace Cain, age 11
Lismore

Garden grief

My garden will not win a garden competition, however, being a farmer the garden is where things are propagated to increase seed or grow cuttings.

At the moment burr medic has nearly covered the eschalots, while vetch is growing amongst the onions, both wanted for seed. Dock is growing beside the beans, while a marshmallow nearly covers the path.

Tomatoes and parsley are growing where the seed germinated after seeding last year, a cape gooseberry is dropping fruit on the path held back by a trellis. The peas are a disaster in the wrong place, covered with mildew. Sweet potatoes and mint run rampant in cooperation with seeds while potatoes are just starting to grow, and carrots just starting to seed. Plastic covers the resting place of a compost bin while the bin has been moved to a new location.

One of today's environmental weeds, (Desmodium) a 60s cow feed import, has been composted in truck tyre tread (picked up off the highway) while the draft of this letter will become a paper pot to put a tomato plant in. Bandicoots dig holes in search of food while through the day the hum of bees can be heard while finches dart about and even a currawong can be seen stealing tomatoes. A nearby 40-year-old peace rose is partly obscured by a tomato while a younger peace has a climbing rose entwined with it. An apple tree which I air layered from one growing on the roadside at Numulgi is suckering despite me moving the pot I had originally grown it in.

However the garden has made me a better farmer as some years ago a firm was offering free soil tests. In reply to their question why do you want a soil test my reply was to enable me to grow feed in the paddock as well as it grows in the garden. The results were low pH.

I enjoy eating what I produce knowing what I have put into the soil and onto the plants. There is the companionship at a local garden club, however, if when you enter a garden competition winning is not a bonus, you have lost the enjoyment of gardening. I enjoy just sitting and watching the birds and insects while enjoying a cup of coffee.

Stan Heywood
Rosebank

Keep the bastards

I had thought that with Green support, the ALP might get across the line; however, with the ALP's action of putting rightwing minor parties ahead of the Greens on the Senate ballot paper, they have managed to give the Coalition extra seats in the Senate, and it looks like the Families First Party will have the balance of power. What a disaster! And the ALP brought it on itself. No longer may the Greens be able to keep the bastards honest.

So now we can look forward to further erosion of Medicare and other insidious attacks on the less fortunate in our country.

Meanwhile Howard will continue to fool the gullible with the bland assertions he is so good at. I hate to think what the next three years will bring with this ideology-driven government making further inroads into the living conditions of those at the lower financial end of its economic policy.

But congratulations to the Greens for trying to make Australia a better place.

Cherie Imlah
Mongogarie

Thanks comrades

I cannot think of anyone who assisted John Howard more during the election campaign, at a local level, than our very own Michael Mizzi and Cloud from Kyogle. The constant supply of letters to the editor reinforced to everyone the Coalition's policies on border protection, the war on terror and economic management and it obviously had the desired effect with Ian Causley being returned with an increased majority.

You both have the potential to keep the Coalition in power for years to come and I imagine Ian Causley's office is already working on a personal letter of thanks to send to you both. Keep up the good work guys.

Tom Murdoch
Lismore

Double disillusion

Well Mungo, it does appear that you can fool all of the people all of the time doesn't it. But control of the Senate as well? A frightening thought.

Darcy P Mckee
Alstonville

Democracy lost

The real loser in Saturday's election was Australia's democracy.

Our Constitution intended the government to be accountable to us, the people, through Parliament. Because the House of Representatives is really just a rubber stamp for the government, it has only been through all except one government not having a majority in the Senate that there has been any chance of this occurring.

Prime Minsters of both persuasions have complained bitterly about the Senate being obstructive, yet in fact the only Senate that was ever so was the Coalition-controlled Senate which deliberately obstructed the Whitlam government and denied it supply, therefore leading to its downfall. Apart from that one occasion, what has occurred in fact is that the Senate, through its strong committee system, has truly reviewed government legislation and ensured that the worst excesses of any government have had to be modified. It has slowed down decisions, but given the people a greater chance to ensure that the voices and interests of all Australians have been taken into account. This made our Senate one of the strongest in the world after the US Senate, and one of just seven Senates that were seen to provide 'strong democracy'.

The demise of the Democrats after Meg Lees took them away from their traditional role of 'keeping the bastards honest', demonstrating partisan support for the government and moving them towards being just another political party, left many Australians (particularly 'small l' liberals) to either vote for the Greens, fringe groups or individuals who never had a real chance of being elected.

For those of us who care about keeping a government accountable, we can only hope that this situation is reversed at the next election.

Ros Irwin
Lismore

The mourning after

Are many of your readers feeling as I am, that our country is in mourning for something lost?

In the wake of John Howard's victory, my faith in the basic decency of the Australian people has been deeply shaken. I had really believed that we were better than this. That we would vote not only for ourselves but on behalf of others. That we would send a message that we want our country's pride restored. That we would not reward lies, divisive tactics and small-minded politics.

Well I was wrong. Please go gently with those of us who worked so hard in our endeavours for change. We are grieving.

Jenny Dowell
Goonellabah

Senate woes

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, a round of applause please for apathy, ignorance, gullibility, indifference and fear, the big winners in the federal election. Please be generous people, this has truly been a momentous triumph!

The surge in support for the Coalition at the 2001 election was understandable, given the combined influence of the Tampa incident and September 11. People considered that election result to be abnormal because it was held under extraordinary circumstances. However, that result now appears quite normal by comparison with this year's result.

Not only has the Coalition's vote increased, but the vote for all non-major parties is incredibly low, especially in the Senate where the vote for minor parties is traditionally higher - and I'm not just talking about the Democrats or One Nation here - the Green vote has plateaued, and the vote for all other minor parties and independents has pretty much disappeared.

The Coalition will control the Senate, meaning no unwanted scrutiny of the government's actions and no checks and balances on the excesses of government. Presumably most Australians don't care, but one day you probably will. The minority of Australians who do care warned you about what may happen now, just like we warned that invading Iraq would increase rather than decrease terrorist activity.

So when Telstra is fully privatised, the independence of the ABC curtailed, a free-trade agreement signed with China, your civil liberties restricted in the name of fighting terrorism, petrol prices rise even further because of another war, small businesses are muscled out of the marketplace by large multi-nationals, water becomes scarcer, and Australians are killed by some of the '100 Bin Ladens' that Egyptian president Mubarak predicted would emerge as a result of the Iraq war, don't expect my sympathy.

We're a democracy, you voted for this government and for a rubber-stamp Senate that can't keep a rein on it. It's one thing to re-elect Howard, but quite another to give them absolute power.

Nick Casmirri
Goonellabah

Why so long?

Re the Lismore swimming pool complex (Echo, Oct 7).

As a retired former builder of many large commercial lap pools and aquatic centres etc, for many councils in Queensland and NSW, I would like to ask the following questions.

1. Why is the project taking so long to complete? For a project of this size I would have allowed six months from start to completion, including pools, amenities, landscaping, filtration etc. The pools should be in operation now. The weather has been fine so that is not a problem.

2. If the council employed architects and engineers how would the site be too small? When the Pyramids were built in Egypt 4000 years ago they used measures and levels.

3. How can the cost be so high? This needs to be itemised.

4. Who are the builders, architects and engineers?

I believe that the general public should be advised.

John Lutze
Lismore

• Editor's note: The sub-contracted builders are Brisbane-based Seymour Whyte Constructions Ltd and the architect is Melbourne-based Rick Bzowy.

Not whingeing

What can I say? I'm as shell-shocked as Latham. Despite all the proven lies, deceptions and deceit by the PM as well as the obvious buying of votes, not to mention Iraq - he not only won again but increased the neo-conservative majority.

This is a depressing referendum on the Australian psyche, and Labor must wear most of the blame - especially for their dodgy preference flows in the Senate in Victoria and NSW. The Dems also did some damage with their preferences, although just about nobody voted for them in the first instance. A tragedy for democracy, despite the Dems wishy-washy performance of the past few years.

I think Latham did OK in and of himself, but Labor itself is in crisis. I am not a Labor voter. I am a Green. The only hope I see for our political future is the doing away with the two party preferred system in favour of proportional representation in the lower house, as it is in the Senate, but this can only happen if the government allows it, and that is certainly not in it's best interests. How can two parties represent the diversity of interests in the Australian community?

Up until election night I'd been campaigning to put the major parties last on the ballot - ie. give someone else (anyone else) a shot, and explaining that giving a number 1 preference to Labor or the Coalition is a completely wasted vote which only encourages and props up the two party adversarial system.

Of course it came as no surprise that all the Packer/Murdoch papers endorsed a return of Howard that will further their own agendas. The media manipulated this outcome by focussing on the two bullies and virtually ignoring any other voices.

I cannot stand to look at Howard's smirking face anymore. It's just too depressing. But I'm not giving up, and I'm not going to whinge. Everyone I have spoken to since the result is angry and upset, but determined we are not going to take it lying down. We recognise that we have to do more to encourage our fellow Aussies to stop acting like unconscious puppets and robots and rather respond to life with compassion, awareness and enlightenment - and demand the same from our elected representatives, rather than a $3 tax cut and fear-mongering.

A little message to all the people who voted for the Coalition: I hope you like their policies, and I mean all of them, because that's exactly what we are going to get for the next three years. Have a look at the Libs website for the direction we will be taking - listed under 'policies' - plus whatever the Lying Rodent didn't want to make public before an election. You will soon wish you hadn't voted for the Coalition - in the Senate, at least.

Andy Gough
Larnook

Crossing the Styx

The Lismore City Council general manager is fond of referring to the relationship between councillors and Council staff as the steerers and the rowers.

Six months into the voyage, the councillors are locked in the cabin with a scrap of treasure map, no compass and no supplies. The ships crew is running around on deck with maps in three languages, sextants, telescopes and Lindsay Walker in the crows nest sighting land.

It looks like a storm on the horizon.

Cr Vanessa Ekins
South Lismore

Keep Rex accessible

An open letter to the Federal Government and Opposition.

The people of regional NSW know that reliable and affordable air travel is critical to our future. Travel to Sydney for medical, business or family interests is fastest and often most convenient by air.

Unless urgent action is taken, that vital lifeline is at risk.

When it sold Sydney airport in 2002, the Federal Government promised that regional airline access would be protected. In March 2001, federal transport and regional services minister John Anderson said:

"Our policies guarantee that regional NSW will always have convenient and affordable access to Sydney airport and through it, the world."

It was a genuine undertaking by the government that we all welcomed.

Now, after two years of private operation, real concerns are emerging that were not anticipated and threaten Minister Anderson's clear commitment to regional travellers.

We now find that Sydney airport can use its position as landlord to directly impact on regional airlines' ability to operate efficiently and effectively compete. This has fundamental implications for the future of regional air services to Sydney airport.

If privately-owned airports don't fully honour Mr Anderson's commitment for 'fair access', then steps need to be taken to ensure that our regional air services are protected.

We call on the Federal Government and Opposition to urgently commit to closing any loopholes that can be used by Sydney airport to stop regional air services having 'fair and reasonable' access to all relevant facilities at Sydney airport.

People in the bush are not second class citizens - we should not be forced to use second class facilities or lose our air services altogether.

Mal Peters
President
NSW Farmers Association

Cr Phillip F Silver
Chairman
Country Mayor's Association of NSW

Cr Phyllis Miller
President
Shires Association of NSW

Geoff Breust
Managing Director
Regional Express (Rex)

Cr Dr Sara Murray
President
Local Government Association of NSW