Disgraceful

THE Commonwealth Bank made a first half profit of $4.9 billion and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull wants to give it a share of a very huge company tax cut. How disgraceful is that? The PM then does nothing while the greatest oxymoron of all times “The Fair Work Commission” cuts workers wages ( Mercury, February 24). Just as disgraceful.

Then to rub it in, an employer representative and Liberal politicians get on TV and have the audacity to say these wage cuts will create more employment. What garbage. The money from these wage cuts will go straight into the pockets of the greedy business owners. Mr Turnbull is that far out of touch with ordinary

Pushing it

LOCAL Government Minister Peter Gutwein is right: TasWater has got to live within its means and its shareholders, the councils, must help it do so. In the short term that’s difficult when so much infrastructure needs to be replaced. But it must not rebuild by looking for short cuts and cheaper options. TasWater is trying to do that, literally, in pushing a sewer through public land, the Peter Murrell Reserves, set aside for other purposes. The public don’t want that, as a strongly supported petition showed. We hope to hear soon whether the Government has listened to the 1500 petitioners and will defend the reserve against TasWater’s cheap short cut.

Industrialising nature

A SILENT sentence hung in the void after Primary Industries Minister Jeremy Rockliff’s statement that “The Hodgman Government is a ‘strident’ supporter of the salmon industry” (Talking Point, February 21). It purred: “Regardless of the impact on the environment.” Mr Rockliff, like many others, would have dismissed any science that showed evidence of environmental degradation from aquaculture debris.

Bad manners

I MUST have missed something Julie McKay (”Women face obstacles in speaking freely”, Talking Point, February 24), but when Yassmin Abdel-Magied was butting in and then had her shouting match with a democratically elected representative, Jacqui Lambi, on the TV show Q&A (ABC, February 20) it did not appear she had too many obstacles to speaking freely. Quite the reverse. This unedifying spectacle may have been interesting TV but both women’s causes suffered as a result of their bad manners and lack of self control.

In a fully functioning democracy where free speech is valued, at least by some, we all have the right to free speech and ideally nobody regardless of gender, orientation or ethnicity is any more special or entitled to contribute their views than anybody else. However, the flip side is that your views and arguments are not immune from open discussion, criticism nor judgment. So if Ms Abdel-Magied is feeling a little hard done by this scrutiny, I would say “harden up princess” if you with to contribute to the “kitchen of democratic debate”. I would contend that the Australian system of community debate is currently under threat with the over zealous use of poor laws like Section 18C of the Anti-Discrimination Act.