Paying for their schools
Democratic name choice
SOLID democratic processes are processes that stand the test of time and community confidence. I reject as ill-founded and anti-democratic the reasons of the Nomenclature Board in rejecting Legacy Link, the council’s and the people’s choice for naming the new bridge over the Tasman Highway. If the ordinary meaning to the reason the board gave — that aldermen dared to defy council officers to determine that this infrastructure should be afforded a name synonymous with a great movement of charity, the legacy of giving — was that the aldermen should always follow officer advice even when valid reasons decried that they should not, how is democracy served? Democracy demands that persons elected have the courage to use their discretion.
The overwhelming vote of the community was for Legacy Link, not a name associated with the organisation called Legacy Incorporated but rather to honour for generations ahead the actions of legatees and selfless givers since 1923 in supporting in incredibly brave ways the families of fallen veterans. The board said there was community anxiety and disagreement. Of course there was as disagreement will follow a publicly contested vote, wisely introduced in an effort to get a community consensus which was strongly achieved. The names rejected by the community should not resurface. A new name is the only way forward for this historic infrastructure. slavery, votes for women or workers’ rights, are passion and persistence; and they give reformers the drive over the long haul to achieve their aims. It may take some time, but rest assured, Australia will become a republic. READER Michael McCall’s letter (letters, April 4) about private schools was on the mark. Parents send their children to private schools for the exclusiveness and advantages they offer. Private schools aka private business cost the taxpayer $12 billion a year. Why should those not in a financial position to send their children to private schools cross subsidise those that can through their tax? Sure if you’re well off, by all means buy your flash cars, houses, clothes and fancy holidays, but the equaliser should be education and healthcare, which clearly they are not. land as chair of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria. Can you imagine what a dill he would have been had he taken the winning tactics of Waterloo into the trenches of World War 1. For a bunch of climate change deniers to seek to cloak themselves in the mantle of Monash to bolster their advocacy of a backward approach to national energy policy is offensive. Monash was an innovator, organisationally and technologically. His approach to devolved military command and control would have his name much better honoured in pursuit of modern energy policy that would see individual households as grid-aware sources of both aggregate demand and renewables supply — not nostalgia for big and shiny brown coal-fired power stations.