Pay less, use less
AT last some sensible talk about petrol prices, with the RACT advising consumers to shop around. There are two ways to reduce expenditure, shop around or use your car less. Use less and you will help our atmosphere. If enough people buy from cheaper outlets or buy less petrol, it costs you less and drives prices down to some degree. According to the 2011 ABS census Tasmania had the largest proportion of people using a passenger vehicle as part of transport to get to work (87 per cent) despite the highest petrol prices. The ABS found Tasmanians have a much higher rate of car ownership than the Australian average and this is increasing much faster than any other state. We have the oldest and less fuel efficient cars. Last year Tasmania was the only state where new car sales grew ( Mercury, January 11). The ABS finds Australians overwhelmingly use cars to get to work and study, but from 2009 to 2012 there was a small drop in car use (1 per cent) and a corresponding increase in use of public transport. Tasmania can follow that path if it makes public transport more attractive. sourcing. Newstart sentences unemployed Australians to live in dire poverty harassed by persecutory rules and obligations. Mutual Obligation on behalf of the Commonwealth would include increasing Newstart and scrapping the ineffective and demeaning Work For The Dole. Replace it with programs that achieve employment outcomes. Let’s bring back the Job Start wage subsidy paid to small business to employ unemployed people in real jobs. Many unemployed can’t compete in the open labour market no matter how hard they try. Age, illness, prejudice and other barriers work against them.
Many in poor health no longer qualify for the Disability Pension and are shunted onto Newstart. How can a sick person ever get better and be fit for work if they cannot afford nutritious food, medical care, heating or rent? Newstart was not designed as a long-term income support payment but some of Australia’s most vulnerable people will be stuck on it to their detriment. Long-term poverty makes people sicker and can contribute to an early death. Sadly, our precious social security system is no longer a safety net.
Salmon front-man
AN ex-global spruiker for a UK cigarette company sounds like just what the Tasmanian salmon industry needs as its frontman. How is that Tasmania seems to encourage perfectly nice industries to grow into monsters. First we had the Hydro building dams long past the point of sensible investment and then we had the forest industry expanding to bursting point. And now we have fish farmers hellbent on doing likewise. I blame the Tasmanian regulatory environment whereby agencies that should be constraining the excesses of dangerous industries actually spend their time frustrating the wider community when it gets upset at such excesses. Meanwhile, like others of your correspondents, I’m quietly engaging in my own dietary adaptive management and phasing out farmed fish from my diet until such time as the companies start getting embarrassed by the sophistries of those they pay to represent them and accept that “sustainable growth” is an oxymoron.
Public confidence
DOES the Tasmanian Salmon Growers Association, with an urgent need to reassure consumers and environmentalists that their industry is ethical and sustainable, really think that employing Andrew Gregson will deliver the sort of ‘optics’ they need to rebuild public confidence? The whole marine farming industry should be concerned. As previous director of corporate and legal affairs at Imperial Tobacco, Gregson certainly has immense experience in “engaging communities” ( Mercury, January 12), but to what end? Are things really that bad? Is defending an industry based on toxic tobacco and ecigarette products really the sort of skill set needed to restore Tasmanian aquaculture’s ethical standing? If the answer is yes, it sends some sobering messages about how the industry thinks it should do business. If Tasmanian Salmon and Big Tobacco have become that similar in their public relations ethos, no wonder our faith in corporate culture is collapsing. Faith in Tasmania’s clean, green gourmet products won’t be far behind.