Complacency creeping in
THERE don’t seem to be any hard and fast rules for cafe’s and shops in Hobart as to keeping their customers safe from COVID-19. The cafe’s and shops in Cygnet are very aware of keeping customers and themselves safe. You sign in when you enter a cafe or use the Tas Safe app. Customer numbers are restricted. Sanitiser is everywhere. This is the same in the city.
Not so in North Hobart. Attending the movies on Monday, I expected to have to sign in. No. I expected customer numbers to be limited in the bookstore. No. We lunched at a popular lounge and again we were not required to give our details. Two of the neighbouring tables had tourists dining.
With tourists coming back into Tasmania (Cygnet is seeing great many), shouldn’t all businesses be trying to keep themselves and their customers safe? We shouldn’t become complacent. Anna-Christina Lees Gardners Bay
INSECURITY
WOMAN fined $774 for breaching quarantine (Mercury, February 17). How can someone in quarantine just walk out of a hotel and get a taxi? Where were the security guards? Smoko?
Liz Phillips Lenah Valley
POVERTY TRAP
THE $150-a-fortnight coronavirus supplement for eligible welfare recipients will end in late March, unemployed Australians will again be forced to live on $40 a day. (“Dole to be single payment for all,” Mercury, February 16).
Why is the Liberal government pushing welfare recipients into a poverty trap? Without a permanent and adequate increase in welfare payments, welfare recipients will envy Oliver Twist. At least food and shelter were provided in the workhouse.
Elizabeth Osborne North Hobart
THE BAD OLD DAYS
I WAS hoping the Coalition government would be bolder after COVID-19. Unfortunately, Scott Morrison wants to go back to the bad old days when poor people had problems putting food on the table. The Labor Party needs to differentiate itself by being the more ambitious program for the next federal election. Australia needs it. Ike Naqvi Tinderbox
KEEN FOR A JAB
THERE are two companies producing the COVID-19 vaccine. I am going for the Pfizer brand because they make Viagra and that brought back the dead. Not speaking from experience either. Jim Connolly Lewisham
QUARANTINE
WE are seeing in Australia that the transmission of the virus into the community has mainly come from hotel quarantine workers. Could it be possible to look at making these hotels closed workplaces for the mandatory 14-day quarantine period, 14 days on and 14 days off, a rotation of crews just like FIFO workers. It’s just a thought but as the transmission is mainly from workers moving around, doing nothing different than we all do, surely the money spent on closing businesses/ shopping centres for deep cleaning and especially the opening and closing of borders could be thrown at making these hotels safer and paying workers good money to stay a 14-day period.
Small businesses are struggling with the borders opening and closing. They need to remain trading to survive. J. Bishop Rosetta
LOCKDOWN LAW
I FIND it amazing that the Australian Open has been allowed to continue while Victoria’s lockdown is in place. Although it is to continue without spectators, it is an insult to anyone else who has to endure a lockdown for their own safety that sport again takes precedence. Show some spine, Mr Andrews, and lock down all non-essential activities.
To categorise tennis players as essential workers is a disgrace and is bowing to big business which is then detrimental to the rest of the community.
This virus will run rampant around Australia while Mr Andrews and the Victorian health department act like Nero when Rome was burning. Get over yourselves and protect the public or resign, you can’t have your cake and eat it too Scott White Sorell
JOBLESS FEARS
A YOUNG unemployed person I know recently applied for a job in Hobart. It was a basic job at minimum wage. He received an acknowledgment stating there were 600 applicants for the job.
So why won’t the government acknowledge there are simply not enough jobs to go around and pay Jobseeker benefit without the charade that is the work test? The young person concerned is keen to do an apprenticeship but there are none available. I would be interested to hear what our local representatives like Eric Abetz or Richard Colbeck have to say about this. Michael Gaynor West Hobart
NATIONWIDE ADVERTISING
NEEDLESS to say, there are many rivers to cross and hoops to jump through during the phases of the rollouts of the massive COVID-19 vaccination program nationwide. There is so much riding on the success of this program and hopefully with a nationwide advertising program, the participation rate will be well into the upper range (“Aussies have gift of jab,” Mercury ,February 16). Chris Davey Lindisfarne