Motorbike parking will help traffic

TRAFFIC congestion is a problem in Hobart. Personal mobility dictates that cars are part of our society that is going to stay with us. But cars are overused. Single occupant cars are about 70 per cent of commuter traffic in the capital. Most of these cars spend the day taking up carparking spaces in and around the CBD. Walking, bicycling, buses, trains, trams and ferries are all parts of the solution. So are motorcycles and scooters. Encourage motorcycling to reduce unnecessary car trips. A quick, cost effective way to do that is to make motorbike parking easier.

Hobart’s motorbike parking is at capacity on weekdays. Riders are competing with drivers for parking space. It doesn’t make sense. North Sydney Council converted the last car bay before intersections to free motorbike parking. It works.

Hobart could do it too. And, Hobart should return the free, centre-of-the-road motorbike parking in Elizabeth St. It worked well for decades.

Melbourne has had free footpath motorbike parking more than 30 years problem free. The Victorian law has a fail-safe. You can’t block pedestrians so riders don’t park on narrow footpaths. Where a council finds a problem, it bans motorbikes from a signed area.

To get a significant number of drivers to leave their cars at home on work days, encourage motorcycling.

Damien Codognotto Motorcycle Riders Association Australia

GRACE NOT THE VICTIM JENNY Grace (Letters, September 15) provides a character reference for her husband, Councillor David Grace, who has been on Kingborough Council for around 20 years.

I enjoyed getting to know David and Jenny over my first six years on Kingborough Council and had a good relationship with both.

However, Cr Grace’s behaviour at a council workshop on 2 November last year, where he physically threatened Cr Paula Wriedt, was completely unacceptable. It had to be called out.

I repeatedly asked Cr Grace to apologise for his behaviour – behaviour which he did not deny. To his great discredit, he did not.

That is why this matter has played out in public.

He did not apologise until he was forced to by the Code of Conduct panel. If Cr Grace had been an employee, I suspect he would have been sacked. Yet, he continues on Kingborough Council, pretending to be the victim. He is not.

Dean Winter Ex-mayor, Kingborough

OUR WOOD IS GOOD

AS a retired forester, I find it rather sad that after all the years of public commentary about forestry, people such as Craig Brown (Letters, September 15) still cling to the outdated misconception that the native timber industry is based entirely on “old growth” trees.

For decades, the industry has been based on mature and advanced regrowth forests that produce much higher rates of sawn timber than claimed by the flawed research that Mr Brown has cited.

It is also irrational to claim that producing wood products, which are renewable and store carbon, is adding to the “climate crisis”. On the contrary, as the IPCC has noted, sustainably producing wood is an important means of mitigating climate change largely because it offsets demand for non-renewable substitute materials (steel, concrete, and aluminium) that embody massively greater carbon emissions in their manufacture. Mark Poynter

Sandy Bay

AGED CARE ACTION

SIX months have passed since the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety released their final report, which revealed complex issues that need to be addressed. The federal government’s response on May 11 accepted or accepted in principle 126 of the 148 recommendations. Unfortunately, not much public attention has been drawn to the numerous conclusions of the royal commission nor the government’s response.

There is much work to be done. Implementation is complex and time consuming. But we should not forget the enormous personal effort by over 10,000 Australians whose experiences informed the work of the royal commission.

We need to keep asking questions of the government about aged care reform and progress with implementing the findings and

recommendations of the royal commission. Change has been a long time coming and we can’t take our foot off the pedal now.

Sue Leitch CEO, COTA Tasmania

JOIN THE BOYCOTT

ON Saturday, there is a planned international day of action to boycott Puma, the global sportswear manufacturer. I call on Tasmanians to be part of this boycott which has been called to highlight a sponsorship deal that Puma has with the Israel Football Association (IFA) which operates in illegal Israeli settlements on land stolen from Palestinians.

What we buy often hides the ugly circumstances in which goods are produced and traded. Awareness of this can help us make ethical choices. For example, clothes produced in sweat shops from slave labour would be unacceptable to most people.

When governments turn a blind eye to human rights abuses that violate international humanitarian laws, boycotts are a legitimate nonviolent way of putting pressure on them to comply.

What can we do? At our local community level we can make an individual choice not to buy Puma sport products; request sports shops to consider stocking more ethical brands and suggest to sporting clubs that they switch sponsorship.

The Australian government is prepared to cancel the upcoming Cricket Test between Afghanistan in November due to its decision not to allow women to play cricket. We should be consistent in our actions against companies and countries that violate human rights and flout international law.

Peta Fitzgibbon President, Friends of Palestine

Tasmania Inc