For congestion’s sake, hold the bus
ON arrival to my bus stop, only four minutes early, I was met with the dismaying site of the bus disappearing down Cascade Rd. I used the 30-minute wait until the next service to provide Metro with some feedback. The helpful response was: “Next week when school resumes and the volume of traffic increases, with the increase of traffic we may find services delayed due to reasons beyond our control. We are sorry for the inconvenience and hope that you would arrive at your stop earlier in the future to avoid this happening again.”
Why can’t Metro provide a better, more regular service for Hobart commuters? Perth and Fremantle have had a free CAT bus every five minutes since 1996. Decent public transport might even reduce traffic congestion.
Holley Lees South Hobart
NO BOOZE ON THE JOB
A KINGBOROUGH councillor was seen drinking during an online council meeting. Would it be acceptable for me as a teacher to have a beer just because the lesson was online? For most professions, the answer would be no. Councillors make decisions about how to spend tens of millions of ratepayers’ dollars. We have every right to expect this is done sensibly and carefully. Kaspar Deane
Taroona
OLD TREES DESTROYED
I DOCUMENTED the destruction of at least 100 critical big old habitat trees in the Butlers Ridge Nature Reserve high up in the Eastern Tiers, in a prescribed burn by the Parks and Wildlife Service justified as pre-protection for the people of Little Swanport. One wonders how much of the mid-East Coast hinterland would be prescribed to be regularly burnt to protect something as big as a Cambria Green development. Under this level of development pressure we need good solid landscape conservation and planning oversight to understand that promised golden goose developments often come at a cost to our island’s beautiful places.
Helen Tait West Launceston
IMMEASURABLE LOVE
CHARLES Wooley may be right in thinking that Pope Francis went over the top in his comment about pets substituting for children (“Pets are hardly main concern”, Talking Point, January 21). But he is way off the mark in his comments on the Catholic Church and science.
Charles should acknowledge that the Big Bang theory was first put forward by the cosmologist Father Georges Lemaitre in 1931. Gregor Mendel “fathered” the science of genetics in the 2ha garden of his monastery in the mid-1800s.
I can assure Charles the Vatican observatories in Rome and the US spend their time studying quantum gravity and moon rocks rather than searching for an “old bloke with a long white beard”.
Which still leaves some matters unmeasurable by science, such as the love Charles has for his six children and Dusty the dog.
Michael Tate Battery Point
POWER SHORTFALL
NYRSTAR are to invest $350m to ensure long-term viability of the zinc works, everyone seems excited as 600 jobs in a city our size do matter. I just wonder whether the model of shipping in ore to be processed with subsidised electricity and shipped out again is the best way to generate jobs and taxes.
The government announced that hydrogen is part of the longterm
industrial future of the state and preparations are advanced for the next Basslink extension cables.
What no one is pointing out is that we don’t have enough surplus energy to make hydrogen, sell energy to the mainland, and still sell the same amount of electricity to our current industrial customers. So, again, what industries do we want to be part of our future? Matthew Garvin
Howrah
SCHOOL PANIC
THE start of the school year will be a debacle. Fear is instilled in everyone. With lessening of rules whereby a contact is to become a nonissue in schools and with Covidpositive children required to stay home, supervised by working parents, some will be forfeiting jobs.
With no ventilation in many schools, no relief teachers available outside metropolitan centres, just who does the Premier think will be teaching or supervising them?
It is unworkable. Honesty is required. Alert Tasmanians to the processes in place and have parents make up their own minds whether children attend.
Terry Polglase Lindisfarne
NUMBERS GAMES
AS usual the Liberal government is relying on hope and maybes when it promulgates the amount of retired and relief teachers available to fill the void at schools during the pandemic. How about the numbers who have agreed and committed? Raymond Harvey
Claremont
PARTY TIME?
HOW do we celebrate Australia Day, with the chaos and mayhem of Covid and the lack of freedom, it’s hardly time to celebrate. Andrew Gloudemans
Mount Seymour
PAWNS IN BIGGER GAME
HOW does this work? No wind farm has been approved for Robbin’s Island, yet our tiny island is being traded away between foreign mining giants to offset their emissions in other countries. We lose native forest, have farms damaged, and tidal ecosystems supporting endangered birds, shellfish and fish will be ruined. Why does landbased wind have precedence over ocean based? It’s cheaper for developers.
We are left with degradation. Jobs on the ground are fleeting and few. We are committed to our own mining. Do our mines offset emissions here? Why aren’t they creating green offsets in our depleted oceans and restoring lost kelp forests and creating reefs of oysters and crays and corals? That way we reap benefits instead of suffering the scars and indignity of a pawn in someone else’s game.
Susanne Chandler
Burnie
UKRAINE FEARS
FOR those with relatives in Ukraine, the fact President Putin has amassed 100,000-plus troops on the border is worrisome. My cousin Ivan lives in Krakow and is married to Diana who, with her mother, volunteered to look after wounded soldiers in a hospital in the Donbas region after the 2014 Russian invasion. They have no illusions about Putin’s intentions to occupy Ukraine and see occupation of Crimea as stage one.
In 2015 Diana’s parents sent her to Krakow to find a safe place to live, work and raise a family, but they are still in Dnipro in Eastern Ukraine. They in no way, shape or form identify as Russian.
Ed Sianski West Moonah