The truth is finally coming to light
FINALLY, we have the truth coming out.
The current Liberal state government continue to run a policy of smoke and mirrors, but finally we see Minster Barnett suffers foot in mouth disease with his comment that if power prices do not rise by nearly 12 per cent, the state will be unable to pay public servants or provide housing. The deliberate breaking of a promise to remove Tasmania from the national electricity market was actually done to increase revenue to the state government.
Interestingly Minster Barnett’s comments are in complete contrast to previous comments that “exiting the National Energy Market would erode investor confidence in the Tasmanian energy market and potentially jeopardise billions of dollars in current and planned future investment in renewable energy projects, including in Marinus Link, new wind energy and Tasmanian green hydrogen projects”.
No mention that the money was needed to provide housing or pay public servants. Is the Liberal government devoid of any shame as it increases costs on the majority of Tasmania through a tax by stealth?
Anthony Lennard
Lindisfarne
FOOLISH DECISIONS
AEMO’s announcement that Australians need to brace for significant increases in electricity prices confirms just how stupid the decisions were to privatise this essential service on the mainland.
The current Tasmanian government’s stubborn insistence in staying in the National Electricity Market and the plans for Marinus Link are absurd and certainly not in the strategic interests of Tasmanians.
John Toohey
Lenah Valley
PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES
INTERESTING what Alan Turner of Bellerive (Letters, Mercury, July 27) wrote regarding the use-by dates and non-recyclability of solar panels and wind power turbines.
But don’t forget the battery packs in the electric vehicles that are being thrust upon us.
These have an even shorter life span, of around 10 years, and as yet nobody has found a way of being able to economically recycle these when their life ends.
What is worse is the fact that with the supposed subsidies that wealthy people are benefiting when purchasing them, like lower taxation, no mileage tax until around 2030 in most countries.
By the time I am able to purchase one, as I always buy used cars, which are about 10 years old, with no more depreciation, I am going to be up for the cost of a replacement battery pack, and then the removal and storage costs for the old battery pack.
This will be way out in the middle of Australia, with the thousands of tonnes of old battery packs waiting for someone to figure out how to recycle these, along with the stockpile of solar panels and wind turbines.
Plus, with the horrendous additional weights of these battery packs, upwards of two tonnes, these electric vehicles will be causing more damage to the road surfaces than any petrol- or dieselpowered vehicle.
The government needs to immediately bring in the distance-driven taxation on electric vehicles to cover the same maintenance that the petrol taxes cover.
Looks like I will be staying with my good, well-tuned, gas-gulping cars, as my costs are already known.
Bruce Reynolds
Lindisfarne
SHORT MEMORIES
CHRIS Bowen is refusing to lift Labor’s position on 43 per cent reduction of carbon emissions because “we were elected with that mandate”.
He might remember that Labor was elected because of the preferences of the Greens and independents. Labor’s primary votes were the lowest in a long time, lower even that the Coalition’s primary votes. The Greens and independents had a mandate for a much higher carbon reduction than Labor’s pathetic 43 per cent.
So who has the mandate for carbon reduction? Fairness and reason tell us that it is the Greens and independents, while Labor in its misplaced arrogance is over-riding the very people who got them where they are.
John Biggs
Mt Nelson
FINANCIAL BLACK HOLE
THE news that the state government is going to pay $100 million to move TasWater’s wastewater/sewerage treatment plant from Macquarie Point to Selfs Point is an obscene waste of public money (July 29).
Look at the location of two other WWT plants in the Hobart area.
One is right beside Mona and the other is on the Rosny Point foreshore surrounded by houses.
These plants have been long accepted by the community; one in the midst of very desirable suburbia and the other adjacent to Tasmania’s number one tourist and cultural attraction.
There are no odour or related offensive issues.
Machinations at MacPoint have now gone beyond a fiasco, it has become a scandalous black hole shredding the Tasmanian public’s increasingly scarce fiscal reserves. David Hurburgh
Opossum Bay