Protecting swimmers

STATE Tourism Minister Kate Jones is to be commended for having deep concern about the appeal being overturned, regarding bait lines to catch sharks in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park area.

It would seem well and good to conservationists to have this ban, but it should never have been done until effective other measures are put in place. South Africa appears to be a leader in this technology and has beaches protected with electro-magnetic devices that cause the sharks to veer away from humans.

These devices can be attached to swimmers or in a net fashion to protect an entire area frequented by swimmers.

How long before the 85 protected Queensland beaches, including the Gold and Sunshine Coast tourist meccas, face a ban on shark bait net and drum lines?

The Whitsunday area has seen a number of horrific shark attacks and the concerns of Kate Jones are very well placed. To give these predators free-rein is simply foolish when there is no deterrent to prevent them attacking swimmers.

One can only imagine sharks cruising through the fish rich McDonald’s of the reef and the animals saying to each other, “Would you like humans with that?”

PETER KNOBEL, Toowoomba

MAGPIES

A RECENT online poll question, “have you ever been swooped by a Magpie?” arouses my interest. I was waiting for the result as to just how many have been swooped by a Magpie.

As a five days a week, two hours a day fundraiser for various charities since 2010, I have canvassed half of Toowoomba’s streets up to nine times, to raise in the vicinity of a $250,000 and have never, to date, ever been attacked by a magpie.

Have been warned dozens of times by well meaning persons,”watch out for the magpies, they’ll attack you”. My response is always, just watch, and proceed to walk up the street totally unmolested. Why, I have no answer. I do love birds. Maybe they love me. Even plovers which can be very possessive of their nests, I’ve walked past and checked their nests many times watching to see if the chicks had hatched and and got lot of noise, including swoops, from the parents, but never a contact.

Magpies. I have walked beside people with sticks in their hands, waving their arms to “scare off the birds, only to remain unmolested while they receive the attacks.

Maybe the birds can sense fear, and any retaliation will certainly bring on a more ferocious attack.

RAY HARCH, Toowoomba

INADEQUATE SENTENCES

WE SEE yet again where an attorneygeneral, this time in NSW, has had to lodge an appeal against a decision of a court, the latest being the release from custody of a child killer and paedophile. He said there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

The courts do not formulate legislation, that is the prerogative of the elected governments and if a sentence is inadequate then it is down to the ideological weakness of the legislators enacting laws allowing this to happen.

There is too much concern for the rights of the offender, often to the detriment of giving justice to the victim and their families. Justice actually concerns both sides of the coin.

Alongside maximum sentences there should be mandatory minimums in place in law so that if there is a minimum of 10 years for, as example, murder, no judge can had down a sentence of five.

Alongside that there should be an overriding law that stipulates 75 per cent of a sentence, to the day, must be served before parole can be applied for or granted. If you are sentenced to fifteen you must do eleven and a quarter.

Before there was an un-elected interfering body such as the United Nations telling countries what they can and cannot do legislation as enacted by the parliaments decreed what would be.

When Ned Kelly was rightly hanged in 1880 the sentence for murder, without options, was death. The judge, Redmond Barry, had no discretion but to sentence Kelly to hang.

That said we should also have capital punishment again on our statutes, as a sentencing pathway against “never to be released”.

The severity and viciousness of the offender’s actions would be the deciding factor in the decision, such as when a child was involved.

Attorney-generals on numerous occasions have had to turn around following a manifestly in-adequate sentence and appeal for it to be increased.

This would not be needed if the politicians had the backbone to legislate mandatory minimum sentences.

ROGER DESHON, Toowoomba