LetteroftheWeek
Have strong opinions, write in an engaging way? You could win our Letter of the Week, and with it a book from our friends and sponsors, the publishers HarperCollins. This month’s book prize is Table For Eight by bestselling author and master storyteller Tricia Stringer. It tackles troubled relationships, second chances and love old and new in this uplifting story of unlikely dining companions thrown together on a glamorous cruise.
THE last time I looked, Australia was an island continent, surrounded by oceans of salt water, just waiting to be de-salinised.
My point being: why can’t we make OZ drought free by de-salting the abundance of sea water at our disposal?
Expensive? Yes of course it is, but what cost the loss of our farmers and people on the land?
With only about 2 per cent of the Earth’s water being fresh, desalinisation is something that we will eventually have to look at seriously, so let’s get in on the ground floor and start now.
And I don’t mean in the halfassed way like that abomination at Tugun – what has it produced to date? A billion dollars down the gurgler, so to speak. JAMES WALLACE, WORONGARY NOT one minister in the Palaszczuk Government has any knowledge of or background in racing. This is the reason Queensland racing is in dire straits.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk makes statements as though she knows the industry; it’s obviously very easy to say how much money her Labor Government has invested in racing. Treasurer Jackie Trad then mimics her boss and pretends she’s an expert.
Racing Minister Stirling Hinchcliffe has been tried in several portfolios without success. Surely there’s someone else who actually knows one end of a horse from the other.
I’m right behind the proposed strikes tomorrow and in the future as all those involved in this industry deserve better.
Trad’s proposed 15 per cent Point of Consumption tax is a major insult to all.
And not promising a fair return to racing is just as insulting.
It’s time this government realised that increasing prize money for instance gives the industry a welcome financial injection which leads to more jobs. For a government that spruiks “jobs, jobs, jobs” ad infinatum, I would think the writing on the wall was quite clear. They seem to forget the government’s return is directly connected to turnover.
We who follow racing realise there are horses for courses but Ms Palaszczuk and Ms Trad seem to have run their race and sadly do not have the credentials to qualify for their next one. Going the distance is beyond them and it’s time they found greener pastures. KEN JOHNSTON, ROCHEDALE SOUTH MANY of us are so angry that this poor woman, not once, but twice has written to the Premier’s Office, pleading desperately for help to protect her from her violent exhusband, terrified she will wind up the next Teresa Bradford.
This is one of the saddest cases I have ever read in the Gold Coast Bulletin.
Yet a Premier’s Office staff member replied there was nothing they could do to help her, and went on to explain that the Government could not intervene in court decisions. What an absolute joke this is.
Well I say, “To hell with the courts”, and agree with Donald Trump who boldly stated to the US media: “Who is running this country, the United States Congress, or these judges overflowing with selfimportance, who need to consider standing down and be replaced with others who are more down to earth?”
Yet in Queensland under the protection of this current Labor Government, criminals are rewarded with so many rights, and one of those rights are to appeal their sentence severity to the Court of Appeal judges who so often reduce sentences sometimes by half. The criminals must adore them.
Are these lenient decisions made by the Court of Appeal judges, just to justify their existence?
This inexcusable lack of compassion by Annastacia and her Government refusing to offer some sort of protection for this very frightened woman, will no doubt have a severe impact on her popularity at the next election, especially in the hands of the angry female voters. KEN WADE, TWEED HEADS ACCORDING to figures given, he is worth $133 million.
He claims to not be a burden on the Aussie taxpayer since leaving the Lodge.
Well that’s a breath of fresh air compared to other ex PMs who are also millonaires, some of whom were gifted free office fitouts.
Why? Not in government any more. Why couldn’t they just use a spare bedroom in their large houses, they no longer have any defining role in the running of the country, and in the case of one female, earns substantial fees for public speaking. Oh to have the gift of the gab. VERN EVES, TWEED SO the racing is back on in Queensland on Melbourne Cup Day ... turns out that’s a pretty big stick they wield, Annastacia. REG DAVID, MUDGEERABA