DON’T EQUATE HUNTING WITH CONSERVATION

PUBLIC TRANSPORT LACK A MAJOR OVERSIGHT MARCH RESTRICTIONS INVITE DISOBEDIENCE

AFTER 10 years, Armstrong Creek might have shopping centres, schools, daycare centres, parks and the like (GA 17/4), but it has virtually no public transport. People have to drive everywhere.

When the Armstrong Creek growth area was first promoted, it was going to be a model of sustainable living. But a decade after the first people moved in, it’s just another car-dependent suburban development.

Despite the huge growth, the state government has provided only one single bus service through the Armstrong Creek development.

Buses which run past Armstrong Creek, along the Torquay and Barwon Heads roads, are remote from a lot of the new population, and they are increasingly delayed by the inevitably escalating traffic congestion.

It’s disappointing that no bus priority measures are included in the Barwon Heads Road duplication project. The increase in car traffic generated by that road expansion will inevitably make bus services even less reliable and less attractive.

Successful cities everywhere realise the futility of reliance on car travel and give priority to active transport — walking, cycling and public transport.

One new bus route at Armstrong Creek in 10 years is certainly not prioritising active and sustainable transport.

Paul Westcott, Geelong Branch, Public Transport Users Association

OH Bev (since we are now on a first-name basis!), open your eyes! (GA 22/4).

I don’t deny the Field and Game do some good work in wetland conservation with a spinoff for other birds.

But theirs is a narrow vision, that at the end is the hunting and killing of birds they claim they are conserving. Benefits to other birds is incidental.

Bev, arrange a visit to Birdlife Australia to learn how real, broad-based bird conservation works. Look at the support of habitat enhancement and protection of threatened species and other birds. See how they monitor shore birds, and work to ensure the long-term survival of many endangered species.

Expand your view to take in the enormous opportunity for ecotourism based on simple birdwatching and naturephotography throughout rural Victoria.

There is absolutely no need to perpetuate the long outdated idea that duck and quail hunting is a “harvest of a natural resource”.

ONE seriously wonders what the Andrews Labor government could/would do if returned servicemen and women and their families defied the restrictions placed on marching on Anzac

Day and assembled, en masse, throughout Victoria on April 25.

This would not be an unreasonable proposition given the fact the Victorian government has given approval for at least 75,000 to attend an AFL match in Melbourne on the same day!

Placing severe restrictions on the right of people to march in honour of those who served this country in times of war, many thousands of whom laid down their lives, is an insult. An insult to the memory of the dead and the living.

There are times when civil disobedience may be in order.

I cannot envisage the Andrews government using the police force as a blunt weapon against patriots and their families on such a hallowed, sacred day.

The “optics” would be terrible — optics which would almost certainly signal the end of the Andrews government in Victoria.

Michael J Gamble, Belmont