Legal addicts

FIGURES released by the Mitchell Institute showing smoking rates for Bridgewater and Gagebrook as among the worst in the country should be deeply disturbing for those smokers and a great concern for all. The medical, social and economic consequences cost Australian society billions annually with a drain on federal, state and territory health budgets. Tobacco is the most widely abused substance and claims more lives than other drugs of addiction combined, including alcohol. People who smoke should be regarded as societal sanctioned drug addicts because that’s exactly what they are. Governments should be held morally accountable for their failure to enact stringent legislation that creates smoke-free environments so those of

Repeating our mistakes

“SHAME! I am a holocaust survivor. No country accepted us in 1939. The rest is history. Must we repeat our mistakes?” This was written on one of the Tassie Nannas postcards on Friday. The Tassie Nannas meet each Friday in Elizabeth Mall to knit blankets for refugees coming to Tasmania and speak with passers-by about Australia’s policies towards people seeking asylum and refugees. We have postcards for people to fill in and we send them to the Prime Minister and Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. After the horrors of World War II, Australia signed the United Nations Refugee Rights Convention. We agreed to accept people fleeing the terrors of war and persecution. Despite that, we Australians have held men, women and children in detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru for six years. Shame indeed.