Drone strike tragedy just too awful
THE US drone attack on Kabul killed 10 people, seven were children. The killing of children is appalling, obscene and not to be condoned at any level or by any government. The fact intelligent adults engage in deliberate acts designed and carried out for the sole purpose of killing others is, in this age, unacceptable.
Humans are the most aggressive and destructive animal ever to inhabit the earth and will continue to kill each other, but kill our children and claim it as collateral damage? If the only positive and good thing we do as a species is to adopt a universal strategy against the killing of children it will be a monumental step. This could be achieved by every nation aligning against any offending nation or power. I doubt those responsible for pushing the button or ordering the drone strike would go ahead knowing it was their children who could possibly die by their actions.
Vyv Alomes Dodges Ferry
SECRET BENEFACTOR
DOES Christian Porter really expect us to believe he has no idea who is paying his legal bills? It’s actually all the rest of us who are kept in the dark about who is funding this very generous “blind trust”. If this secret benefactor eventually seeks a quid pro quo through a ministerial decision, how can the government be held to account by the Parliament or the media? Geoff Law
Dynnyrne
ONYA RENEE
HOW sad Renee Gracie has been sidelined for the Bathurst 1000. When gender equality is at the forefront, they choose a sexist position. She is legally entitled to earn money from what she chooses. Race officials say she will benefit from her exposure. Vehicles have their sponsors names emblazoned for all to see. Double standards is the order of day. Good on you, Gracie, we the paying public back you to the hilt.
Phil Georgeff Dover
INSULT TO FRENCH
WELL, if ever you need an example of the verb renege, look no further than the federal government’s disgusting and disdainful withdrawal from the several year-old submarine deal with France. George Cresswell
Derwent Park
MARINUS MESS
RENEWABLES should be good news for Tassie, but only the state government and TasNetworks are cheering, the rest of us are watching the Marinus mess unfold, a mess we’ll pay for.
Finance expert Mervin Reed claims (Mercury, September 18) that Marinus will be key to a nationwide transition from fossil fuels, offering Battery of Nation rhetoric to support his claim.
He’s right, there’s a gap between the renewable energy we need and the energy we’re producing, but he’s wrong that only Marinus will fill that gap because he’s ignoring energy plans by mainland states to look after their own interests.
Here, the government has handed the policy keys to the corporate sector, along with tonnes of taxpayer dollars, in the hope foreign investor greed will fill our shorelines with turbines, and TasNetworks will cover our NorthWest with giant transmission lines that ship power and profits offshore. Tasmanians will pay for Marinus and TasNetworks’ shiny new grid, which will destroy hundreds of kilometres of farms and forests, all so distant shareholders make a buck. We get nothing. No cheaper power, no long-term jobs, no new manufacturing.
Marinus is a con, and we’re the suckers paying for it.
Ben Marshall Loongana
REED ALL ABOUT IT
THERE’S never enough space to call out all of Mervin C. Reed’s mistakes. He claims in the next nine years 4500MW of coal-fired capacity will be shut down, with no replacement. It will disappear from the NEM. If he read more widely than Liberal government handouts, he’d come across the following facts in AEMO’s July (2021) IASR paper: “The Victorian Renewable Energy Target mandates 40 per cent of the region’s generation be sourced from renewable sources by 2025, and 50 per cent by 2030. Currently in the region there are over 7100 megawatts of committed or proposed wind generation projects, and over 3800MW of committed or proposed solar generation projects.”
Assuming a 50 per cent production efficiency: that’s 5450MW. And it doesn’t include battery storage of surplus energy for calm days and night-time hours.
The NSW forecasts are equally impressive and highlight Merv’s blinkered outlook. Its roadmap cites renewables producing the equivalent power by 2029 which it now generates from fossil-fuel assets. In addition: “The NSW legislation also sets a minimum objective for construction of 2GW of long-duration storage infrastructure (class as storage with capacity that can be dispatched for at least eight hours) by the end of 2029. This is in addition to Snowy 2.0.” It’s not the NEM “balanced on the edge of a cliff”. It’s your befuddled writer.
Greg Pullen Miena