COP26
Dear editor,
The curtain has come down on the Glasgow COP26 and another failure to take real and urgent action on global warming.
Australia’s contribution was a paltry pamphlet of a plan to do nothing. No changes to targets, no signing up to methane reduction, and no costings.
Wasn’t that what the Nationals’ Barnaby Joyce was demanding – costings?
The “technology not taxes” mantra should mean not a dollar of our taxpayers’ money should be spent on subsidies for fossil fuel companies or the carbon capture and storage pipedream.
Will we come to regret our inaction when trading with countries, which will penalise others with carbon tariffs for not properly acting to reach net-zero?
Many of the world’s financiers are already reluctant to advance money for climate risk averse projects, will the money be less available for Australian businesses in future?
Time is fast running out to protect the planet for our future generations – the UN has declared it ‘Code Red’.
Robyn Deane,
Bli Bli.
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HOMELESS ON THE COAST
Dear editor,
Yesterday morning, Monday November 15, I saw what I have been hearing of for many months – the homelessness which longtime renters are now facing here on the Sunshine Coast.
As I arrived at the environmental project I have been working on for almost 16 years, I was puzzled to see a station wagon parked close to the parking area on Stumers Creek Road, with a woman unloading her possessions. I asked her if she was travelling and she replied “yes, and no”. It transpired that this attractive, well spoken lady was sleeping in her vehicle yet managing to fulfill her duties as a nurse, currently on night duty. Her husband is managing an agricultural project some distance away.
The home in which they had been longtime renters, was sold by the owner and despite enquiries with rental agents from Noosa to Caloundra and west to Maleny, they have been unable to secure another home for their family and had to take their children from the school they had attended, and place them with their grandparents on the Gold Coast.
We suggested she approach North Shore Realty, though I didn’t hold much optimism for the outcome, as I am aware of the severe shortage of rental accommodation in our area.
What have we become? – In what was once referred to as ‘The Lucky Country’. How can someone dispossess a family, for the sake of financial gain? I was more upset than this lovely lady was showing me, and I wish I could have waved a magic wand and produced a home for this family. As a tenant in a one bedroom Queensland housing unit, I am not in a position to offer accommodation and consider myself very fortunate to have a secure roof over my ageing head. I want to believe that our society can do better than this – when one of our carers, as is this lady, has to sleep in her vehicle and then head off to administer aide to those in her care.
I thought of this lady with her mattress and cooking utensils in her vehicle, as I lay in my comfortable bed last night. If I believed in a God then I would hope he, or she, would do a Godly deed and find a home for this family, which unfortunately is one of many, and a sad reflection on what passes for life in 21st century Australia.
Linese Norrish,
Coolum Beach.
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LABOR BUDGETS
Dear editor,
Concerning criticism, by Robyn Deane, of the federal coalition’s level of debt (Advertiser, 10 Nov), would the Labor Opposition have done better? The crucial Covid financial support, added to the historical coalition deficit, has, consequently, exacerbated the debt.
Alternatively, putting our own state budget’s position of $95.8 billion into perspective, our present state Labor government is equally in historical debt, after three terms. When Labor took over in 2015, after our state coalition left us in budget surplus, Labor’s borrowing and spending sprees began in earnest, as was Labor’s position after the Howard government loss. PM Rudd took only three months to annihilate the inherited coalition surplus. No mention of that?
Labor’s response to rising debt levels is to “create” taxes and borrow. Queensland was once the least expensive state. Labor changed it to the most expensive. It was Premiers Beattie and Bligh from 2009, who began borrowing with interest, to fund a spending spree, to counter the fiscal damage of their budget disasters. Naming a few: the Traveston Dam fiasco and creating “Unity Water”, countering the drop in water usage income.
The years of coming from a position of budget surplus to historical debt, exacerbated by the billions intended for the 2032 Olympic Games Labor is fixed on, is state Labor’s modus operandi! The interest on state Labor’s borrowing is a perpetual generational debt.
It is history repeating itself. It is: “The pot calling the kettle black”! Being one-eyed about the failures of others, while blind about what is right in front of you, is hypocrisy. Life under any regime has its budget challenges in the third millennium.
E. Rowe,
Marcoola.
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CLIMATE CHANGE
Dear editor,
On ‘technology not taxes’ for climate change matters, another of Team Australia’s innovations is for unemployed people to be harnessed to treadmills operating 24/7 to generate electricity when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. How good’s that?
Margaret Wilkie,
Peregian Beach.
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