I'M a NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association member and active frontline worker, and I am ashamed to be a full-time, permanent staff member this week. NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has blinkers on yet again, giving a thank you payment to all full time nurses and midwives.
What about my part-time, temporary contracted or casual pool comrades who stood beside me during COVID? What made you decide that their sacrifices were not important? They were equally working long hours in PPE each day. They too had limited contact with family members, poor leisure time, crappy eating arrangements and isolated working arrangements. They came to work knowing that many of our comrades across the world were falling ill to COVID in the line of their duties or even dying. They still came as we dropped beside them after we contracted COVID ourselves.
Let's not forget every nurse and midwive's psychological terror and sense of pending doom clocking on and off during COVID. Shame on you Mr Perrottet. Almost 13,000 NSW Health nursing staff were employed on casual or temporary contracts during COVID. They had our backs; they didn't hide under a blanket. As a result 24.6 per cent of the NSW Health nursing and midwifery workforce will not be "thanked". Disgraceful.
Kathy Chapman, Maitland NSWNMA branch acting secretary
Hidden costs may hinder e-bikes
E-BIKES are fun, but for many hirers they may be a one-off novelty. Would there be enough regular and occasional hirers to justify a full blown e-bike hire scheme? ("Cyclists are ready for e-bikes", Newcastle Herald 6/6). If users are really hooked after their first ride, and they live in a place where there are safe bike tracks, they might buy one. E-bikes could be used for the occasional quick shop of a few items, and are much cheaper to buy and run compared to a second car, especially with petrol prices.
The 12-month pilot scheme by Dantia would need serious follow up. This should be easy enough, provided hirers identify themselves. Apart from reliability and amount of revenue, Dantia will need to look closely at costs. For example, how much does it cost in terms of stolen bikes, bikes thrown into the lake and vandalism? How did this affect insurance premiums?
I saw e-bike hire companies operate successfully in London. Each bike had a GPS tracker and was picked up by a company truck usually at night when traffic was quieter. It was recharged and serviced and placed back into a bike rack, usually at a tube station. A few hirers were cleaned up by London's heavy traffic but Londoners didn't vandalise, destroy or steal the bikes as much as other cities. Would the residents of Lake Macquarie use and respect the e-bikes or vandalise, destroy and steal them?
Geoff Black, Caves Beach
Anger at hefty parking fine
I AM angry at Lake Macquarie council for fining me for parking in a no stopping zone. I am a 74-year-old handicapped pensioner. That's the first time I have shopped at Aldi. The car park was full so I drove out and parked in the street. There were a number of signs and I obviously misjudged them. My head is not what it used to be. I am on a walking stick so I wanted to park close. I have had one hip removed and am on the list to have the other done and I am recovering from a prostate operation. I tried a letter of appeal, but all I got back was a standard letter of rejection. I am a good ratepayer, and even being disabled I have been a volunteer at Sailability Belmont for 13 years. I know the rules, but this is to let other locals be aware; otherwise, $275 is a lot of money.
John Wignall, Belmont
We must embrace new ways
I AGREE with John A Yates that coal miners deserve thanks (Letters, 8/6), for dirty and dangerous work that built the foundations of our civilisation. As I said in my exit survey from my admin work at PWCS, great culture; wrong industry.
I await the miners taking their ingenuity into the future with hopefully less dangerous jobs in renewables. "Sustainability will always be re-established, for the unsustainable is unsustainable." If we develop the new tech, we can export it. Otherwise, we'll import. So, which is your desired balance of trade, going forwards?
Mr Yates, the Industrial Revolution also gave us a legacy of pollution at increasing rates. We need to slow this, stop it, and reverse it; no mean feat as we drag our politicians kicking and screaming into conversations about a future beyond the current electoral term. While I'm at it, thank you to parents who used physical punishment on their kids like they received from their parents. Now is the time to stop this, and try something different - there are many helpful books on behavioural training.
Just because you survived such punishment does not mean that it is OK to propagate it. Seek ways to improve on your already good work. Your kids will love you for it, in the long term, as they learn with you. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, even with wooden-wheeled barrows pushing dung uphill.
Andrew Spannenberg, Mayfield
Alarm isn't to blame for coal woe
GEE, so many people alarmed by "alarmists" (Letters, 8/6). No, Larry Allison, coal generators are not faltering because of climate alarm; it's because these privatised plants must provide profit before maintenance, and because they depend on a price-volatile fossil resource they can burn. Meanwhile renewables are cheaper, as Canberra residents have found because their 100% per cent renewable power is not suffering such price rises.
Peter Devey dismisses high-school science as "simplistic propaganda" before indulging in his own propaganda by citing a zoologist (Tim Flannery, yawn) to argue that climate scientists are wrong. He then argues that our cold la Nina season shows that global heating is not happening, seemingly unaware that it's always cold in Antarctica, despite its recent 40-degree heatwave, and sometimes weather systems blow some of it north. Meanwhile "19 of the hottest years have occurred since 2000, with the exception of 1998, which was helped by a very strong El Nino", according to those 'alarmists' at NASA.
Micheal Gormly, Islington
We must do our part on emissions
WEDNESDAY'S letters certainly had some alarmists on the proposed increases in energy pricing and some still espousing the wondrous virtues of fossil fuel and the closing down of coal-fired power stations as a cause for these proposed increases. One contributor described Australia's greenhouse gas emissions as "diddly squat", citing our emissions as 1.5 per cent of world total. To put this into more perspective, Australia is the 14th highest contributor of greenhouse gases in the world, and per head of population, emit at 330 per cent of world average. These figures do not take into account the fossil fuels we export or the goods we import from overseas countries that are producing greenhouse gases for the production of these imports.
It would be irresponsible for Australia, being a wealthy country, to be content to let other less wealthy countries do the "heavy lifting" in reducing greenhouse gases.
Michael Stevenson, Warners Bay
SHORT TAKES
AT the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in 2011, a spent fuel pool almost entirely evaporated. According to the Japanese prime minister at the time, if that had happened it would have meant a mass evacuation of all residents within a 250km radius, including the city of Tokyo. Considering that nuclear power plants are just controlled, slow nuclear bombs, how many of the advocates for nuclear power on these pages will put their hand up to host a plant in their vicinity?
John Arnold, Anna Bay
WE all know that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow, but the waves always move. As most Australians live on the coastal fringe, why don't we give serious thought to wave power? It's certainly green and always renewable and yet I have heard very little about it. I believe it is already used in the North Sea. At the very least, let's look into it.
Ruth Burrell, Merewether
I BELIEVE the biggest threat to Australia security is not climate change or China; in my opinion Peter Dutton's misused words generate a security threat risk.
Richard Ryan, Summerland Point
AS Adz Carter points out, poor old Don Fraser has taken a leaf out of Donald Trump's book of alternative facts. The fact is we have to go back to the Great Depression, almost a century ago, to find an incoming government that didn't win the following election. Even Gough Whitlam was re-elected in 1974 before Mr Fraser blocked supply a year later. Australians simply don't elect single term governments Don, so settle back and enjoy six to 12 years of the ALP governing this great wide brown land.
Mac Maguire, Charlestown
LLOYD Davies, (Letters, 7/6), I don't think anyone should be surprised by Sky News or the Liberal Party using a term with traces of misogyny. From everything I've seen, Sky News seem to relish their appeal to the lowest common denominator, and the Libs have always appeared to be one big boy's club who make Mad Men look like a documentary.
Adz Carter, Newcastle
IN response to Steve Barnett, (Short Takes, 8/6), yes, only about a third of the voters had the Albanese led Labor Party as first preference, but it must be that those who voted formally, preferred Labor to LNP, if this was no so, then ScoMo would not have had to move out of the Lodge. Or Kirribilli.
Fred McInerney, Karuah
I CONCUR with Peter Mullins's observation that the council should just admit the decision for a skate park in this location was incorrect and do something else in this space (Letters, 3/6). Ongoing maintenance / sand removal and surf damage will surely place further strain on ratepayer funds.
