CAT CURFEW
WHAT is happening with the cat curfew, when neighbour’s cat continues to come into our yard, and catch the birds.
I know where it comes from as I witnessed it with a dead bird.
It seems people don’t give a hoot where their cat roams, I for one care very much about our wildlife.
Cecilia Temple
Stratford
Déjà vu
THE Nationals may well be concerned about Labor’s plans for emissions reductions but, at least they are doing something, after 10 years of Coalition inaction, dithering and denial.
The Nationals still have no visible or published policy on climate change and, as far as I can find, no Shadow Minister for Climate Change or even Energy.
Nationals leader David Littleproud claims the nation should downgrade its commitment under the Paris Agreement and, along with the Liberals, is pushing for nuclear as the answer to replacing fossil fuel power.
This despite advice from experts that it will take too long, be far too expensive and will provide electricity that will cost 10-15 times that from renewables.
And now we have their Shadow Minister for Veterans Affairs, Barnaby Joyce, being recently quoted as saying “Wind turbines and solar panels are filth that’s all over our countryside”.
Time for Darren Chester to step up publicly and explain where The Nationals are heading in terms of climate change, reducing emissions and improving energy security.
Whilst he is at it, he should explain how the nuclear option will address the issue and what costs and implementation timeframes might be like.
John Gwyther
Coongulla
Priorities way off mark
THE Latrobe Valley Field Naturalists Club members are shocked by the state government’s decision to allow duck hunting to continue, especially as the recent Parliamentary Inquiry recommended that the practice should be banned.
Such a ban on hunting native birds is already in place in NSW.
Many submissions opposed the killing of native birds for recreation, and millions of Victorians oppose the suffering and distress caused to ducks.
Numbers are generally in decline and bird watchers everywhere are appalled by the killing of species including the Pink-eared duck.
Spending $10 million to educate shooters would be better spent on restoring wetlands.
What a wasted opportunity to end hunting and protect and restore declining habitat for our water birds.
Irene Proebsting
Latrobe Valley Field Naturalists Club
Be brave and shave
THE World’s Greatest Shave is arguably Australia’s favourite fundraising campaign.
It has been going for 26 years – with more than two million Australians taking part by shaving, cutting, and colouring their hair, to raise vital money for the Leukaemia Foundation and people living with blood cancer, in Australia.
The World’s Greatest Shave, however, wasn’t immune to the devastating impact of COVID, which created the most formidable challenge the campaign has faced in its 26-year history.
With the World’s Greatest Shave being the single biggest source of income for the Leukaemia Foundation, the organisation took a significant hit and saw fundraising figures drop dramatically.
The World’s Greatest Shave had to pivot, and this year, we farewell the beloved chins as we launch a new era of the campaign, with a vibrant, bold, contemporary, and more personal approach – to support the growing number of Australians impacted by blood cancer.
The new-look World’s Greatest Shave celebrates the everyday heroes in our community doing ‘bloody beautiful’ acts of shaving, cutting, colouring, or donating.
The new creative direction will feature real human participants and a catchy new slogan ‘That’s Bloody Beautiful’, which will resonate more deeply with Australians.
There has never been a more important time for World’s Greatest Shave to be back in force, with more Australians diagnosed with blood cancer now than ever before – underscoring the urgent need for increased support, additional resources, and more money.
More than 140,000 Australians are currently living with blood cancer.
Incidence of blood cancer has soared by 47 per cent in the past decade, making it a significant public health issue in Australia.
Money raised through the World’s Greatest Shave ensure that the Leukaemia Foundation can continue to provide vital support to blood cancer patients and their loved ones, and fund ground-breaking research, in the hopes of one day finding a cure.
We urge the Australian community to sign up to shave, cut, or colour their hair for World’s Greatest Shave by visiting worldsgreatestshave.com
Chris Tanti
CEO – Leukaemia Foundation
Out of the running
BARNABY Joyce’s recent demonstration against renewable technologies in Canberra was well received by the couple of hundred or so demonstrators who attended.
Barnaby and his National Party leader, David Litteproud described large-scale wind and solar projects in country areas as “filth” and “a multinational taxpayer swindle”.
Apparently a land-swallowing, big open-cut coal mine is clean and aesthetically appealing in their eyes and they seem to ignore the fact that Australian taxpayers support more than $11 billion of tax breaks to gas and coal producers every year, while loan repayments to wind and solar developers from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation are now returning over $1 billion to the Federal budget annually.
The truth is that a minority of farmers are genuinely concerned about large renewable energy and transmission line projects being developed in their areas, but there are many other farmers who support these, because they help fight climate change.
The group, Farmers for Climate Action (FCA), have been growing strongly due to the increasingly obvious effects that the changing climate has had on their operations.
As well, farmers that host wind farms and nearby communities can earn tens of thousands of dollars per wind turbine per year helping to disaster-proof their businesses and keep their sons and daughters on the land.
The Nationals, by taking this anti-renewables stance, would deprive Gippslanders of $42 billion of investment in wind and solar farms over the next decade, and similar figures for other renewable energy zones across the nation.
Instead, they would develop more climate-wrecking, environmentally devastating and polluting coal, gas and now nuclear energy generation to fill the shortfall in electricity supply.
Anyone fancy a nuclear reactor down the road from your house?
Anyone?
The Nationals and by association their Coalition partners, the Liberal Party, are dealing themselves out of any consideration to be our future national government, because they have allowed themselves to be the shock troopers for the fossil fuel Industry.
They need to base their policies on peer reviewed science and for the last 30 years the science has told us that the only way to avoid catastrophic climate melt-down is for us to replace coal, oil and natural gas with renewable energy.
Another piece of advice to The Nationals – they need to get back to representing and leading their rural constituencies to the industries of the future.
At the moment, they have succumbed wholly to the desires of the corrupting big money of the mining corporations who regrettably are enjoying a good return on their ‘investment’ in buying off the conservative side of politics.
Dan Caffrey
Traralgon
