Letters

The Age

Wednesday November 12, 2008

GIPPSLAND LOGGING

Chop, chop, let's honour a promise

HAVING walked through the Valley of the Giants on Brown Mountain, I am horrified that it is now being annihilated ("Nothing natural about selection of which trees live, which die", The Age, 10/11). Barry Vaughan (VicForests) can't be serious when he muses that destroying our remaining old-growth forests could be a "better thing for the world" than importing timbers and using plantation timbers. We shouldn't be importing timber from countries whose native forests are as compromised and exploited as our own. And, yes, we should be using plantation timber and engineered timber products.

I also fail to see how killing 300-year-old trees is a "more sophisticated ... more sustainable way ... of producing natural resources". So, we destroy old-growth forests to replace them with degraded ones? Releasing masses of carbon into the atmosphere, exterminating wildlife, biodiversity and mucking up water systems in the process? That's parochial, not sophisticated. There is nothing sustaining in forest degrading.

Enough with the "consulting". The State Government should honour its 2006 electoral promise and take immediate action to cease logging on Brown Mountain.

Tracey Callander, Preston

Throw a koala on the BBQ

BARRY Vaughan believes that harvesting what remains of old growth forest is "more sophisticated and more sustainable" than plantation timber and that timber is produced by a chainsaw. If Barry duffered and butchered a wild koala and threw it on his barbie, by the same logic he could boast of sophisticated and sustainable meat production. Of course, koala and old growth forest harvesting is sustainable, until there are no more koalas or old trees to harvest.

We've got to think, do we really want the remaining fragments of old growth forest preserved in this state or do we want to pay the likes of Barry Vaughan fat salaries to manage their total destruction and turn the definition of sustainability of its head as they spin nonsense?

Roger Gotch, Scoresby

Heedless of consequences

THE Victorian Government is hellbent on the destruction of our last remaining and irreplaceable old growth forests - and is apparently oblivious to the consequences. Continued logging of Victoria's old growth forests, including logging at East Gippsland's Brown Mountain occurring now, is in direct violation of the Government's 2006 election promises.

Logging of old-growth is reprehensible on biodiversity grounds alone, but when the huge carbon emissions from logging and the severe disruption to water supply are taken into account, it is ludicrous. The pro-logging rhetoric is illogical - ancient forest ecosystems cannot just grow back after being clear-felled, and the logging of old-growth is unsustainable and uneconomic without public subsidy.

Dan Musil, Northcote

Enough of the hysteria

OLD growth forests have long been misrepresented as museum exhibits that will stand forever. The Wilderness Society's Luke Chamberlain is just the latest conservationist to forget that forests actually live and die with his claim that "92% of Victorian old growth has been lost since European settlement. Brown Mountain is among the best still standing" (10/11). Aside from the impact of Europeans over the past 180 years, millions of hectares of Victorian forest has naturally grown old, declined, died, and been replaced by young regrowth - some of it several times over. Other areas that were young forest have since grown to comprise Victoria's current crop of 840,000 hectares of old growth, including at Brown Mountain.

The only certainty is that these old forests will eventually die or be killed by fire and that the parks and reserves in which almost all of them reside will look different in the future. In the context of this, the hysteria surrounding the harvesting and regeneration of a tiny 18-hectare portion for human use is unwarranted.

Mark Poynter, Victorian media spokesman, Institute of Foresters of Australia, Doncaster East

I believe Ron. Why don't authorities?

CHILD abandoned by mother aged 10, left in the care of the Salvation Army in one of their boys' homes ("Details required on decades-old abuse", The Age, 11/11). Ron Hunt suffered horrific abuse as the victim of repeated rape. On weekends, he was given respite from the boys' home by a couple who also sexually and physically abused him. Ron spoke up and complained about this abuse and he was not moved, not protected.

The people who could have saved this child from the hell he was living in perpetuated the abuse. The Government knows all of this information and still it's not enough. The abuse of the abused continues by the Government, which failed a 10-year-old boy in 1958 and has failed a brave, honest man in 2008.

Dear Ron, I believe you and I don't need to know dates.

Beau Lazenby, Collingwood

Funny kind of idea

THE Victorian Government requires wards of the state who were sexually abused and seek compensation to provide precise details of their abuse - dates of rape, frequency, date the suffering started (The Age, 11/11). Even if the abuse took place 50 or more years ago.

I thought it must be April Fool's Day but, checking again, found it was Remembrance Day. How ironic.

The Government has settled more than 60 cases at a cost of $4million. (Victims call it "hush" money because they are sworn to secrecy.) By contrast, Queensland has set aside $100 million, Tasmania $75 million and Western Australia $114 million for non-court redress schemes.

Sympathy and sensitivity, John Brumby? Humbug. The Victorian Government wants to save money, and it does that by dragging its former state wards through the courts, aggressively fighting them every inch of the way.

Frank Golding, Kensington

Other stories please

ENOUGH on the Bali bombers. Showing their photos and giving long-winded stories on their lawful execution only adds to their martyrdom in the eyes of their followers. Instead, show the faces and tell the stories of the hundreds of people who died, and the thousands of relatives and friends whose lives will be forever changed because of their evil, senseless act.

Glen J.Sinnott, South Melbourne

Come to Indonesia

AS AN Australian living in Jakarta, I would urge your newspaper to refrain from using unnecessary - and false - phrases such as "Indonesia on high alert". I live in a place frequented by foreigners and on Monday I travelled to and from Singapore. I can guarantee that Indonesia is not "on high alert". I also implore your readers to bypass the media hype and travel to Indonesia, if they wish - you will get nothing but smiles.

Paul Greenway, Jakarta, Indonesia

Missing the point

LETTERS for and against the execution of the Bali bombers in the past few days reveal a fundamental misconception: that the death penalty is somehow an issue in Australia or Indonesia. Australia will never bring back this barbaric practice and Indonesia is likely to continue with it, like most Muslim countries. Indonesia will certainly not be influenced by letters in this paper.

George Finlay, Balaclava

Auto-dinosaurs

IN THE good ol' US of A, where GMH and Ford are headquartered, they already produce petrol-electric hybrid cars. Why has it taken GMH and Ford and Toyota so long to see the writing on the wall for the future of the Australian car industry?

The Government's bail-out package, while well intentioned, is only going to subsidise and perpetuate the existence of the two dinosaurs, GMH and Ford, who will use the hand-out to adapt pre-existing technology to Australian cars. Too little, too late. Nothing new here.

Paul Rozario, Camberwell

Money for trams

THE Federal Government will give the car industry $6.2 billion to save jobs and exports.

Imagine if it put $6.2 billion into tram and train workshops so they could employ people to build state-of-the-art carriages and engines for domestic use and export. There are gridlocked cities throughout Asia that could use clean light-rail systems, and our major cities could use better public transport.

Damien Codognotto, Templestowe

Not hot on Steiner

THE mainstream program at Footscray City Primary School has suffered enough at the hands of incompetent bureaucrats and parents who have no interest in anything but their Steiner enclave within the school (Letters, 11/11). Each year about $100,000 of additional funding is spent on the Steiner program, creating two tiers of opportunity in the school.

Because of submissions by myself and other members of the school community, the interim school council cut the Steiner intern program earlier this year, saying that the school's budget could not be used to pay a volunteer or Steiner host family. A financial investigation of the school accounts from 2001 has also been requested by the school council as a result of further submissions. Due to the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development's continued intransigence on dealing with these issues, I, and other parents, have referred these matters to the Victorian Auditor-General.

We have requested an apology from the DEECD and the return to the school's budget of every cent used to subsidise the Steiner program.

Jenni Lans, West Footscray

Fight crime the old-fashioned way

WILL overworked police from suburban stations and country regions volunteer to travel into Melbourne CBD for additional weekend night shifts, finding their own way home in the cold light of the morning ("Spy in the street: Nixon's answer to violence after dark", The Age, 11/11)? It doesn't sound likely.

Melbourne used to be patrolled on foot by police from Russell Street headquarters, the city traffic branch and Bourke Street West station. They were supplemented by mobile traffic police and the wireless patrol.

There was no shortage of police on the streets, because the government paid for a large number of them to be stationed in the Melbourne CBD. If there was trouble, offenders weren't photographed from a closed-circuit TV van, they were arrested. The hope that police will volunteer for extra duty and deployment of a CCTV van will not prevent drunken violence on Melbourne's streets. Nor will Hummers, painted up and loaned as an advertising gimmick. We just need more police on Melbourne's streets, permanently, like before.

Lawrie Bradly, Surrey Hills

Ignoring those who need us most

PAUL Austin's piece (Comment & Debate, 7/11) resonated with those of us who, for many years, have struggled to find suitable accommodation for mentally ill family members.

We are the parents of such a man, at this moment in acute psychiatric care and not for the first time. The hospital staff are doing all that is possible for him, but are having great difficulty in finding any accommodation for him, let alone accommodation suitable for his needs.

This has been the case for the whole of the 20 years of his illness. His accommodation in the past has often been basic, with shared kitchens and bathrooms, often dirty, ill-equipped and over-priced. But where else can he go?

We are grateful for the dedicated work of the professionals in the mental health system, and for the services and financial support provided by the community. But as Paul Austin said, public advocate Colleen Pearce finds it "astonishing that basic tenancy rights are denied to our most vulnerable citizens".

With decent and secure accommodation, our son might be able to work and have the satisfaction of interacting positively with the community.

Name and address withheld

Grattan's namesake

BUSINESSDAY reports (10/11) that Australia's newest think tank, based in Melbourne, will be known as the Grattan Institute. Its founder, Allen Myers, hinted that while the name could be based on its possible location in Grattan Street near Melbourne University, it could also be in reference to Irish statesman Henry Grattan.

I am sure that Age readers would think that a more apposite reference could be to your esteemed political writer, Michelle Grattan, who has for many years informed us with her ideology-free prose and insights. Perhaps The Age or Myers could consider a more formal link with the institute to recognise her contribution to Australia's intellectual and political development.

Megan Stoyles, Aireys Inlet

© 2008 The Age

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