The Nationals' vote to remove all subsidies for renewable energy providers segues neatly with Turnbull's resolve to steal taxpayer dollars to engage in market manipulation by conspiring to subsidise polluting coal-fired power stations beyond their use-by date ("Renewables get thumbs down from Nationals", Sunday CT, September 10, p8). Minerals Council of Australia – which may well have vested interests in framing the hypothesis from which desired results automatically occur – commissioned research by BA and asserts renewables are set to receive $2.8billion a year, up to 2030.
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A balanced article would provide comparative Australian Institute research estimating fossil fuel industries receive subsidies of $10billion a year, mostly to mining. This taxpayer donation to mining's bottom line becomes even more obscene on learning these global corporations "invest" more in PR and buying politicians than they remit in taxes to Treasury.
Tortuous legislation, ghost-written by "big four" accounting strategists, involving transfer pricing, offshore dividend flows and inter-subsidiary, high-interest loans, give the illusion of Australian mining being loss-making! Then there are uncosted externalities of negative health outcomes, accumulating over generations, irreversible environmental destruction, air quality deterioration and, as well illustrated by Caribbean hurricanes and Pacific island inundation, global warming.
Assistant Health Minister David Gillespie dared suggest a note of caution on the party's gung-ho approach, however only on the basis that some "voters used renewable energy" – health effects being relatively inconsequential to him!
Albert M. White, Queanbeyan
Plastic folly
Dick Varley (September 10) points out that we can reduce the plastics in waste by not creating the waste in the first place. Tony Auhl (September 3) points out burning plastic increases emissions from the ACT and is in direct conflict with the ACT government's goal of decreasing emissions.
The apologists for burning plastic say it removes waste while reducing our need to burn fossil fuels. They will argue that private industry will pay to build and operate the plant and so it will cost the ACT community little.
Both these statements are demonstrably incorrect. Plastics come from fossil fuels, so burning plastic is the same as burning oil. The ACT community will pay for the money to build the waste plant through a government guarantee that our waste will go through the plant for a fee sufficient to pay for the cost of money.
Private industry can build, operate and own the plant but the ACT community, not the government, should finance it. Doing this will save the ACT community the cost of money on the capital expenditure as the money with interest will be repaid to us.
The recycled interest saved will be more than sufficient to pay for the higher cost of a waste plant that does not burn fossil fuel.
Kevin Cox, Ngunnawal
Restless hearts
Ian Warden, ("I miss being Jesus's sunbeam", September 10, p19), explores such themes as the loss of religious faith in himself and society generally, and why he still loves visiting churches and cathedrals. I am glad he admits great Christian hymns are often masterpieces of the finest composers and writers.
But Ian avoids the more interesting question posed to me by an atheist friend recently. My friend asked why, in the face of both scientific advances and revelations of terrible child abuse by those calling themselves Christians, so many Australians still attend worship regularly?
Churches and cathedrals are crowded at Christmas and Easter. There are often waiting lists for places in church schools and aged care facilities, though perhaps not always for religious reasons. On any given Sunday perhaps 2 million Australians are in church and not all singing "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam". Why should this be so?
The answer is complex but the famous words of Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo, who died in AD430, give us a clue. He prayed: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you."
Every human society has shown that people experience this divine hunger and restlessness. Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the answer of God to this hunger.
Father Robert Willson, Deakin
Erratic zones
After a good deal of vacillation over policy questions in recent weeks, Tony Trobe reverted to a fundamental question in "Design matters", his weekly interview with stakeholders (Sunday CT, allhomes, September 10).
He suggested, to a fellow architect, "The NCDC used to be a one-stop shop for planning strategy and implementation. There is a school of thought that, since self-government, the clarity of ideas has been decapitated."
His formality cannot hide the suggestion that ACT zoning, the core of town planning, has become an erratic, opportunistic mechanism wielded by our town council for the generation of funding to overcome shortfalls in budget allocations ever since self-government was foisted on the territory.
Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor
In defence of grasslands
Andrew Brown (September 10 Sunday CT, p1) reported asthma threats from Canberra's grasslands, quoting local expert Simon Haberle. Searching Professor Haberle's web resources will show pollens from grasses in spring come entirely from species introduced into Australia and widely grown in regional pastures. The ANU pollen team's website specifies: "proximity of the Gungahlin, Belconnen and Tuggeranong suburbs to open pasture ... may be a factor" in supply of spring pollens. Importantly, native grasses do not flower until midsummer so cannot contribute to the major pollen peak locally each spring.
Friends of Grasslands respects serious public health issues like asthma. However our group is troubled native grasslands and grassy woodlands, already feared as places of snakes and uncontrolled fire, could be blamed for respiratory problems. Pollens come out of rural pastures surrounding Canberra, and are supplemented by urban weeds. These weeds are the same grasses planted for pastures that flourish in urban parks and around our houses and transport routes.
Our group argues that if "grasslands" are linked to spring pollens, then native grasslands and grassy woodlands jewels in the ACT's nature reserves must be judged "not guilty".
John Fitz Gerald, Friends of Grasslands, Higgins
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