While classical Liberals such as John Humphries (''Neo-liberalism: more sinned against than sinning'', May 28, p21) and others at the Centre for Independent Studies may believe that welfare, health care spending and environmental regulation are abuses of government power, I and many other Australians would disagree.
When I think of welfare, I don't believe it to be a massive waste of government money, but rather a legitimate and necessary safety net for Australians who have fallen on hard times, been hit by unexpected events (such as the global economic crisis) or otherwise disadvantaged.
Can anyone really advocate cutting off a vital source of income for single parents, aged pensioners, carers and the disabled?
In a liberal democracy, surely the Government has some obligation to try to ensure that nobody is left behind due to factors outside their control?
The United States, with their liberalised, largely unregulated and thoroughly private health-care system, spends more on health in relation to outcomes than anywhere else in the world, despite 16 per cent of people having no access to health care and many more having insufficient access to medication or medical services.
Finally, if we look at environmental regulation, with the problems of acid rain, the ozone hole and global warming being caused by pollution, and a complete failure by business or corporations to deal with these and other land, water and air pollution issues, it is pretty clear that companies cannot be trusted to regulate themselves, and governments are needed to protect the public interest.
Where corporations and business are not upholding the public interest, we need government to step in.
Joshua Smith, Gordon
Nuclear is way to go
Professor Leslie Kemeny's article (''It's clear: we must go nuclear'', May 26, p11) appeals to logic and common sense but not to the clean coal and renewables industries, the obvious competition to nuclear power generation. The former relies on the ability to extract, liquefy, pump and store underground for ever carbon dioxide at its critical pressure of 5.8Mpa, 840lbs/sq inch, 57 Atmospheres. How can we be sure that some seismic event will not crack the old oil or gas dome and release the gas, to asphyxiate all oxygen-breathing life in a radius of several kilometres?
Remember the Beverly Hillbillies? Their wealth from Black Gold, or Texas Tea, had seeped to the surface through a fissure, a natural event. Find me an insurance company that will indemnify against such a seepage and release event.
In contrast, the high-level nuclear waste, amounting to a few cubic metres a year, could be worked into Synroc, a kind of Australian-invented, synthetic granite buried at the threshold of a subduction zone where tectonic plates are colliding. The nearest is the Kermadec Trench north-east of New Zealand. Slots drilled in the subducting sea bed would house the waste to be buried and carried under kilometres of rock for many times the radioactive half-life and eventually into the mantle.
The oil industry has ships and equipment capable of drilling and placement in depths up to 8000m. Instead of wasting money on a dangerous, unreliable carbon dioxide storage scheme, why not back a nuclear waste storage prospect that could safely and permanently serve the needs of countries that have embraced uranium fission, because there is really no alternative for making electricity in the bulk quantities needed.
Let's put Chernobyl behind us and just make sure that our nuclear power plants are not staffed by idiots.
Colin P. Glover, Canberra City
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