I have been waiting for some word of compassion from our Government for the 150,000-200,000 people held hostage between the warring parties in north-east Sri Lanka; some word in support of their right to life; some word of condemnation or even caution to the Government of Sri Lanka, whose army is daily shelling and bombing innocent civilians, allegedly to wipe out the Tamil Tigers.
Even if we doubt the willingness of the Sri Lankan Government to listen to criticism, for the sake of our common humanity the Australian Government must not remain silent.
In Australia, we finally established precedents for bringing to justice those who massacre innocents. We dare not stand by and do or say nothing when others massacre innocent people.
Good Friday reminds us of the evil permitted by compliant governments who turn their backs and let hate, fear and prejudice override concern for human rights and goodness.
Let us not allow the forces of hate, racism and inhumanity go unchallenged as we did in Gaza a few weeks ago.
Dr John P. Brown, Fraser
Is broadband best?
I am impressed by the precision with which the Rudd Government has estimated the cost of the proposed NBN. It's $43 billion, not $40 billion or $50 billion! Impressive, considering it is probably out by a factor of three.
I was the founder (1984) and managing director (until 2005) of AOFR, an optical fibre components manufacturer that supplied products to the world FTTC, FTTH, FTTP market from 1988.
For most of that time we supplied around 40 per cent of the world market for these components.
We supplied the components for the total rebuild of the telecommunications network in the old East Germany in the early 1990s more than half a million devices.
AOFR supplied into all the early trials in the USA in the early 1990s.
At that time the cost was between US$2,500 and US$5,000 per house for a new build, not retrofit. Over 70 per cent of this cost was in the civil engineering that is, the backhoes.
Allowing for close to 20 years of inflation and manufacturing efficiencies, the per-premises cost is probably something like A$15,000 to A$20,000.
If Australia has close to 10 million houses/units/businesses, we very easily arrive at an estimated cost of $150 billion to $200 billion.
Not a precise $43 billion! There have been very few large-scale FTTP installations anywhere in the world and of those, apart from South Korea, take-up rates have not exceeded 50 per cent.
If Mr Rudd's company can manage to raise this amount of cash, I pity my children's grandchildren, who will still be paying for it.
The NBN is a great idea, but can we afford it? Forget the hype, no other country comes close to 90 per cent penetration. And few are as vast as this land.
Dr Scott Rashleigh, Red Hill English channel
Here's an idea for Football Federation Australia.
Why not get chairman Frank Lowy to buy an English Premier League soccer team (Why not? Everyone else is doing it) let's say Portsmouth and then populate it with Australia's top soccer players.
He can do this through purchases from other UK and European clubs as well as providing a tunnel for players in Australia.
So we end up with the Australian international soccer team playing English Premier League.
International competition, constant team building.
David Kindon, Merimbula, NSW
Email a friend