A pictorial half-page (Sunday CT, March 10) devoted to people who regard themselves and the land as one entity; in contrast to those who regard their own environment as something to be exploited for short-term political or financial gain. The former, harmonising with cool water of the high country's Long Plain – without goose pimples – tough as well as realistic.
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Congratulations to those Indigenous people and the Sunday Canberra Times for coming out, in their own way, to support what scientists, dedicated to truth, have been publishing for many decades. It's been a hard fight. There have been few long-term wins on behalf of the Kosciuszko landscape. An early one, deletion of a proposed dam covering glaciation remnants on the upper part of Spencers Creek. Not building it would compromise the whole scheme, declared Sir William Hudson, chairman of SMHEA.
Flow of water into the Murray is dependent, predominantly, on precipitation on the Kosciuszko massif.
Winter snow acts as a reservoir, releasing water gradually via spring-summer snow melt, again much-regulated by moss and peat along drainage lines.
Politicians and such ilk actively endangering this hydrology might be described as "horse-traders" when, above all other evidence, we have the example of the collapse of Wingecarribee Swamp, which "on the night of August 8, 1998, blew out and collapsed ..." (Running Down by Mary White, p113).
The swamp, a wetland of national and international significance, which had taken 10,000 years to form, "originally occupied an area of 600 hectares, and clear, fresh water of excellent quality emerged from its lower end".
Colin Samundsett, Farrer
Lack of authority
So the Murray Darling Basin Authority has 288 people in its Canberra office. Wow, who'd have thought that many!
What do they all do? It can't be managing the Murray Darling river system, as by all accounts the plan is totally ineffective and satisfies no one, while the health and sustainability of the system seems to be totally shot.
Don Sephton, Greenway
Counting heads
No surprise to learn that the "independent arbiter" (laughter, please), the Remuneration Tribunal (federal and ACT), an artifice to justify scheduled and routine salary increases for a select clientele, has recommended an indefensible, given the times, increase for this overclass at the expense, yet again, of their workers.
For some years, in federal and now ACT departments and agencies, we have seen SES and senior management positions and levels inflate steadily, their numbers and salaries surpassing those in like organisations in other comparable societies.
Our military and police are not immune. Past reviews have shown that the ADF has a higher ratio of executive and senior management compared to its foot soldiers than its counterparts in the UK, USA, Canada and NZ. The military is effectively locked in competition with the public service on rank levels, numbers, and reward parity.
The AFP experimented in the 1990s with "flattening" its organisation structure, purportedly to make it lean, mean and cost effective. It didn't happen. The counter-intuitive but arguably foreseeable consequence was the growth of a much higher ratio of chiefs to Indians, as evidenced today. This pancaking also led to the dilution of the breadth and depth of critical skills and experience.
It is time to put our front-line workers first, to pare back executive and senior management, and for the latter to focus on intelligently and empathetically resourcing, supporting, and guiding workers to ethical and successful results.
A seasoned executive headhunter shared his opinion recently that if the SES were to be halved, few would notice and it would not adversely affect productivity.
Lest this contribution be seen as sour grapes, I held SES Band 3 office for 10 years in, successively, two operational entities.
A. Whiddett, Forrest
The smoking gun
That survivor Jay Wilson was not one of the approximately 40,000 Americans succumbing to gun violence annually, recovering, albeit bankrupt and badly scarred to graciously forgive his assailant, reflects the daily Russian roulette to which US citizens are subject ("'Devastation': the cost of getting shot in America", Sunday CT, March 10, p17-19).
Some 24,000 US citizens annually use guns to commit suicide. Approximately 90,000 annually, like Wilson, survive gun violence. 2018 figures show the US accounts for 393 million (46 per cent) of total global civilian firearms, with about 43 per cent of households having at least one gun.
Following the Port Arthur massacre, John Howard, steeled by the nation's horror but against ferociously entrenched vested interests, implemented the 1996 "gun buyback" of unregistered, illegal and unwanted firearms. His then deputy, Tim Fischer, who doubtless has good intelligence, warns a "wave" of pressure from well-funded sources – US National Rifle Association – is putting renewed pressure on gun laws.
Some recently created federal parties have no qualms accepting blood money to further the political aims of their gun advocate financiers. The Shooting Industry Foundation of Australia may have had its fingerprints on donations supplied to candidates in Tasmanian, Queensland and Victorian elections. Figures suggest Australians may now own 3 million firearms, more than before 1996!
Albert M. White, Queanbeyan
Sleepers awake
A group of volunteers at the balloon festival being embarrassed by the farcical banning of Black Magic is a tremendous start. I want to read next that a larger group of Canberrans has woken up to the embarrassing levels of political correctness, in general.
Vasily Martin, Queanbeyan
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