Mitsubishi closure
Federal industry minister Kim Carr has announced a $50 million "support package" for workers at the Mitsubishi's Tonsley Park car plant in Adelaide to soften the blow of the plant's closure. One way to spend that money which would make dollars and sense might be to refit the plant to manufacture renewable energy units such as wind turbines and solar panels.
It is reasonable to expect that there will be a major and sustained demand for renewable energy products over coming decades as the world battles to stop runaway climate change. South-East Asia will be no exception to this trend.
Australia currently has a chance to position itself as a major regional supplier of renewable energy generators. Reconfiguring the old Mitsubishi plant and retraining the workers would make much more sense than starting from scratch.
Zane Alcorn
East Brunswick, Vic
Ecosocialist Network
The interview with me published in GLW #737 has been posted on a few left-environmental sites in Europe and Canada. As a result the Adelaide-based Ecosocialist Network has signed up to the International Ecosocialist email group.
It's just a case in point how your paper, now it's electronic, is working so effectively to help international links grow and mature. Today I receive a request from a Queensland academic to join our group — again because of the GLW article, so national networks are being fostered by your publication too. This is just a note to say a heartfelt thanks, and to bring to your awareness one small example of the ripple effects of what you're doing; I'm sure it's just the tip of a vast unseen iceberg. Keep it up, your presence is invaluable!
John Rice
Ecosocialist Network, Adelaide
Prisons
Don Weatherburn's article in the February 6 Sydney Morning Herald made many good points about how imprisonment is abused by politicians who won't confront the social problems in the community. But he still supports prisons as reducing crime when the evidence is to the contrary, particularly where 60% of offenders reoffend. Crime rates have been dropping consistently in most Western countries, the rate of that drop being masked by the effect of imprisonment causing crime. The disruption of families, accommodation, jobs and brutalisation means that most ex-prisoners don't survive the experience; tagged and excluded from the general community for the remainder of their lives. Only the prison industry gains, while we cower in fear of the crime it creates, leaving the successful restorative justice and mentoring programs unfunded.
Brett Collins
Justice Action
Sydney
Private schools
If the prestigious and wealthier private schools — most of which claim some sort of religious base — are so ethical, effective, elite and successful that they attract five precious federal dollars for every one provided to public schools, how is it that they are not sufficiently ethical and charitable to donate some portion of those funds directly to special needs education in the public system?
Just what is so special about conspicuous greed or disregarding extreme and obvious disadvantage?
Some private schools handpick only the most privileged and successful pupils. These patterns of discrimination and exclusion do the image the schools' religious affiliates no favours.
Fortunately this is not the case across the board.
However, an education minister who is also a minister for inclusion would do better to fund support for needier students in the public system first.
Jane Salmon
Lindfield, NSW
Sorry
They say, don't get mad, get even. I say, don't say sorry, give the land back!
Peter Gilet
Albany, WA
Police corruption
The recent corruption exposure in the Victorian police is about sworn police officers in this state deliberately conspiring to murder members of the public and so prevent greater exposure of other criminal activities in the police ranks.
The Office of Police Integrity and the media are only exposing the ways and means various police members have gone to corruptly and covertly protect their own. Until the "smoking gun" that led to the execution of male prostitute Shane Chartres-Abbott is revealed and Detective-Sergeant Peter Lalor is charged with conspiracy to murder, we will not be privy to the extent of murders commissioned by Victoria Police in recent times (some to be considered: Chaouk, Jensen, Houghton, Abdallah).
It will only then become self-evident of the need for a royal commission in Victoria and for a permanent independent body against corruption, such as NSW's ICAC, to be established in Victoria, this being the only forum in which to complete the investigation in the "Review of Fatal Police Shootings", as reported by the Office of Police Integrity in November 2005.
George Maleckas
Port Melbourne, Vic
Simple
In US politics, Barack Obama battles with racism, Hillary Clinton battles with sexism, and John McCain battles with ageism. In Australian politics, Mark Latham's mother claims that there are slackers and workers. Kevin Rudd battles with battlers. Brendan Nelson battles with workers. The slackers sit on the back bench. Politics made simple.
Horace Consandine
Malabar, NSW
Rental market
I was philosophical when I received notice to vacate my Old Pittwater Road, Brookvale, rental home, which Warringah Council had purchased along with two others in 1995 with Section 94 funds to provide parkland. After eight years, I faced moving into an increasingly unaffordable rental market. I thought perhaps they would use the giant adjoining factory wall as the screen for an outdoor cinema. Instead, it is now adorned with graffiti.
At least they halted any more units being built in that street, which is now heavily overdeveloped — $2 million from our Section 94 coffers well spent.
A year later and Beacon Hill High School was on the market for sale by tender. Administrator Dick Persson refused to dip into Warringah's $25 Million Section 94 slush fund to keep this public land in public hands. Anyway, we never wanted it to be "public open space" — we wanted it to be a public high school.
Tony Backhouse
Dee Why, NSW
Liberal flock
What a hilarious flock of birds attain Liberal Party leadership! They once had a fledgling Peacock, and until recently, a lame-duck John Howard. Now it seems their new leader, Brendan Nelson, with his bent for procrastination and strange declarations, is acting like a lame goose while a crowing Malcolm Turnbull nests in the wings.
What fun, as a quailing Nelson attempted to worm out of supporting an apology to the Stolen Generations; the stool pigeons within his Shadow Cabinet sell him out and Labor Party roosters egg him on.
Keith Mobbs
Lane Cove, NSW
Tibet
Prince Charles, long-time supporter of Tibet and friend of the Dalai Lama, recently made it known that he would not be attending the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. His decision has been welcomed worldwide by Tibet support groups as China has made no progress on its promise to improve its human rights record since it was awarded the Olympic Games in 2001. In fact, China has intensified it's repression in Tibet during the lead-up to the Olympics. The US-based Human Rights Watch has reported that there has been a three-fold increase in arbitrary arrests and detentions in Tibet over the last two years and a total of over 1.2 million Tibetans killed since the Chinese invasion in 1949.
Prince Charles should be applauded for his continued stance against human rights abuses in Tibet, despite pressure from the Chinese government. More world leaders should stand up and follow his lead to make China enter sincere negotiations with the Dalai Lama to work towards a peaceful resolution.
Let's hope the world will see through the shiny facade of the "Games of Shame" and decide not to allow it to happen anymore.
Tim Green
Melbourne, Vic