Uranium use comes at too high a price

Uranium is a finite resource, costing more and more to extract as resources diminish. Hence, it does not compare with investment in solar power, economically or environmentally. And what will be the view of the Martu and other traditional landowners when they are ethically bound to take back the waste?

As ever, the uranium mining industry is in for the quick profit and does not measure up as an ethical or green investment option.

Susan Brookes

Box Hill South

Costly mergers

THE credit crisis has further exposed the myth that one large financial organisation is more efficient than the sum of its component companies. So what happened to the promised cost savings and productivity increases to investors through concentration of expertise?

After amalgamations, the remaining fewer companies that attract big inputs from government agencies and super funds are not in the business of creating anything. They are like marshalling yard supervisors where wagonloads of money are shunted onto different lines and coupled together in an increasingly complicated fashion. It's an industrial-dimension "pea-and-thimble" illusion.

This money shuffling is not the same as supporting a genuinely tangible product that eventually brings benefits to many. Nor, because of our shameful, short-term economic thinking, is it intended to.

The pity of it all is that taxpayer funds and our barely controllable personal superannuation savings have been, and still are being, shunted out of sight because there are no buffers to say "that's far enough". Better check out Centrelink criteria - just in case.

Roger Green

Ferntree Gully

Unit pricing pays off

ELISA Curry's suggestion (BusinessDay, 5/9) that unit pricing will reduce the quality of supermarket products is misleading. Curry is wrong when she implies that better value means lower quality. It is correct that many goods in supermarkets are differentiated and heterogeneous, and clearly consumers make buying choices based on several factors, such as quality, in addition to price. But this does not mean consumers should be denied access to good information, including about such an important factor as price.

Unit pricing makes supermarkets more price competitive and reduces shopping bills. Increasing price competition can in no way be said to reduce quality - what it means is that, for any given quality level, a product will be cheaper. Consumers who have a preference for higher-priced, high-quality products will benefit, along with other consumers. A national mandatory and effective unit pricing system should be introduced to ensure consumers can make informed choices about how much they should pay.

Neil Ashton

Consumer Action Law Centre

Melbourne

Dim outlook

ALAN Moran (BusinessDay, 1/9) is correct in noting that Victorian private electricity system owners "find ways of delaying investments or doing them cheaper than originally intended". This is obviously the reason that 50% of the street lights in my street do not work.

Helen Barker

Boronia

Regional boost

DAVID O'Brien's call for greater focus on development opportunities in regional centres (BusinessDay, 1/9) is laudable because this could take the pressure off infrastructure in Melbourne. But successive federal and state governments have been pursuing this for decades.

Having lived in and worked to develop regional areas over the past 20 years, I have seen initiatives such as satellite cites, decentralisation, and the regional infrastructure development fund benefiting many communities such as Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Shepparton, Wodonga and Traralgon. But these and other second-tier cities such as Wangaratta, Warrnambool, Yarrawonga and Bairnsdale are growing into their spare infrastructure capacity, mainly due to the sea change/tree change/tee change phenomenon.

But the smaller towns between these cities are mainly withering, with services aggregated to regional centres. Rural economies are stalled by the drought and global "free trade" competition, so young people and families are leaving in pursuit of a job and a better existence. Investment in regional infrastructure is crucial, but city people will not relocate without one (or often two) jobs to go to.

O'Brien's highlighting of the Ireland National Development Plan omits to mention the fundamental reason why that country has succeeded in regional development: taxation and investment incentives for research and development and commercialisation in those county locations.

Many similar programs have been proposed to Australian governments but they have not been able to find a way under our constitution. All Australians must be treated equally (including Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders), and incentives to enhance employment prospects for regional areas are apparently unworkable. Many European Union nations and the US have local tax regimes that allow direct private-sector incentives for regional economic development. Why can't we do something similar?

A "Victoria 2030" strategy is also a laudable option, given that most of our state's planning is based on extrapolating historic growth trends, rather than pump-priming infrastructure capacity.

Building capability in regional communities is complex, but government departments have demonstrated their understanding of the benefits to Melbourne of attracting more people outside the urban growth boundary. Whole departments and authorities have been relocated, and state budget allocations to regional infrastructure spending are unprecedented.

But outcomes are not being achieved fast enough to save Melbourne from unsustainable urban sprawl and traffic congestion. Like Ireland, we could adopt a long-term, bipartisan approach to taxation reform, and provide incentives for job creation outside the capital city. Living in regional communities has a lot going for it, but most people cannot make the move without a job.

Geoffrey Carruthers

Mount Eliza

Water reflection

BARRY Hart (BusinessDay, 26/8) stated that the Mitchell River should not be dammed for social and environmental reasons and "people want it to stay that way".

With regard to "social reasons", would it be acceptable to allow, for example, the people of Adelaide to suffer the near-death of their city without any help being given by using some of the water that runs to the sea? Help would be given through the interlocking nature of our water systems to the life-giving Murray River.

For "environmental reasons", would the environment overall be better served by not diverting surplus water to help the important, suffering Murray environs?

And the statement "people want it to stay that way" would seem to be of doubtful veracity under current circumstances.

There is little place for parochial thinking.

Jackson Arnott

Kew