Letters

Manage forests, don't lock them up

AS A forester with 48 years' experience in Victoria's river red gum forests, I am disturbed by Carrillo Gantner's emotive advocacy supporting the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council's recommendations for creating national parks to ostensibly "protect" river red gum forests in the central Murray (Comment & Debate, 13/10).

Foresters have been at the forefront for better management, were first to draw attention - in the 1930s - to potential water issues and continue to be leaders in identifying and promoting the most equitable and efficient use of scarce water resources, the lifeblood of the forests and wetlands. The reality is that these forests have been managed for multiple use for human wellbeing for thousands of years. The on-ground evidence is there for all to see: unmanaged, "protected" forests are the worst affected by accumulated drought stress.

VEAC failed in its duty to recommend a land-use category and management actions that will ensure the long-term ecological sustainability of these forests and wetlands. The region in question is one of the most heavily modified in Australia. Sustainably managing productive and non-productive uses and values for the whole community is the best future for these forests and wetlands, not locking them up in national parks.

Barrie D.Dexter, Mulgrave

Parks are far from perfect

CARRILLO Gantner, president of the Myer Foundation, is right. Victoria does have the opportunity to make this the future and not just the past. But if the Myer Foundation thinks it has backed a winner in the "park dedication stakes", will it ever admit it backed a loser in the "conservation and protection stakes"?

VEAC's own list of "forests in best ecological condition" does not include any in a long-standing national park. This tells me that the best conservation and protection is not provided by park management. VEAC says that national parks are the "cornerstone" of Victoria's protection system. It is about time that at least some parks showed us they are in the best ecological condition. Unfortunately, it is not the case in river red gum forests.

Victor I.P.Eddy, Mildura

A resource, not wilderness

IT IS unfortunate that Nick Roberts' support (Letters, 14/10) for Carrillo Gartner's misinformed call for national parks in the Murray River red gum forests was not accompanied by a declaration that the Myer Foundation has been a major financial supporter of the environmentalist coalition for which Mr Roberts is a constant campaigner.

Mark Poynter's rebuttal of Mr Gantner's dreamy idealism in the same column spells out the hard truth about these forests. To look their best they need aggressive human management, something they have had since they first began to grow. Mr Gantner needs to look at the fire-devastated Barmah State Park before dismissing the contribution of sound forestry management.

These forests are of comparatively recent origin. They have always been a useful resource. They were never a wilderness. They should never become a national park.

David Joss, Mathoura, NSW

Don't be fooled

MARK Poynter (Letters, 14/10) uses a classic tactic of the logging industry - "look over there, the drought is ing the trees," he cries, hoping we won't notice the daily destruction of logging along the Murray River. Poynter claims national parks will do nothing to alleviate the water stress suffered by our red gum forests. Correct, but environmental flows alone will do little to halt the habitat degradation caused by logging. The fact is, we need to do both.

Red gum forests support the highest number of hollow-dwelling bird species of any Victorian forest type, as well as many arboreal mammals and reptiles, many of them threatened.

Logging and lack of water have caused the looming disaster before our red gum forests - 75% of which are stressed, dying or dead. The solution is not more of the same. VEAC has given Premier Brumby a rigorous, scientific proposal to protect these forests. If he supports it, it will be his greatest act of nature conservation and a major correction of the environmental failures that have characterised his first term as Premier.

Jonathan La Nauze, red gum campaign co-ordinator, Friends of the Earth, Melbourne

Numbers on this don't add up

I'M NOT a great one for maths, but I do know that one plus one equals two. Listening to the Prime Minister rattle off the new list of Government guarantees - every cent of customers' money in banks and building societies is guaranteed, every international transaction made by an Australian bank is guaranteed and the Government is ready to pump more than $70 billion into infrastructure to keep the economy ticking over while the financial markets get back on their feet - you really have to wonder whether it is any more than a publicity stunt.

When you add the $1.2 trillion in Australian banks to another $500-$600 billion earmarked to keep the financial system off the mortuary slab, the Government needs at least $2 trillion to cover all the guarantees.

The Prime Minister, the Opposition Leader and the fourth estate must think we all came down in the last shower if they think people believe Mr Rudd. The guarantee is not worth the paper it is written on.

Wealth in Australia is not in the hands of the state, it is in the hands of the private sector. The Government, despite its good intentions, does not have the resources to make good its guarantee unless it is willing to nationalise the means of production, distribution and exchange and transfer corporate held wealth into state coffers.

Dr Joseph Toscano, Anarchist Media Institute, Fitzroy

More of the same

WE HOPED the Rudd Government would prove more responsible and avoid the populist policies of the previous government. How disappointing to see the same pandering to the housing industry. Increasing the first home buyer's grant merely raises the price of existing houses. This decision is one of crass stupidity far better to lower the overall tax rate and give people choice as to how they spend their money.

John Forward, Hawthorn East

Let's pop that bubble

IS KEVIN Rudd serious? His solution to the economic straits we find ourselves in is to spend our way out of debt? Giving away half the surplus on consumption and the only bubble (housing) we have left may sound like a solution, but it is completely unsustainable.

It shows Rudd has learned nothing from this economic crisis. It's debt, stupid. As a nation, we have to pay off our debt and consume less.

While there is no question the pensioners are owed this back pay after years of neglect, Rudd's other spend, spend, spend ideas have already been consigned to the economic policy dustbin. Try a little bit harder, Rudd, or continue to send Australia broke, with everyone living off middle-class welfare.

Dennis Matotek, Footscray

Generation gaps

JIM Mason (Letters, 14/10), I am in my late 20s and, like most of my friends, free from "extensive credit transactions". My partner and I are childless and earn average wages. We cannot afford your "$300,000-plus mortgage", so our course is set for us - the rental trap.

It's easy to blame my generation for living beyond our means, but the reality is that our parents' generation paid their mortgage in 10 or 15 years, mostly on a single income, while taking care of a family. In what possible circumstance could we take those same steps?

While boomers continue to run our economy, invest in real estate to take advantage of unfair tax loopholes and then blame younger generations for their dwindling superannuation funds, some of us are silently banking on a real estate crash so that we might have the same opportunities that Jim Mason did.

Lisa Aspland, Fitzroy

Going with the flow

I AM sick and tired of hearing about doctors' tender consciences. Society cannot accommodate every scruple that anyone can dream up.

Pacifists have to pay taxes, even though part of the money goes to buying arms and waging war. Atheists have to show respect when Parliament opens with a prayer. If you want to be part of society, sometimes you just have to go along with it.

Janet Mackenzie, Mansfield

Take a deep breath, and say no to this

ONLY a brief ("Blowing with the wind", The Age, 14/10) records the State Government's reckless determination to expedite what is probably the largest wind farm in Australia to date.

The picturesque and ecologically important area of Stockyard Hill, between Beaufort and Skipton, looks set to be covered with a forest of steel towers if the Government's recent decision to not require an environmental effects statement indicates the value placed on the district's ecological and landscape assets.

Victoria's planning process, streamlined to facilitate wind farms, now allows substandard and biased scientific material to be used as the basis for decisions that will have long-term disastrous consequences. In this case, one of the most important habitat areas for the threatened brolga has been downgraded and dismissed by spurious experts.

In Paris, the streets were recently filled with thousands of people protesting against these visually intrusive goliaths that destroy avifauna and radically the appearance of landscapes, which in Australia have often remained little changed since white settlement.

In this country, landscape degradation on a huge scale is taking place right across western Victoria and elsewhere without notice.

Tony Edney, Ballarat

It's a cruel krill world out there

YOUR editorial (14/10) made the case for protection and care of other species eloquently. I would like to be more direct: human beings are endangering our own survival when we allow conditions on this planet that promote mass extinctions of plants and animals. We have been fouling our own nest by disregarding the needs of other species for the same resources that sustain other plant and animal populations, reducing the biodiversity of our planet.

A case in point is that of the recent reports of the depletion of krill, a necessary component of the Antarctic ecosystem, being the major source of food for many of the marine animals.

Besides the environmental pollution and fishing practices that are affecting krill, I was horrified that krill is marketed as a superior product to fish oil for human dietary supplements. This could be likened to the barbaric practice of ing rhinoceroses for their horn as an aphrodisiac, except that an entire ecology doesn't require rhinos for their livelihood.

Unless we take action now that reverses habitat degradation, pollution and climate change, we will find Earth inhospitable to human habitation as well.

Linda O'Connor, Northcote

Cooking with gas

I WAS wondering where all his inspiration came from. When he's not busy advising governments, Sir Rod Eddington hangs out with some secretive international corporate intelligence firm whose advisory board has included executives from BP and Shell and which once had a spy infiltrate European green groups on behalf of BP and Shell ("Downer joins Eddington at 'spy' firm", The Age, 14/10).

Now that Sir Rod is chairman of Infrastructure Australia's $20billion Building Australia fund and the author of Victoria's imminent $20 billion transport plan, I reckon just about all the new infrastructure we're going to see for a long time yet will be roads, roads, roads and more roads. Oh, and a heap more greenhouse gas.

Mark Boswell, West Footscray

Seeing both sides

JOHN Bell (Letters, 15/10) says that "the largest body of complaint about the teaching of history in Australian schools concerns the bias of individual teachers, who impose political and moral views on the subject".

Since when has history ever been entirely objective? As the saying goes, "History is written by the victors." Historical events are often interpreted to develop an approximation of past events that cannot help but be coloured by current and past cultural noise stemming from perceived wrongs and various grievances against others.

Perhaps there should be two teachers in every classroom to present both left and right interpretations of history.

Except for dry statistics concerning dates and places, objective interpretations of

how and why things happened is difficult at best.

Tibor Majlath, Greensborough

Ride of my life

YOU have to be a road warrior to ride to work and the tragic death of Carolyn Rawlins confirms this ("In Carolyn's name", Focus, 14/10).

To ride to work, you must put up with attempts on your life nearly every day. You risk getting swiped by every vehicle on the road, big or small, you risk getting flattened at every single intersection, road, driveway and footpath, you risk people walking into you on every bike path, you risk people opening car doors on you trying to knock you off, you risk that Great Dane without a leash running full pelt into you.

You get abused for riding on the road, you get abused for riding on the footpath, you

even get abused for riding on the bike path or you just get abused for riding.

After all that, I still ride every day because I know it's going to get better, but it may take more lives, including my own, to get there.

David Miller, Heidelberg

It's the law

CYCLISTS ignore the laws of roads and footpaths, but they cannot ignore the laws of physics

Clyde Scaife, Hamilton