Utes and SUVs leave little space for parking cars
The time has come to have a good look at car parks. Most were designed when people drove cars, and a Ford or Holden station wagon was considered a big car. Nowadays they look like babies compared to the massive utes and SUVs which are filling our streets.
Vehicles such as the Dodge Ram and the soon to be introduced Ford F150 leave no room for others to get into or out of their vehicle if they are unlucky enough to have one of these park next to them.
I drive a Ford Falcon and the Ram is 600mm wider and almost 900mm longer than mine. The enormous blimps produced by a couple of German manufacturers are just as bad.
These days it seems a large ute or SUV is necessary, especially for the school run. That’s all very well, but when it comes to parking, these monsters are simply too big for existing car parks.
The simple solution is to ban these vehicles from regular parking spaces and have an area at one end of a car park with bigger spaces marked out. They should be barred from entering spaces such as the underground car parks at Mornington Central and the Village (Mornington). Leave them for those with more modest transport, which includes a significant proportion of the Mornington Peninsula’s residents of advancing years.
Jack Wheeler, Mornington
‘Yes’ deception
I sincerely want Indigenous people to have a voice to government which will work effectively to close the gap, but I shall be voting No to the Voice as proposed.
Entrenchment of the Voice in our constitution is not needed to take action to address this gap. Entrenching the Voice is to provide an entry platform for treaty, land rights, damages and reparation, and to ensure that when the Voice is seen not to work as innocently as is now being portrayed, it will be impossible to redress.
Fortunately, you don’t have to take my word for it as this is fully spelled out in the Uluru statement, hidden by this government from the Australian public until finally obtained under FOI. Read the statement yourself and then ask why the prime minister repeatedly tells us that it is a very modest request with limited powers which occupies merely a single A4 page.
The Uluru statement, which the PM promises to honour in full, is 26 pages long and the reason for this deception will become frighteningly clear upon reading past that first page.
If ever there was a critical time to remember the old adage “buy in haste, repent at leisure” it is now.
Put the vibe to one side and really understand what [Anthony] Albanese’s commitment to the Uluru statement in full will mean for Australia. For your sake and that of your children read it before you vote.
The statement can be downloaded in full from the Sky News website or an incisive summary of it and the issues by Peta Credlin of Sky News can be found on YouTube.
John Matthews, Heathmont
Voice misinformation
Some of the reasons people have been giving me for not wanting to vote Yes [in the Voice to parliament referendum] are so bizarre that I feel the need to ask for clarification. A sample:
1 If we vote Yes the First Nations people are saying (who/when through what media?) that they will claim ownership of all Australian land and we will have to buy our existing homes/businesses whatever, from them.
2 All new homes will then require the consent of the elders of the land on which your home is to be built prior to a building permit being granted. All boundaries will be determined by them.
My wife and I spent 10 years plus living and working among Northern Territory First Nations peoples on seven different communities. Our understanding of the culture of all these different people groups is that they do not own the land, the land and they are one.
It is a significant spiritual aspect of who they are and for this to change would involve them no longer being Aboriginal.
I have seen no evidence that such a major shift has occurred after the thousands of years they have been here and that this has been the basis of their existence.
Ken Norris, McCrae
Self-recognition
Voice, Treaty, Truth. Truth? Fair-haired, fair-skinned, English-speaking, western-educated, professional “Aboriginal” activists, who do not even acknowledge their obvious white ancestry, would not recognise truth if it turned into a giant bull ant and bit them on the bum.
Albert Riley, Mornington,
Yes, a moment of joy
I have been astounded at the misinformation being bandied around about the Voice. Hopefully, the information sessions held at Flinders and Mount Eliza in July dispelled some myths (“Decision and discussion” Letters 1/8/23).
From the onset, I was moved by the eloquence of the Uluru Statement from the Heart with its message of Voice, Truth-telling and Treaty. Later, I discovered that the statement was proposed by the 16-member referendum council – a body jointly appointed by Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten in 2015 – endorsed by 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders and created in consultation with 1200 other Indigenous representatives over six months. Hardly elitist like some claim.
While some are concerned about the inclusion of the words “executive powers”, the release by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus of the solicitor-general’s advice on the matter made it a non-issue for me. The advice was, “… in my opinion proposed [section] 129 is not just compatible with the system of representative and responsible government prescribed by the Constitution, but an enhancement of that system”.
Knowing that should the referendum be successful parliament will determine the details of how the Voice will operate is good enough for me. Having lived through the successful referendum of 1967, I very much hope to live through another.
A majority vote of Yes will be a joyous moment for all Australians and First Nations people the world over.
Ray Peck, Hawthorn
What’s happening?
August already, the politicians back from their break to drive us crazy. Opposition leader Peter Dutton sprouting doubtful claims on the effects of a Yes vote for the Voice, [former prime minister] Scott Morrison defending his involvement in the Robo-debt disaster and Barry Jones chipping in with the unspoken subtext “I oppose any change to the Australian Constitution, although I have never read it and have no idea what is in it”.
Our Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also defending stoutly with his problems, energy charges and rent increases.
Antarctica is melting, an Argentina-sized amount of sea ice. And scientists don’t know why? And [Victorian premier] Danny Andrews is unwell.
So much happening after five days in Frankston Hospital undergoing something call an angiogram, reminiscent of a production room in a chicken factory. And locally, potholes.
I’ll think about all this tomorrow, after my two beers at Rye RSL.
Cliff Ellen, Rye
Electrifying message
Given that July was likely the hottest month planet Earth experienced for 120,000 years, we would do well to put up our hands to tackle the pressing and escalating problem of global heating (“Hands up for ‘decarbonisation’” The News 1/8/23).
Members of Repower Mornington Peninsula are paving the way and are most deserving of their nomination for the Keep Australia Beautiful Tidy Towns and Cities awards.
As our state government has acknowledged with its ban on new gas connections from 2024, one of the best ways to address climate change is to electrify everything: homes, businesses and transport systems, and power them with renewable energy. Repower Mornington Peninsula sees the cost, health and environmental opportunities inherent within this switch.
Local citizens working toward community decarbonisation is important and empowering. Let’s all get on board.
Amy Hiller, Kew
No credit in units
The ongoing lie with all the hallmarks of robo-debt style denial and obfuscation is that the Australian carbon credit units scheme is doing a good job, not wasting many hundreds of millions of dollars on dud “carbon farming” projects and is not simple greenwashing.
We are being conned by the Labor government into thinking Australia will meet its climate targets. The only way it will meet this target is to continue to use dodgy and outright fraudulent carbon credits.
The “numbers” will work but big polluters will rely on dubious carbon credits for offsets so they can increase CO2 emissions while greenwashing that they are reducing CO2. Want to produce and use more fossil fuels? No problem, just buy a bunch of these carbon credits and pollute away.
Professor Andrew Macintosh published a paper with colleagues describing some of these schemes as an “environmental and taxpayer fraud” and supplied what he described as a “mountain of evidence”.
Investigation into Verra carbon standard finds most are “phantom credits”, more than 90 per cent of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest certifier are worthless and may worsen global heating.
The most prominent reason why carbon projects are bogus is when carbon credits are issued protecting forests which were never in danger. A significant percentage of the projects, more than 90 per cent of their rainforest offset credits – among the most commonly used by companies – are likely to be “phantom credits” and do not represent genuine carbon reductions.
Then there is the Papua New Guinea scandal where New Ireland Hardwood Timber claims carbon credits on land that is being commercially logged that appears to have been permitted by PNG authorities since 2020.
Companies are using credits to make claims of reducing emissions when most of these credits don’t represent emissions reductions at all.
Joe Lenzo, Safety Beach
Letters – 300 words maximum and including full name, address and contact number – can be sent to The News, PO Box 588, Hastings 3915 or emailed to: team@mpnews.com.au
First published in the Mornington News – 8 August 2023
