Letters and short takes February 6 2023

The only buzz I believe Newcastle East residents are getting is the noise from truck and machinery movements as they start moving in buildings and equipment. She also goes on to say "there are a small amount of people who are affected." Somehow, the council thinks it's only the Newcastle East residents that are affected.

How wrong they are.

As of Wednesday, all eight-hour parking along Wharf Road has closed. This means for a large number of people who live outside Newcastle East and work in the area they have to find alternative parking for the next two months. It also means the people from around Newcastle who visit Nobbys and Newcastle beaches during the week and at the weekends have no or little chance of finding a car park. Taking in these impacts, I believe it amounts to many hundreds of residents living in the outer suburbs around Newcastle city.

Parliamentary secretary for the Hunter Taylor Martin, who was at the opening media event, said the government would take on board feedback about this year's engagement process and look at what can be done differently. Let's hope he does follow up on his promise before there is any talk of extending the council's hosting contract for the event a further five years.

HERE we go again. Supercars is virtually taking possession of Newcastle for the fourth time at the invitation of our council, which seems ever prone to grandiose events (read: photo-ops) whether they are actually good for the city or not. The only continuous piece of road in perfect condition in Newcastle is the race track.

The rest of Newcastle is not given anywhere near the same loving attention.

Are ratepayers of Newcastle really unaware how much of this event they are actually funding? Do the sums. In my opinion the $1.2m City of Newcastle claims they budget for this race wouldn't even pay for the track resurfacing let alone barriers, removal and reinstatement of speed bumps and park infrastructure, traffic management, signage and line markings, road closures, waste management costs, full cost of maintenance crews before and after the event, publicity costs and a hosting fee of $550,000 - the list goes on. And for what? So a rapacious private enterprise can virtually shut down the Newcastle peninsula for 10 weeks, take all profits at the expense of local businesses and in the words of Neil Slater of Scratchleys, "extract every dollar and keep it for themselves". I have absolutely no doubt that the council will be quite happy to waste ratepayers' money to host this event for the next five years - they will probably even expect ratepayers to believe that they had a choice in the matter.

SEVERAL years ago Lake Macquarie City Council (LMCC) carried out a beautification exercise in the Cardiff retail area.

Whilst this may have improved the appearance of the streetscape, nevertheless it resulted in the loss of quite a few street parking spaces. Now the council seems to be taking another step, and placing flimsy looking 'huts' on the streets themselves, decorated with plants, and providing some seating. However, this has resulted so far in the loss of three parking spaces in Kelton Street, and another three in Veronica Street. The Veronica Street 'hut' is right outside the post office, where vehicles need to come and go when collecting the mail.

Parking in Cardiff is at a premium during normal trading hours already . I can only believe that extra seating, if necessary, could have been provided on the existing reasonably wide footpaths, and that this massive loss of street parking will seriously affect trading for the smaller retailers who try desperately to give their services so that the locals do not need to scurry off to the larger shopping centres and their substantial car parks. This is in my opinion another 'hare-brained' scheme dreamed up by someone at Lake Macquarie council.

WITH all this carry-on about the Voice, I am yet to see any detail regarding the cost of the referendum, which I imagine would be in the millions, and more importantly, the ongoing payments and lurks and perks I would expect the people involved in running it would be paid. Again, eye-watering amounts you can bet.

With the country in so much debt and the social housing, health system, education and other essential services desperately in need of more funding, is the Voice Referendum of such importance that it could not wait until the next federal election and save heaps of money that could be put to much better use now? My question is what's the rush, particularly when past referendums are anything to go by? I don't have much confidence in it succeeding anyway.

OUR community needs a commitment to build Huntlee High School. There is a state government election in two months, so this is the time to demand it. Even if you live out of the Branxton/Huntlee area, do it for your friends and neighbours and their children, and please tell the election candidates how vital this is to our area. For the major parties, if you are in the Upper Hunter electorate (including most of Branxton) that's Dave Layzell for Nationals and Peree Watson for Labor. For Cessnock, Clayton Barr for Labor and Ash Barnham for the Nationals.

IT'S a little-known fact that mature forests dominated by Eucalyptus regnans have been found to store more carbon than any other forest known. Logging, however, releases all of that stored carbon.

According to Professor Brendan Mackey from Griffith University, stopping the logging of our native forests would reduce CO2 emissions by 15 million tonnes each year; almost the same as the annual reduction needed to achieve our 2030 emissions reduction target of 43 per cent.

Forests also provide critical habitat. Since settlement, 100 known Australian species have become extinct with 13 added in 2021 alone. Now, more than 1700 native species and ecological communities are known to be threatened and at risk of extinction.

As the NSW election approaches, the climate and the biodiversity value of the state's trees are clearly touchy election issue, evidenced by the quick scuttling of the land reform bill introduced at the end of last year. Unsurprisingly after extensive and severe flood events, Local Government NSW has called for "urgent action to address the climate crisis ... and fit-for purpose protections for biodiversity of native habitats."

Phasing out the logging of native forests, as WA and Victoria have done, would be an excellent start.

YOU should have seen the look on my dog's face when I said no swim for a while at the dog beach due to Supercars. Not happy.

IF you are not "woke" you must be "unwoke", therefore asleep. Is this you?

WE finally had some really good letters about the Voice To Parliament. They all understood what the Voice To Parliament Referendum is all about. We don't need all the stupid questions put to Mr Albanese by some of the opposition political parties about all the nitty gritty things we all know about the Voice to Parliament. It is very simple. We all need to vote on the referendum, with either a yes or a no. If the yes vote wins, then it will go to a special committee of constitutional lawyers and other experts on constitutional law, on how to enact it into our constitution. I can't understand how any political party in parliament can tell their politicians to vote no, as the vote is a personal vote for all voters in Australia, not party politics.

MICHAEL Schien, ("Send a message at the polls", Letters, 30/1), what disturbs me more than anything else because of its insidiousness is the appearance everywhere in town, on trams, on buses, of giant advertising by Glencore saying that "Mining matters" (on the model of Black Lives Matter), singing the praise of the mining industry when we should put a stop to coal and gas mining now if we want to avoid making the planet unliveable for our children and grandchildren. Those global mining giants who pay virtually no tax and rape our land, our water resources and the sacred sites of First Nations people really need to be stopped by government regulation. But with both parties addicted to fossil fuel donations, that's not likely to happen any time soon. So indeed, send a message at the polls. And make sure Supercars get out of Newcastle: I believe the harm they do to the city and the glorification of the fossil fuel they burn over the time of their presence here is outrageous. What a message to our young people!

AT the republic referendum in 1999 there was a second question which, if agreed to, would have put into the Constitution the words "honouring Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, the nation's first people, for their deep kinship with their lands and for their ancient and continuing cultures which enrich the life of our country" Labor opposed the referendum question and argued that if you don't know what to do, you should vote no. In regard to the current proposed Indigenous Voice Referendum, I think Mr. Albanese might like to explain why Labor's position has changed and they are now saying we should vote yes if we're unsure about the proposal.