I somehow don't think the homeless or destitute community of the larger CBDs would have been that excited about the million-dollar cracker shows. How much health care, dental care, housing, clothing and food could that money that went up in smoke in 15 minutes have bought for our most vulnerable citizens?

In two words, l lot. 

The recent debate around pill-testing at festivals is certainly an interesting one. I can understand why people would be in favour of it because, on one hand, anything we can do to help save lives is a good thing.

On the other hand, though, it’s awfully hard to get past the fact that it somehow condones the use of illicit drugs and for that reason, I’m in agreement with the NSW and Victorian governments, along with police, who remain opposed to the idea as “it can give people a false and potentially fatal sense of security about illicit drugs”.

Imagine if a festival-goer took a pill on the premise it was “safe” and then decided to take two, or three, or four. Would that be “safe”? I highly doubt it. The safest bet is to avoid the toxic garbage altogether.

As much as I too, would like to save the world, I don’t like the haphazard energy solutions being touted.

Many issues have been greatly exaggerated. Despite liking the idea of solar power, these matters must be firmly denied as it is an incomplete technology. The amount of land needed for the proposed panels is wasteful, and technically unfeasible, also due to high costs and the very real fact that there is no solar at night, so there needs to be at least a similar amount of base load power.

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The fact is hydro gas and coal are the only ones capable of doing that job. Coal is being denigrated as evil, when it has been the reason why we are all able to live as we do. It’s reliable and coal will not run out for some time in Australia.

We have record coal exports, so other countries can use it. Where is the sense in that?

The deaths often stated, due to pollution from coal fired power, go against the figures that show we are all living longer and those figures can be measured realistically. The densely populated overseas countries are having these problems. Smoking is more of a cause than coal fired pollution.

Its quite obnoxious that Germany is actual building more lignite (brown coal) power stations at the moment and we, with fewer populated areas are expected to shut ours.

Misquoted statistics are one thing, and reality is, that despite that we need local work, this solar farm at Wangaratta and others proposed, must be seen as what they are: a costly, subsidised intermittent source of power with a need of replacement in some 20 years. Not only this, but the power lines needed to use this power, must be robust, and destabilises power grids. Batteries needed for such a system are very costly and can only carry grid power for short periods.

We must understand to be able to see what folly solar panels may hoist on Wangaratta in the future.