It's nothing new
I read with great interest the piece in The Border Mail headed 'climate debate is beyond politics' (May 28).
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Indigo Council's mayor is quite right in questioning the urgency of the fabled climate change of late. If there is an emergency regarding the calling of triple zero it will be to try and save the lives of old age pensioners who have nearly frozen to death from lack of money and heating through a very cold winter and the price of electricity continually going up and up.
Of course all the windmills and solar panels if set up and covering Victoria still wouldn't be enough to power the needs when people keep arriving with our out of control immigration intake.
In all the years that the climate change radicals have been spouting off their fables I have never heard them once mention 'immigration' that will cause us as a population big trouble, and is now doing so. We are heading to be a third world nation.
The main thing that is destroying the Great Barrier Reef is the population building all along the coast of Queensland, not a few chimneys down in Gippsland.
Back in the early 50s I mustered cattle to go on the road to Marree in South Australia, we mustered south-west of Birdsville in the desert country. There I saw stumps that were petrified nearly two metres across. I ran scrubbers in the Carnarvon Ranges of Queensland where there were petrified stumps also.
The Carnarvon gorges and plateaus were caused by giant rivers which carved out a lot of rough country.
Of course there is climate change but it has been happening for thousands of years, well before we ever used coal for electricity. And it will keep going on.
Bill Whitham, Tallangatta
Threat to the vulnerable
Rosie Batty's courage has transformed the national conversation around family violence and the protection of women, and has been tested again in the political arena raising some uncomfortable questions that won't go away.
Tragically some political parties and institutions remain as engines of gender inequality and while change will be controversial, it is necessary for the sake of human rights and to protect the lives and wellbeing of Australians.
"Religious freedom" is a van driven down the pavement of national values without the bollards of legislation enacted to protect all Australians. The human cost of discrimination can longer be hidden, the statistics of domestic violence unchallenged by faith communities in societies with a colonial Christian legacy such as Samoa and other cultures have strong resonances within Australia.
Biblical teachings mandating gender inequality necessarily put literal understandings on a collision course with contemporary values. Tax other exemptions combined with current calls for greater powers of religious institutions over the freedom of individuals represent a threat to those already vulnerable.
Employing pre-enlightenment texts to help form attitudes of the next generation is an act of social vandalism tantamount to being shot with your own gun, and in the light of current family violence priorities needs to be urgently addressed .