Losing faith
It has come to my attention that Wagga City Council has proposed to cancel the normal practice of having a prayer before council meetings. The councillors that are proposing this change need to hang there heads in shame.
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I was a labour voter before being informed that Dan Hayes is the instigator of this proposal. Last time I looked Australia was built on Christian principle and values which include prayers at important public occasions.
Shame on the councillors that have proposed this change and shame on the councillors that do not have the gumption to defend this prayer.
Peter Delaney
Wagga
The Darlington upgrade
Funny how the Roman Empire built roads and structures that are still in use to this day, but today's builders can't.
Think about that.
Andrew Baxter
Kilburn
Careful what you wish for
We hear lots of comments from some of our politicians, aspiring politicians and local voices calling for a royal commission into the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and/or the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.
When both the basin plan and management of the MDBA are flawed, we really need to think carefully about a royal commission. This is just more thought bubbles without thinking through the consequences.
The South Australian Royal Commission outcomes are what we can expect the outcomes to be from another royal commision. That is, given the plan is based within the Environmental Act it doesn't need to take into account social and economic issues. This is what the SA royal commission found and what a former Chair of the MDBA believed. It's our clever political leaders who have weaved the social and economic impacts into the plan.
Any inquiry into the basin plan has a high probability of recommending similar outcomes to the previous one and could accuse governments and the MDBA of not going hard enough in implementing the Water Act 2007. On top of this, the commissioner is likely to be someone who lives in the leafy north shore of Sydney or the plush suburbs of Melbourne. They have been reading about fish kills over summer, how irrigators are turning on one another and that South Australia needs more water.
So what's the outcome? There, would be less water for irrigators, more direct buybacks and a royal commission to back it up. We would be better focusing on getting the Productivity Commission's recommendations implemented and getting the Water Ministers to align the Murray River operating rules more in line with a dryer climate so that water is maximised to all water users.
Be careful what we wish for.
Malcolm Holm
Blighty
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