Letters to the editor

Australia’s dirty future

Australian taxpayers, at their own expense, are receiving copies of the Labor government’s 20-page document entitled “Clean energy future, What a carbon price means to you”.

Unfortunately this scientifically-illiterate document contains a falsehood of commission or omission on nearly every page.

Critically, data from Treasury, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and US Energy Information Administration reveal that under the Labor carbon price plan, by 2020 Australia’s annual domestic plus exported greenhouse gas pollution will be roughly double that of 2000.

That is, our future will certainly not be clean and will not even be cleaner. The Gillard Labor government clearly has no intention of “tackling climate change”, but is falsely pretending otherwise.

Australians should be outraged over this taxpayer-funded litany of falsehoods that makes Australia an international laughing stock.

As a five-decade career scientist and science educator I urge media, MPs and citizens to insist that this anti-science, spin-driven government retracts its egregious, taxpayer-funded falsehoods about a “clean energy future”.

Gideon Polya,
Macleod, Vic.



Bellotti supporters not going away

As a member of the public and a human being, I am disgusted and angered by Superintendent Dene Leekong’s deliberately misleading comments and completely fabricated statements on the case of Rex Bellotti Jnr in the July 26 Albany Advertiser.

Leekong said that the WA police did “everything they could” to investigate the case after the 15-year-old Aboriginal youth was hit by a police car in 2009.

That’s a lie.

The Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) report into the accident remarks that the investigating Sergeant relied largely on Mr. Bellotti Snr and another person to bring witnesses to him, rather than proactively seeking them out himself.

Is that how an investigating sergeant or the WA police department do “everything they can”, asking the parent of the victim, who was not even present when his son was run down by two members of the WA Police in their 4WD, to bring witnesses to them?

Again from the CCC report (2009): “The Commission is of the view that it is not appropriate, nor sufficient, to wait for witnesses to seek out such assistance. It is clear that in this instance Sergeant L did not adhere to Police policy on this issue”.

Superintendent Leekong, as a member of the WA Police, surely would not lie or release false information to the media, so perhaps I should reread the CCC report.

Do phrases such as “insufficient checks and balances” and the fact that the WA Police has “instigated changes in the way investigations are now dealt with at the District level” endorse the efforts of those officers involved in the Bellotti case to any degree?

Superintendent Leekong, thank you for exposing the reality for many of those involved with the WA Police. Through your deceit and arrogance, you have provided an additional platform for us to speak the truth.

I hope that the people of Albany now know that their Superintendent has no qualms telling outright lies and feigning offense, when he and his department are the most vile and offensive abusers of social justice and human rights.

Justice for Rex Bellotti Junior will be afforded to him and his family. One of the Police memos regarding the Bellotti case, attained under a freedom of information request, states “hopefully we can get rid of this”.

The Bellotti Support Group would like to inform those WA police officers that we are never going away.

Shilo Harrison,
Bellotti Support Group coordinator, WA.

Australia’s trade in human cargo

The ability to discover the truth is outstripped by the ability to manifest deceit. Generally, I try to rely on the context of statistics and facts to hang on to the truth.

In Malaysia, 29,759 foreigners were caned between 2005 and the end of 2010. This refutes immigration minister Chris Bowen's claims that human rights, as we know them, will be protected.

It is often argued by the Australian government that they do not want to see children, or anyone drown at sea. Is it better that they die in their place of origin in greater numbers? Or in Malaysia where 1,400 asylum seekers have died in the camps since 2002?

During the last ten years, 156 children have drowned on their way to Australia, or because of boats being turned back.

In those same ten years, 1,250 children have died of starvation and preventable diseases every hour, 90 million children, and yet we have barely increased foreign aid and have failed to live up to the minimum 0.7% of our GDP as foreign aid, which would have prevented millions of deaths.

The government, and many Australians, claim their argument against asylum seekers arriving by boat is either a humanitarian one on their behalf or in that we should put for example our sub-Sahelian brothers and sisters, starving to death, foremost.

Nine hundred and twenty five million thereabouts starve today and we do next to nothing. Billions live in abject poverty and yet xenophobia and closed economies demand “border controls”.

Historically, Australia brutalised 500,000 children in various institutions, and where thousands of “child slaves” were sent from Britain, where thousands of Aboriginal peoples’ children were taken and lives destroyed, and where still Aboriginal children and their families live in unconscionable abject poverty.

Nevertheless, our government uses the weakest sophisms to thinly veil its racism and discriminatory identity.

Ten children have drowned on their way to Australia since the SIEV X in 2001. 6.7 million children under 5 years died of starvation in the same time.

In the same period, there have been 314 drownings in Australia, 47 of them children. However, we look for safety measures and education and not a blind eye.

How many have considered the vulgarity of trading human beings — on this occasion five for one? The whole concept of human cargo is beyond ugly, it is evil.

We look back on the various slave trades with judgment and shame, millions of Africans, and before them hundreds of thousand of Irish, were transported as human cargo to be slaves in the Americas.

Today, an Australian government screams for their “right” to transport as human cargo, and for their “right” to do human trade “deals” — to trade in human beings. Unbelievable.

Gerry Georgatos
Bridgetown, WA .