Early boat people
Foreigners invaded Australia on January 26, 1788 to begin the slaughter of native peoples, trees, birds, fish and animals on a massive scale.
These new Australians were boat people who came without regard to existing laws, ethics, cultures and practices of the existing peoples.
Now they are heroes celebrated throughout Australia by fireworks.
Now their crazy politician rulers, unlike wise tribal elders of the Aborigines, want free market economics and enterprise bargaining to usher us into the Great Depression of the 1990s which will make the 1930s and 1890s Great Depressions look as harmless as a butcher's picnics. We need GST like a hole in the head.
After all, all the great socialist and capitalist countries are next door to world markets, full of snow and ice in winter, and full of cheap labour (or found nearby). They value tariff protection, useful thinking management, free education at all levels of education (even at university) and females in the workforce.
They know that new technology wants fewer and fewer workers while population grows and know that European settlement experiments at the bottom of Asia are archaic jokes. They know that free market economics, enterprise bargaining and GST laws are silly. They think of Australia as the human garbage dump.
Australia is not a great socialist or capitalist country but it does inherit their unwanted ideals, ideas and ideology which they have happily discarded and exported to Australia once they prove to be failures abroad.
Australia is full of environmental and economic problems beyond solution by the Labor and Coalition parties. The Lib Labs have failed and will continue to fail Australia. Australia must get rid of the Lib Labs if it is to survive.
David Fletcher
Connells Point NSW
Free market policies
The Labour and Coalition parties only want to benefit foreign multinationals with their free market economic policies.
They could not care less about the recession, unemployment or the economic hardships of voters. It's all lip service to get voters in the big election game between Labor and Coalition parties.
They delight at voters' disenchantment with the major political parties and their helplessness to do anything about it. Voter hardships are fun to politicians who delight in how many they can create after each election.
The economy the environment will be the losers of the free market.
Labor and Coalition parties should hang their heads in shame.
Assumpta Howard
Malabar NSW
NT mining
The Northern Territory government and the mining industry see Kakadu and any other wilderness area for that matter exclusively in terms of short term mineral profits. Recently the office of the supervising scientist expressed concern in regard to increased pollution levels at Nabarlek mine in Arnhem Land and the Ranger uranium mine. Radioactive spills from Ranger flow into the Magela Creek which leads to the East Alligator River via the beautiful and sensitive Magela wetlands. The Aboriginal people of the area have long gathered food there.The Environment Centre in Darwin has repeatedly pointed to negligence by mining companies but the alliance of government and mining bosses plus the fact that the ALP is divided on the issue kills any debate. Add to that the Murdoch print monopoly and the prospect of a "mine everything" Hewson government, Kakadu could become the radioactive Swiss cheese of Northern Australia. Furthermore large mining projects like Jabiluka on the Magela Creek, Koongarra at Nourlangie Rock and others wait for approval.
Another example of the NT government's twisted environmental mentality came last month when it announced the establishment of a Marine Park along the North Coast. However, included in this wonderful package are provisions for petrochemical facilities which require the clearing of large areas of mangrove vegetation and other dubious projects. And last but not least the pastoral policy of the NT has the potential to be an ecological disaster.
Thus environmental politics in the NT have a distinct tropical-proto-fascist character which is underlined by the government's cosy relationship with Indonesia.
Michael Rose-Schwab
Rapid Creek NT
Work, consume, die
All non-suffering states of being are "acceptable" phenomena. Only pain is unpreferable. Things that don't cause pain don't bother anyone and are therefore irrelevant. The only relevant principle anywhere is to minimize pain.
Unfortunately it seems our society only functions to satisfy individual wants by consuming the products of its work. Even science is used almost exclusively to improve commodities for people, while suffering persists.
Perhaps all pain could be eliminated now by eliminating all sensory phenomena (i.e. by nuking the planet). Unless of course humanity can justify its existence by eliminating more pain than there might be without "life". Let's hope we get our act together and stop being so selfish.Name supplied
Chirnside Park Vic