Credit: Illustration: Badiucao
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INFRASTRUCTURE
The Victorian government wants more housing and is pressing local governments to deliver (“Where state’s housing will boom”, 16/6).
To what purpose? Yes, thanks to federal and state policies, our populations are growing fast. But what is being done about the complex planning and resources required to achieve population and housing increase while not destroying our human environments?
When multi-storey apartments and medium-density developments are approved in older suburban areas of once low-rise housing and narrow local roads, have on-site car-parking and traffic expectations been updated to account for the large vehicles now dominating local roads, streets and parking areas? (“It’s not ute beaut. They’re taking over”, 16/6)?
Is the design and implementation of new developments adequately overseen to prevent ongoing building defects and disputes? Are the existing infrastructure, environment and amenity of the area not just exploited but enhanced?
On the basis of recent experience in Rippleside, Geelong, where planning pressure is being exerted to approve a seven-storey apartment block in an already intensely-developed waterfront site, within an old-established residential area, I fear the answer is no. I am sure there are and will be many more examples. Sadly, Victoria’s prevailing policy is to increase housing at any cost.
Rosemary Kiss, Rippleside
Whitehorse is already under pressure
The Sunday Age reports that the state government has directed Whitehorse to provide almost 80,000 new homes within its boundaries. On average, this would mean around 200,000 people of all ages and needs.
Such a population is equivalent to two Ballarats or two Darwins added to this local council. Having limited the local planning government powers, what can this indebted state government offer in return for directing such a potential population increase?
Whitehorse roads are already congested, and the Box Hill hospital is full. Even the local schools are full due to the current increasing population density; Box Hill lacks a primary school, and Surrey Hills, Burwood and Mont Albert lack sporting and open space leisure areas.
The government planners need to look at these housing directives, check their overall policies and finances, and ask how such a directive can be the best outcome for the current and future community of Whitehorse?
Elizabeth Meredith, Surrey Hills
Where is the transport plan to service the housing?
A plan for massive housing and population growth but where is the plan for transport? A regularly updated transport plan was mandated in the 2010 Transport Integration Act, but such a plan has never been delivered. The government claims its “Big Build” is a transport plan, but it’s only a group of very large projects. Some projects can provide infrastructure for improved services, but that doesn’t automatically follow.
Melbourne’s public transport services have been steadily declining on a per capita for some years, and there is no indication of the massive investment needed for both catch-up and new public transport services that will be critical to support this latest “plan”. Transport and land use are inseparable - where is the other half of this proposal?
John Hearsch, Heathcote Junction
The west will be destined to poor quality of life
Wyndham, Melton and the western suburbs are already bursting and have very disconcerting worries with school, public transport and road traffic issues. Melton still does not have the public hospital promised in the 2018 and subsequent state elections.
If the mooted housing increases are forced through, this will just create widespread, lifelong and poor quality of life for the residents.
Robert Cudlipp, Melbourne
THE FORUM
Globalisation victim
While it is hard to challenge the status quo of neoliberal thought, I think Millie Muroi is deeply mistaken about globalisation (Comment, 15/6). Australia has been a victim of globalisation - losing everything from manufacturing to the ownership of agricultural and mining businesses due to foreign investment and takeovers. Japan, by comparison, has flourished at home and abroad. Likewise, Germany, France, Italy and the USA continue to serve the needs of their people, increasing exports without the need to sell off or shutter their industries.
Anders Ross, Heidelberg
Counting cost of living
The expression ″cost of living″ is used somewhat gratuitously by the federal government with little regard to two words.
One is cost, the other living. Cost takes us beyond dollars and cents. The mental health cost, the broken relationships cost, the lack of housing etc.
Living is another glossed over word. For many it’s existing, not living; certainly not living with dignity, purpose, security and hope. For others, it’s the soul-destroying battle to afford sufficient food. Could the federal treasurer stop using the term ‘cost of living’ as a single-issue title for a hugely complex problem. The pain is in the detail, not an all-inclusive expression hiding the daily reality for thousands.
Jim Pilmer, Camberwell
Fairer policies
Your correspondent (Letters, ″RBA’s failed policies″, 16/6) argument for fairer public policies is spot on. The fact an increasing number of Australians cannot even afford a roof, even a rented roof, over their head should alarm everyone. The fact that many cannot afford to eat properly or stay warm in winter should make all of us cry. Why do we tolerate this?
Ewa Haire, Moonee Ponds
Climate wars, not a gift
I was dismayed by Simon Holmes a Court’s reaction to the Coalition once again threatening to betray Australia’s commitment to preventing catastrophic climate change saying, “This is a gift”. (“Fallout Boy”, 15/6). I see it not as a gift, but a terrible curse on the country.
The LNP’s enthralment to climate denial dooms us to reprising the basics of climate change policy every three years, going back and forth in a game of snakes and ladders as the precious remaining time we have left to act decisively slips away. Decarbonising Australia’s economy, phasing out fossil fuels, protecting citizens and wildlife from the upheaval of transition and the upheaval of climate change are tasks that will take generations. We have barely started those tasks and now must roll again and risk landing on a snake and sliding back the beginning. It’s devastating.
Georgina Woods, Point Lonsdale
Golden Razzie nominees
Your correspondent is right to give a bad review to Under Paris and the killer mutated shark adapting to climate change (Letters, ″Give sharks a break″, 16/6). That other horror movie, The Politicians Who Ate Paris, playing now across the country is far scarier and real. Rumour has it the judges will struggle to separate the film’s leads Peter Dutton, David Littleproud and Barnaby Joyce for the Razzie at the next Golden Raspberries. Bad actors, bad script, one star.
Ray Peck, Hawthorn
No, Dutton is not right
Re (Letters “Dutton is right” 15/6) is contradictory and limited. Your correspondent argues against accepting that fossil fuel emissions cause climate change. Then, he partly argues for nuclear generation on the basis that it is free of emissions.
The letter makes unfounded assertions about cost. There is ample evidence that Victorian wholesale coal and gas electricity prices are much higher than solar and wind. Nuclear is assessed to be higher still (CSIRO Gencost). The letter doesn’t discuss nuclear lead times, dispatchability, waste disposal, water cooling supply, or technical capability. Nor, does it identify any company in Australia that is proposing or financially backing nuclear.
If Peter Dutton thinks he can cause ongoing distraction by generating doubts and confusion over current emissions and energy policy, then he is probably right.
Tom Maher, Aspendale
Money for COVID care
Federal government policies for COVID management in aged care homes changed on May 1, 2024. Aged care providers now supply their own Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs), sourced from commercial suppliers. The federal government gives each provider $941 per resident per annum. This money is intended to help private providers fund a COVID outbreak. According to the government website: ″This approach to funding streamlines payment arrangements, and moves to a more business-as-usual model for managing outbreaks″.
Once again, the government relies on aged care providers spending the money as it is intended. What could possibly go wrong?
Dr Sarah Russell, director, Aged Care Matters
Kids get phonics
The news of the education union’s order to teachers to disobey the mandate to introduce phonics in the classrooms, comes as no surprise to me. In the days of Reading Recovery, (early 1990s) with the help of a diploma in adult literacy and numeracy, I helped adult non-readers to success. At the same time, while volunteering at schools, where many children were floundering, I attended a meeting of parents and teachers to discuss how to teach the current method. Their children were not to be corrected when their guess at a word invariably failed, or to be given any clues as to what the letters or words sounded like, and were apparently expected to learn to read by osmosis.
Some of the parents expressed their disapproval of the “Nanna’s” method of trying to help their failing grandchildren by sounding out words and letters, and wished Nanna would desist. So insulting, dismissive, and short-sighted.
The struggling children were mainly bright, but failing to understand how to make sense of anything on the page.
The secret phonetic help was generally quickly grasped. It was so rewarding when they suddenly “got it”, to see their relief and sense of achievement. These children were not dyslexic, just failed by the system. To make sense of the squiggles on the page into an understanding of the written word, is magic and miraculous, and should be available to every child in the quickest, easiest and proven method possible. Time for the decades of denial to end.
Bette Erskine, Port Melbourne
Musical straitjacket
I’m sad and frustrated when articles about music education equate learning to play an instrument with formal instruction only.
Using the voice that comes with birth is the best basis for a musical life before we even get to picking up an instrument. Having provided singing-based classroom music programs over four decades, properly sequenced programs ensure every child can learn to use their singing voice. By the time a child wants to consider learning an instrument, they can have a great range of skills, including the beginnings of useful aural skills, the inner capacity to hear music.
Yes, all children should have the opportunity to try out musical instruments, ones that interest them, ones they can learn to play and so much more. But let’s get it out of this straitjacket.
Fay Magee, Trentham
Keep Rising
Rising festival deserves and earns the government funding it gets. Unlike many other cultural festivals I’ve attended, Rising seems to be fulfilling a charter to involve people who might never before have considered themselves part of the ″cultural″ scene – that such scenes are the domain of white (haired) people. (Please note, I am a white (haired) person.)
Last year, I attended the joyous communal Rising event, 10,000 Kazoos, a triumph of participation never to be topped, I thought. Last night I joined with a cathedral full of strangers in an even more joyous ritual of dance and singalong, Rising’s Shouse ″Communitas″. Rising is the most diverse and ambitious arts experiment I’ve encountered. It warrants generous, ongoing funding.
Rose Scott, Moonee Ponds
Risen not for everyone
Rising is a pale shadow of the Melbourne International Arts Festival. There is nothing now I could comfortably take my family to see. White Night was one of the most special nights of the year and Rising has nothing even approaching a replacement. Rising is not a festival run for everyone, and I would celebrate its end and a return to the events it supposedly replaced.
Keiran O’Neill, Clifton Hill
Please the masses
Who is Rising for? Any casual person glancing at the program will not find many events that they find personally relatable or are not just ticketed events for white, inner-city yuppies – and I say this as an inner-city yuppy myself. It is disappointing to see the loss of White Night, which drew the masses, and see Vivid Sydney, which had crowding issues, and then to go to a play at Rising where only 40 per cent of seats were full, or the Shouse “Communitas” show on Saturday which looked amateurish in organisation, logistics and production. Bring back arts for the masses, please. Rising does not reflect Melbourne at all.
Julia Nguyen, Richmond
Please the masses
We discover that there are folk who ″want to embrace faith wholeheartedly and go all in″, which is (of course) irrational (″Religious generation getting into the habit″, (16/6). Well-meaning people not only owe others but themselves respect, and this means not becoming zealots. Otherwise, they become little more than religious zombies.
Peter Drum, Coburg
AND ANOTHER THING
Property ladder
How is it fair to flood established suburbs such as Camberwell and the like, with cheap high density housing when people have worked their way up the property ladder and paid top dollar prices to live in a quiet and leafy neighbourhood?
Margaret Summers, Carnegie
Phonics
Phonics didn’t stop. It became one of an increased number of strategies developed in learning to read.
Prue O’Mara, Winchelsea
Headlines you won’t see, (Letters, 16/6): ‘Skools to improve kids’ literacy by teeching fonics’ goes to the nub of the phonics myth. English is not a phonetic language.
Kay Moulton, Surrey Hills
Peter Dutton
Dutton and the Nuclear Nationals. A backyard thrash band, out of tune and offensive to the neighbours.
Greg Curtin, Nunawading
Dutton seems to have convinced himself that, deep down, disaffected Liberal voters are just closet climate deniers waiting for a good excuse to return to the fold.
Bernd Rieve, Brighton
Hey Dutton, no one ever said climate change would be easy. We’ve all known big changes were needed for decades.
Pete Sands, Monbulk
Furthermore
Putin’s peace plan is for all his demands to be met, no doubt followed by further demands if they are met. It is a plan for his domestic audience only to show them how conciliatory he is.
Alan Inchley, Frankston
The British election reminds us that the British really are eccentric, not because one of the party leaders has the title ‘Sir’ because he leads the Labour Party.
Tony Haydon, Springvale
I note the Indian spy story was dropped quickly whilst the anti-China fearmongering continues. What perfect timing: whilst the Chinese premier visits Australia.
Ken McLeod, Williamstown
Finally
At long last it’s the sort of footy I want to see, the Reclink Community Cup. Any other is way too serious!
Martin Hengeveld, Research
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