Your chance to win each week
QT letter-writing competition launches.
Opinion
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THIS week, marks the first week of the QT's letter of the week competition.
Each Saturday, we'll run our pick of your letters - and the winner gets a prize.
Here's this week's winner. Congratulations, Ken Alderton for his letter about the very topical issues of transport and development.
We've teamed up with sponsor HarperCollins to reward the best letter writer each week with a brand new book.
For his trouble, Ken gets a copy of The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn. It debuted at No 1 on the NYT best-seller list in the US and is a gripping psychological thriller about an agoraphobic woman who believes she has witnessed a horrible crime in a neighbouring house.
You have a chance to win this prize each week this month.
And what will constitute the criteria for letter of the week? It could be a number of things. Great opinion on a controversial issue; humour; excellent technical writing or just someone opening themselves up with raw, personal feelings. It's subjective, like much of what we do. So get writing as it's now even more worthwhile.
THE noise being generated by Mayor Andrew Antoniolli and other councillors about the road congestion resulting from the supposed delay in extending the rail line to Ripley Valley smacks of poor memories and "pass the parcel”.
Cr Antoniolli and the majority of the councillors nodding sagely at the last council meeting were there in 2013 when a development application assessment for the Ripley Valley was handed to them by the state government.
As they enthusiastically promoted the development of Ripley Valley, councillors must have been fully aware that the extension of the rail line there would certainly follow the completion of the Cross River Rail project and that the rail extension to Ripley Valley could not be expected before 2021.
This was all laid out in detail in multiple documents from the 2008 Inner City Rail Capacity Study to the 2011 Connecting SEQ, 2031 plan.
I recommend that councillors worried about providing housing for the expected influx of people without major road congestion should have a close look at the amount of vacant land adjacent to the existing Rosewood to Wulkuraka and Bundamba to Redbank rail corridors.
Then, maybe, they might be as enthusiastic about promoting more development there rather than Ripley Valley.
KEN ALDERTON
One Mile
How to win
Turn to page 49 for details on how to enter and what you can win.
Originally published as Your chance to win each week
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