Hubble bubble…
BEHOLD, subtle witch-hunting persists.
Why the big picture of Perth’s suspended first woman lord mayor when she is not even mentioned in your article (“Call to expedite inquiry”, Voice, April 20, 2019)?
More relevant and occupying the same space would have been mug shots of the magnificent six –premier Mark McGowan, minister of local government David Templeman, leader of the Perth council inquiry Anthony Power, and the three state-appointed commissioners currently running WA’s capital city: Gaye McMath, Andrew Hammond and Eric Lumsden.
Substituting “speed up” for “expedite” would have made your headline more quickly understood, though this might not have been objective of the exercise – rather obtusity in tune with the witch-hunting.
Winsley Hurst
St Georges Terrace, Perth
This chick’s got attitude
MY name is Bronte, I’m 12 years old and I attend Perth College in Western Australia.
In 2018 when I was in year 6 we had a project called “Your Choices can Change the World”.
My friend and I chose the topic of ban caged eggs. To start our project we printed out flyers and posters that we stuck around the school and attached them to cars.
Then we created an Instagram account to tell everyone about why they should not buy caged eggs and finally, we went around our neighbourhood and put A5 flyers into everyone’s mailbox.
Now I would like to make a bigger change and tell more people about this problem and how they can help stop it.
This is the life of those poor chickens every day. How would you feel being in a cage the size of an iPad, not being able to spread your wings, and your feet hurting on hard cage wire?
The chickens are stacked on top of each other around 12 chicken’s high. Each of them has their beak cut off, so they don’t peck each other. They can’t see sunlight as it is one big dark room.
Did you know male chickens don’t live longer than 18 months and the female die before their second birthday?
Male chickens don’t lay eggs, so the egg industry has no usage for them. Instead of letting them out into the wild or giving them to farms for a wake-up call, the one-day old boys are either gassed or thrown into a machine to be ground up alive.
Did you know that every hen has a different personality, just like a human? Some may be shy, social or even mischievous?
However, in factory farms, a hen never gets to express her personality. She is defined by how many eggs she can produce.
With so many cages and heaps of chickens, it is impossible for the farmers to care for all of them.
Sick and injured birds do go untreated and people have found dead birds left to rot under the feet of their cage mates.
Most chickens live in agony with broken bones. Thank you for reading this story.
Bronte Fong,
Perth College
Yours, and yours alone
IT’S a bit rich for Liberal candidates to claim that they will “pay down Labor’s debt”.
They will have to lift their game.
The Coalition has doubled our debt in five years.
They inherited a national debt of $300 billion in 2013 and Tony Abbott said: “I’m going to end the waste. I’m going to repay the debt”.
Instead the Coalition has doubled the debt to $600 billion.
Imagine the interest we are paying.
This government has been profligate with our money, letting huge contracts without tender, reopening Christmas Island prison at a cost of $180 million, then closing it within weeks, employing 140 Serco workers to guard zero refugees.
There have been critical reports from the auditor general, but nothing seems to change.
Our current national debt is the Coalition’s responsibility.
Betty McGeever
Cottesloe
Ideas party
I READ the synopses of the political candidates in Perth and your characterisation of Flux is misleading.
It creates the impression that every voter would be required to vote on every bill. That’s not the idea.
Flux is about issues-based direct democracy. It gives people the option of voting on any piece of legislation, instead of the current ‘one vote in three years – unleash the lobbyists’ model.
Importantly, it proposes letting people delegate their votes to others who are better informed on an issue. Potentially, this is a substantial improvement on what we have.
Flux is the only party proposing a change in our voting system; at face value it’s a good change. It deserves discussion and consideration.
It would be great if the media encouraged this, instead of lumping all these parties together and labelling them ‘minor’ or ‘micro’. It would be helpful to say Flux is an ‘ideas’ parties and not a ‘special interest’ party.
It would be helpful to ask candidates from other parties why they think representative democracy is better than issues democracy. It would be helpful to represent their proposal accurately.
Bret Treasure
Perth
Thanks Baysy, for getting it
I read with interest the article on Bayswater council looking to stop “suburban deforestation” (Voice, May 4, 2019).
I’m astounded that some people just “do not get it”. I’m glad that Bayswater council seems to “get it”.
The whole reason why we have to even contemplate these sorts of decisions in the community is because of mounting population pressures.
I believe we must adjust our way of thinking to better manage an ever increasing population.
Over-development, urban sprawl, clearing of native bush land, congestion on the roads, all of these waste our resources and our time.
Reaching 25 million with a diverse community background is a great achievement for the nation. But moving into another population growth phase will be catastrophic unless we understand it better and manage it better. Suburban deforestation can be just the beginning of an ecological nightmare that we don’t want and it looks like someone at Bayswater is onto it. Excellent and it’s a good start by them.
Colin Scott
Perth
Perth Voice Interactive 