dust and buses
Thumbs down to the people responsible for building smaller roads, and using the Rowland Street, a residential street as a major bus route. Our road has too much traffic as it is. As Rowland Street is not sealed from kerb to kerb, we now get dust in our houses, and we breathe in the dust.
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Ev Le Mester, Sebastopol
a marriage tragically curtailed
Congratulations to all concerned with the memorial to the Grieving Mother. This memorial is just another of the sort that Ballarat does so well. My close connection adds to the occasion as my mother was engaged to Eric T. Brind when he was killed in France on 28 July 1916, and his tree number 443 in the Avenue of Honour remembers him. I have been unable to contact any of Major Brind's relatives.
Oliver Guthrie, Alfredton
Expect no humanity
When Tony Abbott was prime minister, he stated that Australia would be taking some thousands of refugees from Syria. Where are they? I have heard that we are only taking Christian families from Syria. How shameful and how bigoted.
But it is no surprise. Compassion is in short supply with our minister for immigration, who was once a member of Queensland police force, known for its racist attitudes.
Ann Lawry, Wendouree
inconsistent punishments
I was expelled as a member of the Labor Party in November last year for supporting my friend Samantha McIntosh, a Liberal, when both of us stood as candidates at the council election in November last year.
Sam was elected, and is now mayor, and I was not. The expulsion then occurred. The reason cited ostensibly was for me placing Sam as my second preference on my how-to-vote card, rather than Labor members who were also on the ticket. I suspect, however, it was more to do with my vocal opposition to the government's proposed plans for the Station precinct and some other projects.
Given my expulsion, I did smile wryly to myself when I read about some recent relationships between some Labor luminaries and some high-profile Liberals. For example, the former state secretary of the Labor Party, Nick Reece (also former adviser to Steve Bracks, John Brumby and Julia Gillard), was part of Liberal Robert Doyle's re-election team during the lord mayoral campaign for the City of Melbourne. Doyle wins, but there is no action taken against Nick for supporting the other side.
Another case in point is that of Labor stalwart and former federal politician Barry Jones. He publicly supported the federal Liberal minister Josh Frydenberg and Tom Harley, who is chairman of the Liberal think tank, the Menzies Research Centre, in opposing the state Labor government's proposal to remove 100 trees along St Kilda Road to make way for the new underground metro rail tunnel because the four-kilometre, tree-lined boulevard is one of the richest urban cultural landscapes in Australia! Again, no action taken by Labor against Barry.
By contrast my situation with these two examples, would it be audacious of me to suggest my expulsion from the ALP was because of my questioning of state Labor's wasteful spending on the Eureka Stadium fiasco ($20 million plus and climbing) and also gifting crown land to a private developer to build a hotel complex that no one wants? I believe my expulsion from the ALP is punishment for standing up for the community on these issues.
If the ALP chooses to selectively quash dissent and diversity within its own ranks, why would anyone join? Who knows when and why the axe will fall? I was, and remain, committed to advocating for the issues that I believe in.
Ron Egeberg