Tell your super fund to get out of Russian assets 

Tell your super fund to get out of Russian assets, says letter writer MARTIN GORDON, of Dunlop.

I FIND those silly industry super advertisements irritating and a waste of money. It’s worse though when the same super funds invest in Russia. 

It has come to light that a fund that I am a member of – namely Australian Super – has more than $200 million invested in Russian oil and gas and banking investments. After a long struggle by fund members they ceased investing in tobacco. 

Perhaps they might see their way clear to exit morally bankrupt holdings in a corrupt and despotic country such as Russia? Perhaps they should never have invested there in the first place? 

I am a company director, and have worked as an auditor and tax official (amongst other things). I am amazed that for all the environmental, social and governance posturing, some sanity check is not applied to investments that might be financially fine, but raise ethical and appearance questions because of tax havens, invading peaceful democratic neighbours or other unprincipled issues. 

And to make it worse, even Sweden has swung into action and helped out with weapons, and even the Swiss are drawing the line on Russian exposures. It’s pretty sad when our own supposedly moral and ethical superannuation funds are actually immoral and unethical and have to be shamed into action 

Please find out what your superannuation fund is up to as regards Russia and badger them to change tack. 

Martin Gordon, Dunlop 

 

KEEPING UP THE ACT

Restore our local ABC station

AS a rusted-on ABC listener, having listened to a range of stations in different regions, I believe “Keeping Up The Act ” (CN March 3) has nailed it. Our once erudite, substantive and relevant ABC is too frequently characterised by vacuous drivel at the expense of engaging content. 

The change in managerial priorities since the retirement of Alex Sloan and the axing of the wonderful Genevieve Jacobs has left potentially capable presenters with too much trite trivial dross, as depicted in your cartoon, masquerading as quality infotainment. One wonders why?

Before the change, the rich, textured and thoughtful local programming made 666 a credit to Canberra, an exemplary ABC station. I urge them to treat their listeners with more respect, abandon this lazy programming and restore our local station. In the meantime, I will continue to switch to Radio National when they dish up the tripe.

Peter Morgan, Ainslie 

Do we really need noisy drones? 

DRONE deliveries are being rolled out to selected Canberra suburbs in a partnership between Coles and service provider Wing. I am not looking forward to this development, which has the potential to become Canberra wide in time. 

I’m sure I don’t need to tell people who have been subjected to the noise created by drones during trial periods over the last several years that they make a heck of a noise. 

A recent property sale nearby had the realtor use a drone to take pictures of the house/views – it was very loud and you couldn’t escape it, the noise just cut through my house walls and it wasn’t that close by. The noise really carries.

I’m all for technology advancements and, of course during times of emergency (such as the floods we are seeing), delivery of emergency supplies is an excellent deployment of this technology, which has many other legitimate applications, too (checking power lines/infrastructure, search and rescue, law enforcement and the list goes on). But is this something we really need on a day-to-day basis for delivery of general shopping items?

Other than genuine uses similar to those listed above, I object to the use of drones on the following basis: noise pollution, safety (deliberate misuse to cause harm or just plain malfunction), security risk (around airports/prisons etcetera), illegal use (spying/privacy invasion), impact on pets and wildlife (similar to fireworks) and too many more to list here.

Let’s hope the ACT government says: “This ain’t gonna happen here” – but I doubt it.

A great feedback comment I read: “Will be interesting one day when the Coles drone hovers to wait for the Woollies drone to depart and the Amazon drone is in a holding pattern while the customer tries to give a landing clearance for the Aldi drone via the app on his mobile.”

Bjorn Moore, Gowrie

Locked up like ‘caged animals’

I THANK Jon Stanhope for raising the issues that he has over our prison, the Alexander Maconochie Centre. 

In his most recent article (“Why a young man’s death in prison matters”, CN February 17), he talks about a young man who took his life on the first day of his imprisonment despite being under close observation. 

This is a terrible situation which should not have happened. As part of the ACT community I want to express my sadness and sympathy to the family of this young man.

As a community we can’t shut our eyes to the fact that these things are happening within what is supposed to be a human-rights prison. I, for one, know that this is not the case, despite the fact that there are some good people working there and some good programs that help detainees.

Yes, they have done the wrong thing, which is why they are there and I’m sure there are some detainees who have done atrocious things to others and I don’t condone any of that. But the majority are there because of stupid mistakes and decisions that they made and are serving their time. Some of them are our relatives.

But there is lots of research that tells us detainees need some help to turn their lives around, that their lives matter and that we need some empathy for those that can be helped.

I know there have been endless lock-ins because of staff shortages and covid issues – but not only are the detainees serving their time locked away from their family and friends, but they are locked up like caged animals for up to 20 hours a day for days on end in some periods of time. 

The Transitional Release Centre, which helps detainees reintegrate into the community, has been out of action for nearly two years. Not good enough.

Heather McLeod, via email

Facts about the polluting bus fleet

CANBERRA’S growing fleet of government-subsidised, fossil-fuelled buses continues to add to the territory’s already excessive greenhouse emissions.

Transport Canberra’s annual reports have not included public transport greenhouse emissions since 2015, or public transport passenger journeys since 2020.

From a freedom of information request, I learned that Transport Canberra provided 11 million bus and/or light rail passenger journeys in 2020-21.

I have estimated greenhouse emissions from published diesel and CNG consumption figures. Transport Canberra’s buses caused record-high emissions in 2020-21, equivalent to 37 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Transport Canberra’s greenhouse emissions were equivalent to 3.5 kilograms of carbon dioxide per passenger journey.

If patronage returns to pre-covid levels, Transport Canberra’s emissions will fall below 2.5 kilograms per passenger journey. That is 20 per cent more than per-person emissions for an equivalent journey in a car that carries Canberra’s average of 1.5 people.

The ACT government’s plan for a zero emissions bus fleet was postponed in 2019 when it bought 40 new diesel buses, and is now being further delayed by the lease of an additional 26 new diesel buses.

Leon Arundell, Downer

Sick of being told abnormal is normal

GREG Cornwell (Letters, CN February 24) uses too many words on the problem of bureaucrats and none on the remedy.

Our bureaucrats are managers who measure their performance with statistics.

When the Snowy Mountains Scheme was built in the ’50s and ’60s, the head of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Authority was an engineer, William Hudson. His management style “stressed co-operation between management and labour and scientific knowledge (facts) over opinion”, according to Wikipedia.

Which leads me to my main complaint. I am sick of being told that the abnormal is normal. I want one of the basic freedoms of a modern democracy returned – to be able to argue my case in the media.

Our culture (if it’s worth saving) will not survive unless we start having more children. You cannot legislate the family, nor can technology replace it. Society needs the traditional family to survive, so it should be recognised accordingly. The dignity of any person should not be denigrated because there are truths in this world.

John L Smith, Farrer

Planning contributes to gang gang stress 

THE ACT government is to lead a national working group to help conserve the beloved gang gang cockatoo, which has now been included on the national endangered list of threatened species. 

It has also received about $250,000 to monitor these birds and find out what is causing their decline. Canberra is the only city where this bird is found yet we persist with poorly managed urban renewal planning processes that are known to impact this important species. 

The working group or our environment minister may wish to set up a longitudinal study that reviews, initiates and monitors specific actions to counteract the significant and ongoing loss of extensive and well-known gang gang habitat across Canberra including in central Downer. 

On one large section in this suburb, dozens of mature trees, including many 70+ year-old, heritage-listed ones, were felled more than two years ago and dozens more will be lost when more multi-storey complexes and swathes of hard surfacing appear next to what were well-established public treescape corridors for gang gangs and other birds. 

A well-co-ordinated, time-critical tree replacement, management and maintenance plan is required to ensure that the expected, yet slow, regeneration of publicly-owned habitat in central Downer does not receive set-backs or suffer losses over the next few decades. 

The new gang gang project should aim to provide evidence of how and when more of these birds will be enticed back to this suburb. 

Sue Dyer, Downer 

Albo’s suffering from amnesia

OPPOSITION Leader Anthony Albanese is being hypocritical by saying “it’s not the job of the PM to scare people, it is to look after the interests of the nation”.

Albo and the ALP appear to be suffering from amnesia, as they have conveniently forgotten about “Mediscare”, the mother of all scare campaigns. 

Mario Stivala, Belconnen