The headline "fishing boats" represents a fuzzy approximation of the vessels in question, which are a combined super trawler and factory ship, upwards of 10,000 tonnes and about 150metres long, with 6500 tonnes cargo capacity and flying flags of convenience ("Fears that foreign fishing boats will be allowed here", Sunday CT, December 10, p10).
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That they invoke fear is a reasonable observation. The pelagic biosphere – out of sight, out of mind – is a grossly neglected, under-researched area. It is one of those areas, which to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we don't know what we don't know about it. Government dismisses stripping marine protections from remote waters as "unsubstantiated scaremongering", while failing to make a reasoned, independently researched justification for so doing.
Government is responding to profit-driven constituents demanding immediate access to resource exploitation, irrespective of environmental outcomes. Courtesy of National Party pressure, Abbott's government passed the Shipping Legislation Amendment Bill 2015, providing open slather to virtually introduce marine slavery, outside the jurisdiction of Fair Work Australia. The $1000 annual wage represents an over-estimate of what, unrepresented by unions or labour law protection, trawler workers might be "paid".
Unsupervised, these trawlers employ giant nets which envelop everything in their path – "collateral damage" by-catch – while wreaking sea-floor destruction, visible from satellite imaging. Low-grade marine diesel, these trawlers produce 3500 times more sulphur than road diesel, plus cardio-pulmonary damaging, cancer-inducing particulate.
On-board, off-shore produced sewage and waste disposal is impossible to police.
This represents "on-water" privatising profits and socialising costs!
Albert M. White, Queanbeyan, NSW
Buyers hit twice
As reported in The Canberra Times (December 12, p3), Icon Water will charge property developers a new fee on infill developments.
The fee covers the cost of increasing the capacity of the water network caused by infill developments. The developers pass on the costs to buyers.
Buyers are the ones who ultimately pay, and it increases the cost of infill dwellings. Buyers will still pay fixed costs on their water connections to cover the same capital costs and so pay twice.
Icon Water could make it fairer on buyers through a simple book-keeping exercise and stop double payments.
They could offer buyers of new dwellings, on which there was a developer charge, discount credits on future water charges.
Assume the extra cost per dwelling is $4000, then Icon Water could give a $400 discount on water fees for the next 10 years to the dwelling occupier.
The approach would be easy to implement, fair, and still be user-pays but only pays once.
The discounted payments would cover Icon Water's operating costs.
The main adverse effect would be to reduce future Icon Water profits, but on the positive side, itwould demonstrate that Icon Water cared about fairness for its customers.
Kevin Cox, Ngunnawal
Suppressive policy
Peter Martin's column, "Low pay rises are now routine. Here's why" (December 14, p21), discounted Treasury's explanation of "automation and competition from overseas" and the surplus of university graduates and only grudgingly admitted, "Some of it is due to the fading power of trade unions".
He mentioned that while wage growth has dived in the mining industry, "it has also plunged everywhere else, as well as overseas". In2016 the IMF said "Australia needs a more consistent stream of infrastructure investment year to year while funding costs are low" ("ACT can lead by example", December 12, p14).
At the height of the GFC, the IMF was telling Australia that its debt level was negligible compared with other developed nations. As the economic/trade war continued, we were diplomatically chided for not making the same level of sacrifice, for not having the same level of debt and deprivation, as the rest of our developed allies.
The lowering of wages has been driven from the top by years of suppressive commonwealth public service wages policy. It has been supported by slave labour by refugees with little or no English, workers with temporary working visas and hordes of foreign students without the funds to eat.
As to why, aside from the financial war, there is the hubris of the glaring gap between the standard of living in Australia and its Asian neighbours. Also is the unfortunate need for a reserve of disaffected labour to man the ramparts.
Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor
Cheaper energy
Contrary to the assertion of Mark Sprout (Letters, December 15), renewable energy, not all of which is subsidised, is already cheaper than that from coal or gas.
According to Wikipedia, 82 per cent of energy subsidies go to "clean coal" projects and only 18per cent to renewables.
The Earth had been surviving – in fact thriving – for many thousands of years with CO2 levels of about 300ppm.
Being a potent absorber of infra-red radiation (heat) from the sun, any more than 300ppm CO2 will raise atmospheric temperatures to uncomfortable, and later hazardous, levels, as pointed out by Peter Snowdon (Letters, December 14).
Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin
Performance unites
On Sunday I attended the regular Christmas event at the German Club in Narrabundah. Every year it delights its capacity audience.
They sing carols in German and participate in a heart-warmingly amateur program of choral, instrumental, pantomime, dance and story items brought together by Katy Cole. Katy has that rare and precious capacity to celebrate and weld the miscellaneous talents of young and old into a quirky yet coherent performance.
Events like this leave us all with a deep sense of wholeness.
I want to thank community catalysts like Katy and Tobias Cole. May they continue to practise their magic of bringing us together.
Jill Sutton, Watson
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