Teachers deserve more
Our teachers have been holding up the educational system for too long, they should be given the respect and acknowledgment of their essential value by the government with higher pay, appropriate and realistic relief time and broad-scale increase in funding of our public school systems.
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Marina Ely
Are we 'fair dinkum' about Climate action?
Climate Action, when do we want it? Now.
This was the cry during the election but what happened?
During COVID there was hardly any air travel, but now every one wants to fly in a fossil fuel powered plane.
The Cruise Liner travel was at a stand still, but now we are encouraged to hop on one of these ships that are equivalent to a 1000 cars a day running 24 hours.
Road travel was encouraged by the tourist industry and as soon as fossil fuel fuel prices went up from external factors the cry was so loud that the government subsidised it.
If we were fair dinkum we would have said let's keep the COVID situation on travel and adjust, but perhaps we aren't if our hip pockets are affected.
Chris Brandis
Ongoing threat to koalas
While the NSW Threatened Species Scientific Committee's (TSSC) listing of koalas as endangered in NSW was anticipated the threats to koalas at a state level should not be applied to, or confused with those the TSSC has specified for this bioregion.
In its 2007 final determination to reject an endangered listing for South Coast koalas, the TSSC acknowledged koalas "...are threatened by ongoing degradation in the quality of their habitat because of extensive canopy dieback, clearing due to rural residential development and commercial forest harvesting.
Further measures are needed to mitigate these threatening processes and provide for the recovery of this iconic species in south-east NSW and elsewhere in its range."
The vague Koala Action Network (KAN) suggestion that "climate change, loss of habitat and fragmentations have had a serious impact" is consistent with NSW government's endless efforts to ignore the ongoing threats and the management required to mitigate them.
This is particularly the case for extensive forest dieback, because understanding this phenomena explains why the Australian Koala Foundation says there are only 175-250 koalas in Eden-Monaro even though 61.6 per cent of original koala habitat remains.
The AKF's advice that koalas need "cooperation between state agencies and private landholders interested in protecting biodiversity" has much merit.
Unfortunately it is apparent that like state agencies the secretive and unresponsive KAN does not support cross tenure forest management for koalas, has rejected credible local environmental science and seemingly doesn't mind suppressing information.
Robert Bertram, Bermagui
Calling out 'climate negligence'
It is distressing to learn that Australia's national greenhouse gas emissions rose in 2021 as the economy began to return to pre-COVID practices.
We had the golden opportunity to transition our post-COVID economy towards a cleaner and more prosperous economy; yet the Morrison government squandered it all on a "gas-led recovery" which did nothing to revive the economy.
Good climate and energy policies, and significantly stronger environmental laws are needed to drive long-term emission reductions in Australia.
The Labor government has much to unravel after a disastrous 10 years of climate negligence.