Letters

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday June 19, 2009

Where is the room for the "building bonanza"?So Sydney is to have a "building bonanza" in areas around Blacktown, Liverpool and Penrith, and Eric Roozendaal signals "the Government may open further areas for development" ("New housing boom set to go through the roof", June 18).Where, Mr Roozendaal? In the urban agricultural land around Sydney that has half of NSW's vegetable establishments, whose crops include 42 per cent of NSW's production of cauliflowers, 47.5 per cent of lettuce, 12 per cent of tomatoes and 90 per cent of Asian vegetables?Will the land be assessed as more or less suitable for agriculture before it is released? Acting on such an assessment could allow housing development and urban agriculture to coexist.Pat Rayner BlackheathColossal stuff-up of RhodesThe Rhodes peninsula, until very recently, was one of the most polluted and contaminated sites on Earth ("Meriton halts Rhodes work due to safety dispute", June 18). The remediation of its dioxins and other nasty chemicals using incineration technology was a world first. However, the big property developers were given this land by the State Government on condition they remediated it properly. After that, the land was free to develop.Surely it is not too much for NSW Health and the council to ask that the occupation of units is delayed until all the contaminants have been removed or treated on all the development sites.Brad Ruting Castle HillWhy was residential redevelopment of highly polluted industrial sites at Rhodes allowed even to start before their remediation was complete?Norm Neill DarlinghurstThe revolution will be TwitteredWhat evidence does Herbert Woodthorpe (Letters, June 18) have to support his assertion that the 2000 US presidential election result was fraudulent? That is a big claim and I hope he has something to back it up. It reflects directly on all Americans who took part in the democratic process.Alistair Dent South WindsorIt is good that we are championing the cause of the Iranian people in their quest for fair elections, as long as they have access to Twitter, YouTube and video phones ("Twitter to the rescue of gagged protesters", June 18). May I suggest we are putting forth the case for the rich minority in Iran, and ignoring the wishes of the poorer majority who have no access to these modern disseminators of public will.Is this how it is? The revolution gets televised only if you have a broadband connection. Vive la technocracy!Julian Brown Manly ValeSolstice searchingTragic: dreadful, calamitous, disastrous. Please, Jon Mortensen (Letters, June 18), keep it in perspective. Deaths in custody are tragic, climate changes are tragic. Google decorating its banner with a winter theme for the winter solstice is ... delightful, artistic, charming. Lots of things, but not tragic.Even if it is declaring the beginning of winter, maybe children need to learn that not everything they read on the internet is true.Louise Sinclair Baulkham HillsJon Mortensen, to prevent a generation of schoolchildren believing the solstice falls on June 22, let us remember that it is a universally defined astronomical event that this year happens to fall not on Monday, but on Sunday.Peter Fyfe ErskinevilleIt was always my understanding that astronomically speaking, winter and summer start at the solstices and autumn and spring start at their respective equinoxes. So surely the United States's calendar is more accurate. Who in Australia decided that the seasons should start at the beginning of their respective months?Dylan Walters RandwickQantas still safety leaderThe fact that there are no longer flight engineers on Qantas flights does not mean the airline is jumping into the great digital unknown ("Too late to reboot when in the air", June 18). Aircraft have been flying without flight engineers for decades, and the tasks they used to perform are safely executed by computers installed in the vast majority of modern airliners.Miranda Devine says that in emergencies "computers override pilots", but that in the case of the Emirates A340 tail strike in Melbourne, the pilots "managed to override the computer".Every new aircraft type has glitches when it enters service. But it is irresponsible to present limited operational faults with the Qantas A380 alongside crashes of aircraft with high levels of automation. Doing so risks stirring up unwarranted concern among passengers.Edward Terry MosmanMay I remind Miranda Devine of the world-leading safety record of Qantas. This is surely because it would prefer to wait eight hours to ensure the plane is safe, rather than proceed with a dangerous flight in the pursuit of profit or to please its demanding passengers. Yes, it is inconvenient to have to wait for a delayed flight, but surely better than being killed in a crash. We should all prefer safety over haste if it means lives are protected.Andrew Buckley New Farm (Qld)Pay for protectionAs someone who was involved in the heritage assessment of the proposed demolition of the Camperdown terraces owned by the Green family ("Stuck in a heritage-listing Catch-22", June 16), I agree that our heritage-listing regime is not perfect. But until people are willing to put their money where their mouths are (for example, by paying a levy through the tax system or council rates for heritage protection), it is the best we will have.The 2006 Productivity Commission report on the Conservation of Australia's Historic Heritage Places found instances of owners deliberately damaging their properties to avoid heritage listing. Clearly, listing is sometimes counterproductive.A heritage register or list is not the totality of our heritage. Some highly significant places are not heritage-listed, but they may be nominated if they come under threat of loss or damage. Some places are not and should not be listed in order to protect them (for instance, from vandalism).Although commonly misunderstood, heritage listing does not preclude compatible and sympathetic changes to places of significant values.Hendry Wan Matraville