Letters, September 28, 2022

Tree removal

STEPHANIE Jarrett wrote of her concerns over Springlake Communities’ application to clear 438 trees on its Wistow development site (The Courier September 21).

Stephanie is one of many passionate Hills residents who volunteer to plant tree seedlings with dedicated local conservation groups, but are dismayed at the loss of large trees, some of which these trees are.

Seedlings are no substitute for mature trees.

Large trees decrease temperatures, increase property prices and improve health and biodiversity.  

Unfortunately, the State Government weakened protection of significant trees in 2011.

SA now has the weakest tree protection laws in the country.

A recent University of SA review found that SA has much weaker tree protection laws than NSW, Victoria and WA. It is not only Mt Barker which is losing its trees.

Seventy-five-thousand trees are lost across Greater Adelaide every year and we are not on target to meet State tree canopy ambitions.

I worked with the council and community groups to oppose the weakening of tree protection in 2011.

If re-elected, I will move a motion that the council seeks advocacy by the Local Government Association to the State Government to strengthen tree protection.

The views above are personal and do not represent the council.

Ian Grosser, Mt Barker Councillor
PO Box 397, Mt Barker, SA, 5251

Football fiasco

ONE wonders how long the list of sporting clubs will get to after the latest fiasco with the highly successful Hawthorne Football Club, following on from the Collingwood and Adelaide Crows club managements’ inability to provide adequate empathy and understanding toward Indigenous culture.

Experiencing the tokenism and disrespect towards the First Nations People, is it any wonder that thinking people are calling for an equal voice in all matters affecting them.

Our Australian way can at times be so cruel and barbaric.

Glen Chenoweth, Goolwa North

Dairying legacy

REGARDING the article in last week’s Courier (September 21) ‘Sculpture honors dairyman’ – this needs to be corrected as a dairy farmer all my life and a relative of the late Mr Fechner.

Bill worked on the farm only six months, then left to work at a local business as he could not work with cows.

It was his younger brother Robert who worked the farm with his parents and continued with his mother after his father’s death at the age of 66, and is still farming on part of that land today.

Those three contributed to the dairy industry, not Bill.

Eric Braendler, Echunga

Editor’s note: the information in the story was provided by Bill Fechner’s long-time friend Peter Stanbury, who maintains the accuracy of the information included in the story.

Fossil fuel exports

ON September 23 The United Nations Human Rights Committee found that the Australian Government is violating its human rights obligations to Torres Strait Islanders by failing to act on climate change.

It appears that this landmark decision obliges the Australian Government to do whatever it takes to ensure the safe existence of the Torres Strait Islands.

Surely now the Australian Government must give considerable thought to ceasing, with urgency, the massive exporting of greenhouse gas producing coal and natural gas (both fossil fuels) that are the prime causes of climate change and the resulting fast rising seas causing such enormous problems for the residents of the Torres Strait Islands.

As the exporting of coal and gas earns huge dollars for Australia, surely the time has now come for a decision to   be made by the Australian Government, what is more important – countering climate change in an effective manner or attempting to ignore the decision of the United Nations by continuing to export massive quantities of fossil fuel products.

Certainly there will be some financial pain but in my personal opinion countering climate change in an effective  manner by quickly stopping selling climate change producing products, will be the only decision acceptable for most Australians.

Brian Measday, Myrtle Bank

Paid position

ON the morning of the special one-off national public holiday, I was reading in The Courier over breakfast about “wiping the royal bot-bot” (Counterpoint, September 21) and had a bizarre thought: What if the Counterpoint writer and Courier cartoonist was actually being paid to submit this kind of inappropriate, unfunny, leftist drivel?

Gavin Stafford, Mt Barker