DEAR News Of The Area,
NOW that the Federal Election is finally over (thank God) it seems a few are grieving the result, and as a consequence their current thinking, as well as their memories, lack clarity.
Mr Williamson in his letter of 9 May 2025 laments the fact that we have elected a lying Labor Prime Minister.
I share his sentiments about sincerity and integrity, traits which unfortunately are hard to find in any politician, however I remind Mr Williamson that these characteristics are not confined to Labor politicians.
Remember John Howard and the “Children overboard” disgrace in 2001?
This unconscionable lie was instrumental in winning him an election.
In 1998 Howard pledged the Liberal Party would “never ever” adopt a GST.
However in 2000 this commitment “was not a core promise” and a GST was introduced.
Tony Abbott’s assurance in 2013 that there will be no cuts to education, health, the ABC and SBS and no changes to pensions.
He lied. All got “the chop” in that year’s budget.
Scott Morrison in his 2019 campaign maintained that Labor would introduce an Electricity tax, a Housing tax, a Car Tax, a Retiree Tax, an Investment Tax and a Superannuation Tax.
As a result of such spurious lies, none of which were proposed by Labor, they lost that election.
“Misinformation” during the Voice campaign torpedoed that excellent initiative.
Now we hear how Mr Dutton was demonised during the election campaign by Labor.
How quickly some people forget the way Julia Gillard was treated in her entire term in office by the Coalition party. Remember the pictures of Tony Abbott, Bronwyn Bishop and Sophie Mirabella standing in front of posters calling Gillard a witch, a liar and “Bob Brown’s bitch”?
The massive swing to Labor was partly due to the rejection of the Coalition’s nuclear power policy.
Mr Dingle obviously does not agree with the majority of Australians as he still strongly advocates (NOTA 09/05/2025) for the introduction of nuclear power.
Nuclear power is totally unfeasible and impractical in Australia and the Coalition’s projection of 2035 for the first reactor is overly optimistic.
According to expert opinion this will not occur before 2040, which is probably optimistic based on overseas experiences and our own experience on major projects (Snowy 2 was planned for completion in 2022 at $2B and now is expected to come into service in 2029 at $12B and this is technology that we have experience in.
In the meantime AEMO project that 95 percent of coal fired power stations will reach their life by 2035 and that they will all close by 1939.
The Coalition proposal avoided discussing the environmental impacts of this project in that the continuation of coal and increased gas generation would inject at least a billion tonnes of gas pollutants into the atmosphere. Nor was the disposal and HUGE cost of nuclear waste thoroughly addressed, not to mention the adverse impact on our water sources, as France discovered during their drought.
Little was discussed on the Regulatory organization needed to support a nuclear industry and the unique skills that we would need to develop to implement such an industry (if Mr Dutton was going to cut the public service there is a whole new Department that he would have to create which would offset his head count) and let us not forget the state government bans on nuclear power.
Therefore, we may have some that bemoan the election result but as John Howard once said “the people get it right”.
Regards,
Pieter DE VISSER.
