Smart money is on renewables

Masking our new reality

As restrictions from the pandemic start to lift, there will be mounting pressure to embrace more working from home. While this may provide short-term benefits, it is worth reflecting on what society might look like if we lose the benefits of social intercourse, and see our standard of living stagnate due to a loss of critical mass thinking. While there will be short-term gains, continued working from home will invariably lead to contraction and a slowing of development and growth. If your comfortable home job becomes redundant, it may prove difficult to find the next one from home having lost your contacts and your awareness of developments and the opportunities in the world around you. You may well become, dare I say, isolated. We are living in times where you cannot stand still; if you do, the world will pass you by. - DÁrcy Hardy, North Turramurra

The limit on travel under the virus restrictions is said to be "no limit but people should not be engaging in local or regional travel". What other kind is there? The Premier clarifies nothing by saying she is "still not eager" to permit local or regional travel. Can she please state unambiguously the present level of travel that is allowed? - Greg McCarry, Epping

Surely the logistical problems with public transport and lifts can be easily resolved by requiring users to wear masks. It provides a physical barrier for droplets from infected people and is easier and cheaper to implement and enforce than "crowd control" at train stations and in lift wells. - Penny Hackett, Willoughby

Your correspondents (Letters, May 14) are a good indication that Australians are coming out of this period of lockdown and reflection wiser, kinder, and looking forward to a much different future.

What an opportunity we now have to do things differently and not return to tired old ways. Hopefully our politicians will recognise this reluctance for the status quo. - Christine Tiley, Nana Glen

As hospitals brace for the second round of COVID-19 cases with the easing of lockdown, the government and its advisors remain steadfast in their advocacy against the use of facemasks in public, despite growing international evidence of their effectiveness in preventing community transmission. The regions that have been most successful in this regard – Taiwan and Hong Kong – saw facemasks used from the outset, including by schoolchildren when classes resumed. Even the government's own policies, issued through health departments, recommend placing a facemask on a patient presenting to a healthcare facility with COVID-19 symptoms. If they are so ineffective, why bother with this measure? Is it because the government is unable to supply sufficient masks for public use? - Andrew Hill, Dulwich Hill

Mental health system forces clients to fend for themselves

When the federal government introduced Medicare rebates for consultations with psychologists in 2006, this initiative was supposed to service people with mild to moderate anxiety or depression ("Crisis looms for mental health system", May 15).

Unfortunately, within two years, state governments shut down community health services that had provided comprehensive care for people with concerns across the mental health spectrum, from the worried well, to people with significant mental health problems. Clients did not require a referral from their GP, and there was no fee for or cap on the number of sessions. As a result of this loss of government services, psychologists in private practice have been expected to fill the void, and we are often referred clients with complex mental health problems that we are expected to resolve in 10 sessions in a calendar year. Further, there are many people who cannot afford private psychological services. The local government Mental Health Service has strict criteria for admission to their service, which sees its role as case management rather than ongoing treatment. It is distressing for clients who cannot get the help they need, and worrying for those of us in private practice to have to, in effect, abandon some clients who require so much more than we are allowed to deliver. -Sandra Pertot, clinical psychologist, Diamond Beach

Nurture the homegrown

Does it take a pandemic to state the obvious? For decades, Australian classical instrumentalists and singers have suffered insurmountable frustration by having their work taken for granted and ignored. They have been overshadowed and often replaced by international artists. Faced with the decision to either move overseas and survive, or stay in Australia and give up their art, it's no wonder so many end up leaving. Ironically, those who choose to leave often do brilliantly and are then brought back at great expense, hailed at having achieved the impossible. Until they leave again.

Perhaps it takes a deadly disease that makes overseas travel an impossibility to prove that homegrown Australian classical performers are assets who support the national cultural economy. Even pre-virus, overseas travel comes at a huge expense on many levels. Let's cherish and invest in these world-class artists right here, where they live. - Bridget Bolliger, Bilgola Plateau

Herd immunity mentality

Vaccinations allow us to live in a world without smallpox and with historically low levels of many other severe infectious diseases such as measles, influenza and pertussis. Now human trials of COVID-19 vaccines have begun, thanks to brave volunteers taking a significant risk on our behalf. These trials reduce the risk for the rest of us, although sadly some of us will experience adverse reactions. Nonetheless, most of us take this leap of faith for ourselves and our community. Anti-vaxxers choose to take no risk and contribute nothing to our collective security while enjoying the great benefit of living in an immunised community. - Dr Chris Alexander, Bowral

Puff of hot air

Smoke is in the air – again. Fuel reduction burning now going on is mostly a politically driven activity that is a waste of resources, damaging to the environment and short-sighted. On a hot, windy summer's day, reducing the fuel load on the ground will not stop a fire burning through the tops of trees or being sparked by airborne embers that have originated from elsewhere. Carbon dioxide levels are also being added to in the atmosphere. What use was such burning throughout 2019 in preventing last summer's destructive fires? - Grey Williams, Cremorne Point

Reviving two-fold

When there are so many negatives connected with an idea such as the Powerhouse move to Parramatta, the writing is surely on the wall that it's a bad idea ("New Museum Eclipses Loss of Heritage", May 14).

The loss of yet more heritage buildings, flood mitigation, public disapproval and staggering cost can all be turned around by focusing on the other end of the Civic Link, where a magnificent, priceless heritage building – the Roxy Theatre – awaits a rebirth at a fraction of the cost. The result? Heritage buildings preserved at both ends, the acquisition of a world-class theatre right on the Metro, a parkland river bank, Sydney keeps its Powerhouse, and it's an outcome far more popular with the locals. It's a no-brainer. - Robert Fox, West Pymble

Demountables idea doesn't stack up

As a local Dulwich Hill resident, I was appalled to discover the Department of Education's plans to place a demountable classroom on this much needed, well-loved green space ("School's squeeze prompts turf war on popular green", May 15) To think that we might lose access to this park, when we have so few green spaces in the Inner West, is devastating. The issue also highlights poor planning by successive NSW governments. In the late 1990s, many of our local residents protested against plans by the then-NSW government to sell off and close the same high school. Less than 25 years later, the school is almost full, the population density mandated by the NSW government for our area has increased, and that population increase is represented in the planning regulations that apply to our area. Yet the government has not moved to provide more schools or increase the capacity of existing schools. I know of other local schools that also have had their playing fields impacted by demountable classrooms, which are often presented as a temporary measure but never removed once installed. The Graham Green park has been a shared community/school park since it was created in the 1990s. This decision will greatly impact the local community who desperately need this green space, as well as students at the school who will lose a good proportion of their only playing field. - Maria Chilcott, Dulwich Hill

Normal service resumes

Our premiers and chief ministers have done a remarkable job in managing the crises over the last six months. They have all been focused on their various jurisdictions and making, in the most part, decisions based on expert advice. I have no reason to doubt this is still the case when the Queensland Treasurer put forward a plan to support Virgin Airlines. To listen to the conservative aviation commentators dragged out of retirement and the intemperate language of Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton is disappointing to say the least and has resurrected the appalling state of partisan politics back into the arena. - Peter Phillipson, Fingal Bay

Slowly but surely we are returning back to business as usual. Frontline public sector workers like teachers and nurses are praised one week but told to forego their promised minimal pay rise the next. Dutton wants the right to question 14-year-olds without a warrant and then finds the time to abuse the Queensland premier for wanting to save some jobs in Virgin. Backbenchers practice shouty diplomacy and mates in the non-renewable energy sector are given jobs for the boys to deal with COVID-19. The good old days, for some, are already back. - John Bailey, Canterbury

A plague on them

Pity the poor pigeons during this pandemic. Fewer people on the streets means food supply has dropped to alarming levels. And all those ibis might be forced back to the bush where they came from. With any luck, though, the rat population may also be impacted. - Genevieve Milton, Newtown

So 2020 is the Year of the Rat. Like the rat, we are all in hiding. We only go out to get food and we store it to eat later. And when people come close to us we run away. - Richard Ryan, Summerland Point

Better late

Regarding the British PM's response to the pandemic ("New arrival rules spark criticism", May 15): late by two weeks is a mistake. Late by two months is a catastrophe. - Mustafa Erem, Terrigal

Living dead

Does anyone else find it a tad weird to be referring to funerals broadcast to those who can't attend as "live streaming"? - Judith Fleming, Sawtell

Plane crazy

There are so few planes in the sky now that when I do see one I am tempted to call out "the plane, the plane" like Tattoo from Fantasy Island ("Promiscuous airline bidders flirt with other partnerships", May I5).- Michael Deeth, Como West

Fun park

Be it New York or Kings Cross (Letters, May 15): any park with two trees and a patch of grass. That's Disneyland for me.- Tim Schroder, Gordon

Postscript

A return to normal. It's a wish that, somewhat surprisingly, did not seem to be at the forefront of readers' minds this week. While everyone wants COVID-19 to disappear, there seems to be a growing consensus that the same old normal won't cut it in the age of pandemics and climate change, with the virus igniting a lot of soul-searching about the future. What's needed, suggests readers such as Susan Wynn, of Mannering Park, is a new kind of normal, with a complete U-turn on the fossil-fuelled trajectory we were on before the pandemic. Whether it was COVID-19 or the colder weather, comfort food and the more comfortable past were hot topics, though Joy Cooksey blames the recipes on the new Home Front page for "fattening her curves". Mentions of the Metro/Minerva theatre in Kings Cross incited many memories, including one from Richard Fry who says its '60s reincarnation took the form of Surf City, where "hundreds of surfies (and wannabe surfies who peroxided their hair" would "stomp the night away". Eagle-eyed readers of a later vintage should check Spectrum's cover to see if they've been immortalised in a classic shot of a free AC/DC concert in Sydney's Victoria Park in 1974. And a "sorry" is in order for Peter Hull, who sadly went incognito when he mused about the Eden-Monaro Barilaro imbroglio last week, with his witticisms unfortunately being attributed to another. Lastly, the week cannot go by without a passing mention of the impending retirement of Alan Jones. In much the same way he attracted a lot of attention despite having a relatively small audience, he provoked a lot of letters, though there were not many loyal listeners among them. - Jane Richards, Acting Letters Editor

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