Wonder

WONDER if changing Australia Day to Australians Day, which includes everyone in the country, might be better, as well as having the day at the end of the month.

Everyone returned from holiday and ready to start a new year with positive feelings.

Happy New Year

Patricia Lea

Road raging

I’VE lived on Marine Tce for 12+ years and can confirm Barbara Darling’s comments (“Bliss revved,” Herald letters, January 10), particularly in relation to the increase in South Terrace ‘hoon traffic’!

Foremost contributors to the extreme noise nuisance are wannabe bikers on modified Harley-like cycles, but there are plenty of modified or ultra expensive sports cars whose drivers feel the need to share their over fuelled exuberance at their vehicle’s exhaust notes! 

Apart from extreme noise pollution, the obvious traffic safety issues arising from excessive speed in a (designated 40 or 50kmh) ‘pedestrian precinct’ are of concern. 

As an acknowledged hoon in my teenage years, there was a consequence for creating/ displaying a ‘noisy’ vehicle. 

Usually a ‘yellow canary’, closely followed by loss of point and fine/or licence. 

It appears that the minimalist sign advise (40kmh), total lack of enforcement of road traffic/ local laws encourages such behaviour.

Simple (ineffective social engineering) methods such as speed humps only serve to accentuate this behaviour. 

The usual 98 per cent of socially adjusted drivers abide by the speed limits/ courteous driving behaviour, but like local residents, get to endure the antisocial behaviour. 

Robert Jack
South Fremantle

He knows

THE Member for Perth, John Carey knows that fracking in the Kimberley is not something constituents in his seat of Perth want.

He’s also acutely attuned to the close call in Fremantle where concerns about fracking were at play in the state election and Labor nearly lost to an Independent strongly opposed to fracking.

Mr Carey is right, the Cook Labor government has done significant work to protect the environment. 

His statement that only 20,000 square kilometres of the Kimberley is open to fracking, the most destructive method of extracting oil and gas which industrialises landscapes and pollutes drinking water, shows the lack of attention he has of constituents’ views. 

This is a throwback to former premier Colin Barnett’s assertion that the world’s largest gas refineries proposed at James Price Point in the Kimberley were equivalent to one seat at the MCG. It didn’t wash then and doesn’t now.

It’s time for Mr Carey to begin following his party’s line; the WA Labor Party took up a new policy position in December and now want the polluting and destructive industry banned. 

Surely, after claiming such good work on the environment the Member for Perth wouldn’t want the Kimberley turned into Texas gasfields?

Martin Pritchard
Executive Director
Environs Kimberley
Broome