GEOFF Bryant ("Big tick for lowering voting age", Letters, 6/4), if 16 is the voting age teenagers should be treated as adults. Let them into pubs at 16. I'm sure they would vote for that.
Criminals tried and jailed as adults at 16, if they're old enough to run the country they know right from wrong surely. Send them to war at 16, they are adults after all.
Steve Barnett, Fingal Bay
Long road to party over port
WITH all the excitement surrounding the container terminal, has anyone thought about how all the containers will get into and out of the Port of Newcastle? How will our roads and train lines be affected, in particular the Adamstown railway crossing?
Mark Lee, Newcastle
Ramadan nears end in hard year
EID Mubarak, happy end of Ramadan to all Muslims. It is joy mixed with sadness due to the loss of so many Palestinian lives.
Julie Robinson, Cardiff
More evidence bolsters claims
John Cooper has calculated that nuclear ("Renewable renewables", Letters, 6/4) energy is cheaper "in the long run" than renewable energy. The argument would be stronger if we see the working out.
Nigel Stace, Charlestown
It's not as simple as less rain
IT seems timely to recall the 2007 proclamation by Professor Tim Flannery, once Australia's preeminent authority on all things related to climate science, that "even the rain that falls isn't going to fill our rivers and dams". Warragamba Dam, Australia's largest urban water supply dam, is spilling over for the fifth time since 2012. We are told to believe the science.
Greg Hunt, Newcastle West
Harder and faster on energy
SOME contributors argue Australia is adopting solar and wind renewables, while China is not. Wrong. In 2023, China added 118 Gigawatts (GW) of new onshore and offshore wind energy, 65 per cent of global wind additions. This has climbed to a total 468 gigawatts in 2023 compared with 2019. The levelised cost of their energy (LCOE) has dropped 53 per cent to $41 per megawatt hour. Currently, in Australia, it is more like $75 to $85. Chris Bowen is on the right track, we just need to go harder and faster.
Richard Mallaby, Wangi Wangi
Preparing for 'rain bombs' can defend droughts
HERE they go again - spill gates reopen on major dams.
All this time has passed and what has this government done? Zero. Maybe they confused Warragamba dam with their 2050 net zero policy? As I wrote previously, forget raising the walls; install pumping stations and pipe lines to maintain dam levels well before predicted rain-bomb events. This would limit the spill gates flooding the downstream lowlands. Do something that will help property owners from continual inundation. Start now and stop chin-wagging.
Pipelines could have been installed by now and pumping stations well underway. Inland buffers, storage dams and reservoirs could have been mapped out and locations designated. You shouldn't have doubts about pumping feasibility/ability/capacity, as there are pumps that can discharge huge volumes in a short time. The news media could almost save money by storing up their flood stories and photos and reprinting the same old, same old each year about the same time. Groundhog day.
Graeme Kime, Muswellbrook
Spike in bikes posts a danger
HOW long must we wait until the civic authorities take action to prevent high-powered motor bikes from riding on public footpaths and promenades?
These motorised bikes are unlicensed, unregistered, and typically driven at high speed, often by teenage children with no helmets and total disregard for the safety of pedestrians. I believe the sudden explosion of sales of these "fat" bikes is due to a legal loophole that successive police ministers have told me is below their threshold of concern; likewise some senior police in the region. These bikes present a mortal danger to elderly people and small children of families out for a stroll. I hope there is sufficient evidence to persuade the government to alter that law so that any bike that can be ridden without pedal-power should be registered, and that the rider requires a motorcycle licence.
John Boulton, Wickham
Who's gone missing on the issue?
JOHN Cooper ("Troubles in Alice prevail", Letters, 9/4) forgets that the 'no' campaign in the Voice referendum was largely founded on a claim the Voice would do nothing to address Indigenous disadvantage.
Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and many others were seen every day, hand on heart, saying their motives were pure. All they really wanted were "better outcomes" for Indigenous people. Predictably enough, those concerns seem to have evaporated as quickly as they appeared once the result they wanted was achieved.
Without examples, Mr Cooper claims many of the Indigenous leaders of the 'yes' campaign had "benefited financially and educationally" after moving from remote communities, yet have gone missing on the issues in Alice Springs. Anyone seen Senator Jacinta Price since the referendum?
He calls Indigenous culture in remote areas "anachronistic". The concept of royalty also qualifies for that description, but there it is at the pinnacle of our constitutional arrangements. What an incredibly insensitive and ignorant thing to say.
Michael Hinchey, New Lambton
Liberal win is no impossibility
IAN King ("Minns might as well stay home", Letters, 9/4), do you have a short memory - or a selective memory? Newcastle has proved that the Liberal Party can win seats in the area - if they really try.
Do you not remember the Liberal's Tim Owen won the seat (2011-2014) before resigning after the Independent Commission Against Corruption's Operation Spicer? Andrew Cornwall also held Charlestown in the same era before also resigning, and former Newcastle lord mayor Jeff McCloy from the same era, who I believe was also more supportive of Liberals than Labor, also went.
While you are saying Premier Minns has no reason for coming to the area because of "rusted-on" support, the Liberals have shown in the past they could win if they only had the motivation to "give it a go" again.
Glen Wilson, Cardiff
Fork in the road for power plans
AUSTRALIA's pushy nuclear lobby whose cause has been taken up by the Opposition, an abundance of uranium in the ground, and excellent nuclear waste disposal potential has put nuclear power back on the political agenda.
Nuclear waste disposal is already a NIMBY problem for Australia. Land rights and Maralinga have seen to that. But Australia has a build-up of radioactive medical waste from existing nuclear facilities. In future, Australia will also need to dispose of radioactive waste from its AUKUS subs.
If Australia builds nuclear power stations it will certainly need to safely dispose of their huge amounts of very radioactive waste. A nuclear fission power station would be very expensive and take a minimum of 10 years to build, given our lack of expertise.
A low-polluting fusion nuclear power station is a long way off. Renewables leave a big ugly footprint on the landscape, and at present are unreliable and impractical in providing dispatchable power.
Do we hope for better battery power storage in the next 10 years or go nuclear?
