Your Voice: August 13-19

WHITTLESEA PIPE UPGRADE

All these upgrades and increasing suburbs and higher-density
housing mean the fixed rate of our water bills must keep increasing. The
public is being forced to pay for the desal plant, the actual water
that should be a “natural resource”, not artificially produced, and we
are still paying more for the infrastructure.

Ponzi growth schemes are always paid for by those at the base,
with little power to change governments’ “economic growth”-at-all-cost
policies. Australia’s low fertility levels don’t match the population
growth being projected.

MARY G VIA WEB

SUNBURY OUT OF HUME

Jeff Kennett placed Sunbury in the City of Hume in 1994. He won
the Victorian state election in 1996 by proclaiming that he had lowered
council rates throughout Victoria.

Now the modern-day Liberals want to raise Sunbury rates by about
$150 for each household in the first year and by about another $100 for
each of the following three years.

How are families, pensioners and people on fixed income going to survive these imposts?

PETER GAVIN SUNBURY

HUNTING HOONS

Senior Sergeant Tom Bentley, I wish you well with your plan (Northern Weekly, July 30) and hope you get all the idiots off our roads. Thanks for your efforts so far.

BARRY VIA WEB

The “hoon hotline” needs a bit of work. I placed a report about
six months ago, left all my contact details and explicit details of the
offending including dates, times, number plate – with no follow-up. Not
even an automated email saying the report had been investigated.

Senior Sergeant Tom Bentley’s words carry little meaning to the
hoons and unfortunately the courts are unlikely to back him up either.

Calling hoons “cheap” and saying they have “no skill” demonstrates
Tom doesn’t really understand his clientele. A lot of hoons spend all
of their disposable income on their cars; they certainly aren’t cheap.

And to imply there isn’t just a little bit of advanced skill in
throttle control, managing oversteer and understeer etc in doing power
slides and doughnuts is really just Tom exuding some of his own driving
ego.

I’m all for Tom talking tough, but the community wants results,
not idle threats. I look forward to seeing the pictures of crushed cars
on page one, but I won’t hold my breath.

DAVID VIA WEB