Teach our children well
With an electorate that would vote in a donkey if it had the National Party logo on its back, our local member rarely has to defend government policy.
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It was therefore intuitive that Michael McCormack came out to defend the Liberal/National government funding of education in the recent budget.
For 10 years politicians have wrestled with a movement away from the skewed model of the Howard years that favoured the elites and the publicly funded private schools to a new model, developed for the Labor government by Professor David Gonski, that has equity for all as its underpinning concept.
Readers will recall that it was the Liberal/National Coalition that rejected outright the model when David Gonski first reported to the parliament.
Having been elected, their sleight of hand was to refuse to fund the agreement for years five and six where the larger amounts would flow to schools.
The truth is that NSW signed up to Gonski under Education Minister Adrian Piccoli and both the NSW government and schools have budgeted for and developed programs based on that original agreement.
This new agreement changes the levels of funding but short changes our schools by once again not funding to the equity levels intended by Gonski. It falls short by $22 billion and is set at a level that will see the three local government high schools collectively receive close to $2.5 million less than anticipated over the next three years.
Glyn Leyshon
Wagga
Bad for you
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared May 31 "World No Tobacco Day". Bravo! We've known about the link between smoking and cancer for more than 60 years and any opportunity to remind people to quit is welcome.
But let's not forget that meat can also be deadly. The WHO ranks processed meats as group 1 carcinogens – bacon, ham, and sausages are now in the same category as asbestos, alcohol, arsenic, and tobacco as a major cause of cancer, while red meat more generally is in the 2A "probably carcinogenic" category. The International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that each 50-gram portion of processed meat eaten daily increases a person's risk of developing colorectal cancer by 18 per cent. Research also shows that meat-eaters are about 40 per cent more likely to get cancer than people who eat plant-based foods.
Millions of people have improved their health and longevity by quitting smoking, and millions more would live longer and better if they gave up processed and other meats. And there's an added benefit: they would help end the confinement, torment, and killing of billions of sentient creatures each year for a taste sensation that lasts no longer than a smoke.
Laura Weyman-Jones
Sydney
Humanitarian crisis
Famine has been declared in Sudan while in other African countries and Yemen millions face starvation and watch their children die on a daily basis. Meanwhile, “developed” nations like Australia are guilty of continual large-scale food wastage. Dumpster divers tell of retrieving huge quantities of perfectly consumable goods discarded by grocery stores, fruit shops and fast food outlets. A quick visit to your local shopping centre dumpster confirms this as being true.
How will God call us to account for such wanton disposal of edible produce while our East African brothers and sisters are unable to feed themselves or their children? As pointed out in the Somalia famine of 2011, there are not too many humans, there is too little humanity.
Please donate online or phone one of the following agencies: PLAN, Caritas, Oxfam, UNHCR or Red Cross.