In response to Jan Hainke's letter where she has attacked George Quigg for writing his thoughts on the environment levy.
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Firstly why should young families who struggle to pay off a mortgage be slugged an environment levy on their rates - they can not afford it.
The money collected from this levy is then given to wealthier people to plant trees on their properties - it is robbing the poor to give to the rich.
You have stated that a cappuccino a month equates to the levy that you pay. You must drink expensive cappuccinos. If I apply a mathematical equation to the environment levy paid in this case, which is $345 divided by 12, I come up with 28.75. Which means a cup of cappuccino cost $28.75. I don't think so.
You have stated that council now operates a nursery. This nursery operated for about 23 years [up to 1995] that I can remember and during this time thousands upon thousands of trees were grown yearly and planted in council parks, reserves, roadside reserves.
Trees were also made available to any ratepayer would wanted to plant trees on their properties free of charge. There was no discrimination between species of trees: natives and exotic trees were made available. So from this you can see that replanting of native vegetation has been going on longer than you think.
AT NO EXTRA COST TO THE RATEPAYER.
You have stated that volunteers give up their time to grow and plant these trees. Good on them its their passion and/or hobbies.
I too have passions and hobbies but I receive no financial support to pursue them.
I have also observed people fence off a section of their land and plant trees, no doubt with financial assistance from some sort of levy and in six months time cut the fence put stock in the area that eat the trees.
I am not against anybody planting trees but I certainly don't like being robbed to give my cash to other people.
No doubt Jan Hainke will respond to this letter with the same amount of venom that would come out of a tiger snake if you poked it with a forky stick while it was sleeping.
GRAHAME TOOTH
Penrose