LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

100km/h? Give us a break

OVER THE Christmas break we travelled to Adelaide via Blanchetown and the amount of traffic in both directions was heavy.
Our wonderful State Government is hell-bent on decreasing the open road speed limit to 100km/h. This would increase country people's travel time, which would cause more fatigue.
How much extra time would a trip from Adelaide to Ceduna, on the west coast, take?
Come on Premier Weatherill, think of country people who have to travel for many hours getting from point A to point B.
Is it that the State Government just does not care about country people because we live past Gawler and Murray Bridge?
Money wasted in Adelaide to build monuments for burned out government ministers should have been used to rejuvenate the country after the recent drought and poor sales of produce.
M.C. SCHOLZ
Barmera

Road toll disappoints

THE NUMBER of fatalities and injuries incurred over the Christmas holiday period rose this year and Police Commissioners across Australia and New Zealand are disappointed that the some drivers are not taking responsibility for their actions on our roads.
Preliminary final figures for Australia and New Zealand for the period December 23, 2011, to January 3, 2012, recorded 68 fatalities (Australia recorded 50 fatalities and New Zealand recorded 18 fatalities).
Holiday periods produce high volumes of traffic on Australia and New Zealand’s roads. While the latest road toll figures are disheartening police will continue their efforts to drive the road toll lower.
Overall most motorists were careful on our roads this Christmas.
However, it only takes one person to be careless for a tragedy to occur. In those instances, police will do everything in their power to enforce road rules and keep people safe.
The great majority of road users who do the right thing should not have to share the roads with the irresponsible few who place us all in danger.
At Christmas last year, Police Commissioners launched Operation Crossroads.
Operation Crossroads takes the Safe System approach to road safety. The Safe System approach is a holistic road safety method used by governments in Australia and New Zealand.
It encourages a better understanding of the interaction between the key elements of the road system: road users, vehicles, roads and roadsides, and travel speeds.
Police have been doing their bit by focusing their efforts on apprehending drink/drug driving, speeding, traffic infringements and licence offences.
The Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency (ANZPAA) is the agency that serves Police Commissioners in both countries.
JON WHITE
CEO
Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency

Fair shake of sauce bottle

THE CLOSURE of the Heinz’s Girgarre tomato sauce factory with the loss of 146 jobs is a sign of what will come if the Federal Government adopts the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) Draft Plan.
Without a strong, viable, internationally competitive food processing sector many communities in the MDB will be forced to close down and farmers would go broke.
It is a disgrace that a country where even a Prime Minister has demanded a 'fair shake of the sauce bottle’ and where a bottle of tommy sauce can be found in just about any Australian home that we only have one company manufacturing tomato sauce left in Australia.
Whilst water reforms are not the reason for the closure of the Heinz’s Girgarre tomato sauce factory, to put it simply if we don’t grow the food or fibre, the food manufacturing sector, which is the country’s largest, will have nothing to process and jobs will disappear.
The Australian Food and Grocery Council have already warned the Australian Government that by 2020 up to 130,000 jobs will be lost from the sector, many of them in the MBD.
The National Irrigators Council (NIC) is willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Prime Minister to help her fulfil her pledge to make 2012 the year of the job, however, if she is serious she will have to ask her Water Minister to send the draft MDBA Basin Plan back to the drawing board.
In its current form the Draft Basin Plan is a job destroyer.
We agree with the Prime Minister when she stated in Wollongong on the 13th of September, 2011 that "nothing matters more than bringing the dignity and benefits of employment to all who want to work".
“We want to work. We want to pay our way. We want to keep exporting food and fibre - not jobs.
We want a Basin Plan which equally takes into account environmental, social and economic issues.
I hope the Prime Minister may find the time in her busy schedule to come to irrigation dependent communities such as Girgarre to explain how her government’s Draft Basin Plan will deliver ‘jobs, growth and fairness’.
Irrigation communities provide real jobs and we say ‘yes to jobs, to growth, to fairness’, but if the current Draft Basin Plan is adopted many of our communities have no future.
It would be a sad day if Australia could no longer manufacture its’ own tomato sauce.
TOM CHESSON
CEO
National Irrigators Council