Dear Echo News,
Many thousands of vehicles sit idly at train stations, shopping centre carparks university grounds and adjacent roads – all driven short distances and then usually abandoned for many hours if not whole days.
It’s totally wasteful of so many resources... Call the Productivity Commission!
Meanwhile to vastly reduce the use of cars we need to introduce local, small buses to ferry people to and from the transport hubs of railway stations and bus stations rather than have thousands of wasteful parking facilities at them.
Small buses of 20-25 seats could operate 8am to 6pm, circulating through suburbs, perhaps on the quarter hour at peak periods and half-hour for the remainder, delivering people to transport hubs and to schools, shopping centres and even hospital (visitors).
Private vehicle use for short, local travel could be reduced substantially, at huge savings for all (and the environment) and make local shopping easier and more profitable for local businesses.
It would also facilitate and increase the use of public transport by getting passengers to and from public rail and bus stations.
Smart marketing would help – advertising space on the small, local buses could be sold to retailers at shopping centres and a two-dollar passenger charge for use of the bus (a dollar or free for concession-holders) would collect revenue to offset operating costs, but the real savings would be in long-term reduced fuel usage, parking space provision and even reduced vehicle maintenance and repair costs.
A small, additional charge to ratepayers would help defray costs.
A fleet of buses jointly provided by major adjoining local governments co-operating, would make the scheme even more effective and drivers could be found from within local communities.
Rates may even be reduced, or at least not increased as a result of savings made.
It’s at least worth a scoping evaluation with cost/benefit analysis and my guess is that savings achieved would offset costs with the service improving amenity and community lifestyles to benefit individuals, businesses, local government and the environment.
Priceless. Let’s do it!
P Carman
Hovea
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Dear Echo News,
As a loving son-in-law who has taken his wife’s mother into care at our home (after her discharge from hospital following a heart attack and fall) I am disgusted to learn that despite her being eligible for some minor home-care support aids, such as a walker, under her aged care package, she is currently unable to access any additional care due to administration shortfalls.
She’s very elderly (93) and frail and can’t move around without help and/or a walking aid, but would you believe, her application for funding for a walker will take “up to six months to process” and then may take “some additional months” to be paid. The obvious solution would be that we buy it, now, and get refunded the cost, later.
But there’s a Catch 22: we can’t buy it for her and then be refunded; we’d have to wait for the whole funding admin process to complete and then buy the walker, when the purchase is funded!
Meanwhile, is she supposed to remain in bed or seated? Obviously, we’ll have to buy it for her now, but never get refunded.
Whoever makes these nonsensical decisions should have their pay docked (by us, taxpayers) until they’re fixed.
Or is it an intentional avoidance of the promised and deserved funding for aged care?
Concerned resident
Hovea
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Dear Echo News,
The WA Horse Council was interested to read the article Midland rallies against wild horse aerial culling about more than 200 people gathering in Midland to protest the aerial shooting of brumbies in Kosciuszko National Park in NSW.
It raises an important question:
Why aren’t we having the same conversation about wild horses here in Western Australia?
WA is an enormous state. What happens to horses across our remote regions is largely out of sight and, for most Western Australians, out of mind.
Aerial control of feral horses has occurred in the Kimberley for decades. In one operation in 2013 alone, more than 7000 horses were reportedly shot near the WA-NT border. Thousands more have been removed through subsequent control programs.
And the issue is not confined to the far north.
Wild horses at Lake Muir in WA’s southwest are again the subject of calls for culling, despite DBCA recently acknowledging that it does not currently have an estimate of the population.
The WA Horse Council recognises the very real environmental and animal-welfare problems associated with unmanaged horse populations.
Allowing horses to multiply until they suffer from starvation, dehydration or environmental degradation is not an acceptable welfare outcome either.
But lethal control of horses raises serious questions about population data, identification, animal welfare, oversight and accountability.
Australia has already seen just how badly things can go wrong.
In 2020, shooters authorised to control feral animals at Killarney Station in the Northern Territory killed 30 station horses in a paddock close to the homestead.
These were not anonymous horses without human connections. They were working horses, companions and, in some cases, much-loved children’s horses.
Jumbuck Pastoral described them at the time as some of its most prized and cherished horses. One, Riot, was a quiet schoolmaster who had been lent to a nine-year-old girl to ride during her school holidays.
Station staff described losing their ‘mates’ and members of their family. Almost two years later, they said they were still shattered by what had happened.
The subsequent legal proceedings also demonstrate how difficult accountability can become after the event. Dozens of charges against the two shooters were ultimately dropped, with the court hearing that investigators could not establish who had shot individual horses.
That tragedy should never be forgotten when Australia discusses shooting horses as a population-management tool.
So, while more than 200 Western Australians stood in Midland protesting what is happening to brumbies 3500 kilometres away in Kosciuszko, perhaps it is time we also asked:
How many wild horses are being shot in Western Australia? Where are they being shot? How are population estimates established? What welfare standards and independent oversight apply? What non-lethal alternatives have genuinely been assessed?
And importantly – how does the Western Australian public know?
This should not be a debate between people who care about horses and people who care about the environment. We should be capable of doing both.
Western Australia’s wild horses, our environment and the community all deserve transparent, evidence-based and humane management.
WA Horse Council
