Letters

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday June 26, 2008

Car's future is electric - all we need are battery farms

Roy Leembruggen was in the news recently as the engineer who designed Sydney's revolutionary double-decker trains ("Expert warns single-deck metro trains no good for city", March 22). He is also the designer and principal of Elroy Engineering, an Australian company that has designed 26 types of electric cars, buses and trolley buses in Sydney.

He also created the Townobil, for four or six people, which leaves petrol-driven vehicles for dead in fuel economy. The capacity of conventional lead batteries is a problem, but if these are replaced by superior types, the future of electric transport is beyond question.

Toyota and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co (the makers of Panasonic) are now building a nickel-metal hydride battery plant in central Japan. Toyota is building a lithium-ion battery plant for future electric cars. Nissan, which plans to release an affordable electric vehicle in 2010, will be using lithium-ion batteries.

The US presidential candidate John McCain has promised $US300 million ($315 million) for the invention of an effective battery for electric cars. May I suggest the Australian Government follows these examples and takes a look at the Leembruggen designs?

Klaas Woldring Pearl Beach

We're lost in translation, Rudd

Kevin Rudd excludes his principal foreign affairs adviser from his trip to Washington, and his petrol-pricing policy is denser than diesel. If Robert Menzies was "all front and no factory", as Manning Clark said, is Rudd the Sultan of Semantics and the Bureaucrat of Babel?

Patrick Robertson Rivett (ACT)

Watering down public interest

A year ago the Herald reported an application by the Cadia gold mine for access to the Orange town water supply, which was estimated to have enough water for 18 months. Now emergency drought relief of $4.5 million is to be paid by NSW taxpayers to secure this same water supply ("Orange's water woes", June 25). There seems to be deep confusion among both sectors as to what constitutes private interests and what are essential public utilities.

Ingrid Matthews Hobartville

Bug in the system

The M5 East tunnel debacle fits to a tee the quotation: "To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer".

John Harding Eastwood

Merchants of menace

Malcolm Turnbull ("Rudd's big fraud: all symbols and no substance", June 25) asks why Australian consumer confidence has taken a greater dive than after the attacks of September 11, 2001. It may have something to do with the value of everyone's superannuation going south, a collapsing sharemarket and interest rates going up, all caused by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US and the flow-on to the Australian financial sector.

Who caused this mess? There wouldn't have been any merchant bankers involved, would there?

Jim Iveson Hornsby Heights

Condoms will go in the sin bin

I am 22, a World Youth Day pilgrim, and I will be very happy to take the condoms from the anti-Pope protesters. I'll either make them into water balloons or throw them in the garbage. After that I will celebrate Holy Mass with my beloved Papa Bene, and together we will pray for the protesters.

I've read about a dozen of Ratzinger's books and he is not a bigot: he is a deeply compassionate and uncommonly intelligent man whom I adore, and it will take more than ignorant Pope-bashing to change that.

Britt Bennett Turner (ACT)

Use cash to satisfy workforce

The Qantas bosses say 5 per cent; the workers want 3 per cent. How much of the 2 per cent difference has been spent, or will be in the next six months or so, on strike-breakers, paying for maintenance overseas, the cost of delays, pacifying irate passengers and generally dealing with the mess?

As a very minor shareholder and rather infrequent flyer, I would prefer to see a contented workforce, and reliable service and maintenance carried out as much as possible in Australia, even if it means a reduced dividend. Are there others with a similar opinion?

David Branagan Willoughby

Wrong kind of pluralism

There is a great deal of support for Muslims in Australia as they face tough scrutiny following the September 11 attacks: I include myself among these supporters. However, they are let down by their leaders, whether it be Sheik al-Hilaly or now Keysar Trad. Mr Trad's woeful attempt at trying to raise public support for the legalisation of polygamy does nothing to foster the perception that Australian Muslims can modernise and adapt in a pluralist culture.

Elias Nasser Kangaroo Point

If polygamous marriages protect women, it follows that if women have multiple husbands, this will help protect the rights of men in the relationship. No doubt if Keysar Trad's first wife took a second, then a third husband, he would understand perfectly if she said to him, "It's my way of honouring you, Keysar."

Gaby Grammeno Springwood

Keysar Trad has called for the Federal Government to recognise polygamous marriages because Muslim polygamists in Australia would like their relationships to be legal.

The people he represents have migrated to a country that, whether he likes it or not, is essentially Christian, where marriage is a union between one man and one woman.

In the West, contracting extra wives and husbands is a crime. Polygamists should go back to the Islamic countries that allow polygamy.

Antonia Feitz Rocky River

Play together, pay together

I am tired of this rubbish about how this or that is going to hurt working families. I belong to a working family and, like most people I know, do not want anyone or any industry or activity to be exempt from carbon trading.

If we are all part of the problem then just get on with it and let us all be part of the solution. If we put carbon into the atmosphere, then let us pay; if we take carbon out of the atmosphere, then give us credit. No exceptions. It is the only way to be fair, and fair dinkum.

Helen Robinson Tullera

These days all I hear are complaints about and hatred of the Arabs for regulating the supply of oil, which has added enormously to petrol prices. These prices are hurting us all.

Are we not doing the same to India and China with our 85 per cent price rise for iron ore? One cannot complain about being screwed, if we do the same.

David Rooney Turramurra

Castle wisdom

"We've got time to win hearts: Costa" (smh.com.au, June 25). In the words of the great Darryl Kerrigan of The Castle fame: "Tell 'em they're dreamin'."

Cameron Blunsden Mayfield

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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