Government's focus ill-directed
There's a lot of talk about recovery from COVID-19 shutdowns but months after the harsh lockdown ended, I'm still hearing the same message: the Andrews government's focus is in all the wrong places.
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This week we learned that Daniel Andrews is sitting on millions of dollars in small business grants that was intended to be a lifeline to get them on track to recovery.
Yet he's poured at least $7.7 million into legal fees to hide the truth of what went wrong in the bungled hotel quarantine program. It's a hard pill to swallow for Victorians whose livelihood was decimated by COVID restrictions and border closures.
The Liberal Nationals know hundreds of thousands of Victorian jobs and small businesses depend on our agriculture, tourism and international education industries.
We're urging the Victorian government to adopt our plan for recovery. This should include working with National Cabinet on a national approach to the definition of 'COVID hotspots' and to ensure border closures are only implemented as a last resort.
A dedicated facility should be established in regional Victoria for the quarantine of seasonal workers to get them on-farm helping harvest crops, before they rot.
Other measures that must be implemented are further rounds of the tourism vouchers program - including for travel to Melbourne - and a blueprint to bring international students back to Victoria this year.
Businesses, employees and communities will need more support as we rebuild our economy post the COVID second wave.
Peter Walsh, Leader of The Nationals, Melbourne
Support for roos
MP Mary-Anne Thomas has fast alienated all who love our wildlife, rural residents and businesses. She's destroyed the best "shovel ready" tourism opportunity we had which needed no investment.
80-odd roo shooters across Victoria is nothing on the thousands of jobs from nature-based tourism. Studies show tourists come to regional areas to see wildlife - alive.
The government estimate of roo numbers in 2018 was 1.4 million. If roos reproduce at nine per cent a year in good years, at best they would have got to 1.66 million in 2020. Yet government say they got to 1.9 million despite record drought and fires which wiped out millions of native animals?
Please. One can drive for hours in the country and not see a single roo. Sadly when a mob is seen, the propaganda being peddled leads those who are none the wiser to think roos are in plague proportions. Wrong.
Thanks to self-serving minority industry propaganda and government apathy, half our macropod species are already extinct.
By contrast there were over 150 million farm animals in Victoria 2016 (Labor's Animal Welfare Action Plan). A few roos who hardly eat or drink are hardly "competition".
With Australia warming faster than other countries and worsening droughts and fires to come, our wildlife need protection not persecution. Cruelly killing it off is another Andrews government disgrace - in animal welfare, regional development, biodiversity and safety.
No wonder we have a Parliamentary Inquiry into Victoria's ecosystem decline.
Sabrina Allen, Ballarat
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