Working parents deserve this small reprieve. How do we pay for it? Stop giving JobKeeper to Harvey Norman - I'm fairly sure they are rich enough already.

Early learning centres and childcare workers were massively neglected by the government throughout the pandemic. Children are our future - let's start investing in them.

Read more: RSL to welcome unvaccinated veterans to Anzac Day event

Congratulations to those who instigated Bendigo's historic Woollen Mill's renewable energy project ("Bendigo Woollen Mill's energy shift", Bendigo Advertiser, April 20).

As we collectively grapple with global challenges - including a climate crisis - this type of positive initiative is exactly what Australians need to inspire change toward a better future for us all.

The new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) advises we can avoid the worst outcomes of climate change without any significant effects on standards of living.

The catch? We must act now to achieve this happy outcome.

This means cutting emissions from fossil fuel use rapidly and hard. Global emissions must peak within three years to have any chance of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees.

If we continue with (fossil fuel) business-as-usual our emissions will exceed the carbon budget for 1.5. The maths has been done - it's now or never.

Until I'd read Karen Campbell's letter, "Government MIA on climate action", I was very unaware that in order for a person to become a defence chief, one needed to be an expert CLANGER (CLimate chANGER).

And like all CLANGERS, they ignore the history of the planet. All the previous Ice Ages ended due to the natural warming of the Earth.

Except the last one, when the planet warmed because the woolly mammoths burnt coal for electricity and the sabre-toothed tigers insisted on driving their V8s.

I would like to thank the Bendigo City Council for its Easter parking initiative.

Setting aside multiple parking spaces at the bottom end of Williamson Street helped myself, and many others, get a disabled park during a very busy and festive weekend. Thank you.

The Liberal Party has had three years to select a credible candidate for the May 21 federal election.

I was expecting their candidate to be a local person who's been active in the community for years, who's aware of the issues that the community cares about, who has a record of service and who will fight for Bendigo.

Instead, we get a candidate who I've never heard of, a 'blow in' from - of all places - Toorak.

Fortunately, we do have a candidate who matches the criteria outlined above - Federal Member for Bendigo, Lisa Chesters.

When you compare her credentials to someone who, when he gets to the top of Big Hill probably thinks, "must be getting close to Bendigo now", the contrast is stark.

When Scott Morrison became Prime Minister I was pleased. I thought he was a decent bloke, genuinely prepared to put the best interests of Australians first.

When the government was returned at the last election, it appeared most agreed.

I have been disappointed. Mr Morrison does not deserve to be re-elected. He has let the people down badly.

He has totally refused to stand up against vaccination mandates, lockdowns and punitive regulations, long after they are redundant, if they ever were justified. State premiers have run roughshod over the people, and the Prime Minister has looked on.

Read more: 'Luck of the draw': Ballot paper to show independent first and UAP candidate last

So what to do? Vote Labor? Umm, maybe not. Mr Albanese has come out of the shadows and has revealed his total lack of understanding of the basics, such as unemployment figures, the cash rate and border security. As a potential leader of a government, he makes the blood curdle. Labor is going in on a platform of 'small policies'. More accurately, no policies.

No one seems to have a clue. The thought of them in power in a partnership with the Australian Communist Party, or The Greens, as they are commonly known, is scary.

Suddenly, the independent candidates and small parties are very valid options. To vote for a party or candidate who will hold any government firmly to account for its actions may be the best use of one's vote.

It appears that one major party is just as bad as the other.

With apologies to Lisa Chesters.

In response to Simon Mulqueen's notice to the community on April 9 regarding the outrageous fee increases for future burials, surely there needs to be an inquiry by the government to advise the Bendigo community why a 270 per cent hike is justifiable?

These fees would be unattainable to low or moderate-income earners.

Not everyone wants to have a cremation.

These fees are to be implemented sometime after May 3, 2022.

May I suggest the community write to their local Member to stop this highway robbery.

OTHER STORIES:

Ted Brown defended duck shooting (April 9). While recovering from COVID, I've pondered his arguments. He sees duck shooting as "tradition" and suggests duck numbers are exploding.

Duck shooting is (literally) a blast from a past era of bountiful wildlife, male dominion, and no global warming.

It's irrational today to lock up thousands of wetlands and waterways for a quarter of the year - for the benefit of a tiny minority of blokes who shoot ducks for a few days.

Abattoirs minimise suffering but hunted animals suffer terribly.

And there are enormous losses to our meat industry when shooters plunder nature instead. In an average year, Victorian hunters slaughter 76,400 deer, 155,000 quail and 347,000 ducks (GMA figures).

A 20-bird quota only applied on opening Saturday last century because Sunday was a day of rest (no duck shooting).

Now climate change and irrigation schemes have messed with duck habitat, causing the long-term decline of waterbirds across eastern Australia.

Queensland has banned duck shooting, and NSW only permits a limited cull at rice farms (6405 ducks shot in 2020-21).

Victorian taxpayers contribute millions each year to prop up duck shooting. If shooters had to pay their way, they'd drop their "tradition" like a hot potato.

Mercy Health Bethlehem Home for the Aged holds first Anzac Day service in years

Dear Ted Brown, duck shooting may be a tradition among some families but caring for the environment is also a tradition among others including farmers and our First Nations people who go back further than 100 years.

What duck hunting activists are asking is that if people wish to shoot things for fun or to feed their hungry bellies that perhaps they put their "skill and effort" towards controlling feral species instead of native fauna which is actually declining in numbers and is not a renewable resource but an essential component of our ecological system.

People who reside near duck habitats can attest to that fact as do the aerial surveys.

Activists are also asking that shooting of any species be carried out away from residences and popular tourist spots and in a sized area that can be managed.

At present, shooting is carried out in such a vast area the authorities have no hope of controlling what, where or when wildlife get shot.

Unfortunately, the majority of shooting I have witnessed seems to have little regard for the rules.

On Friday, April 8, I attended the Bendigo Senior Secondary College (BSSC) Anzac Ceremony which was hosted in the Ulumbarra Theatre.

A number of veterans from past conflicts were invited with former student and World War 2 veteran Pierce Grenfell one of those who attended.

Principal Dale Pearce, his staff and students are to be commended for conducting such a poignant ceremony in honouring, remembering and thanking the Anzacs.

The whole event was conducted with respect and dignity and is perhaps the most moving Anzac commemoration event I have attended.

Students brought a personal touch to the ceremony with some relating stories about their relatives that served our nation. The reverence and sincerity displayed by the students is to be applauded.

On behalf of the Bendigo District RSL Sub-Branch, I wish to publicly thank BSSC for hosting this event and continuing the Anzac tradition.

Lest we forget.

Hey Amanda Vanstone (Opinion, April 14):

Google it, mate. Thanks Adam Bandt for the perfect postmodern response to the new version of the journalistic gotcha.

Albo, I'm sure, is welcome to borrow a spine and use it too. Shame on you, Labor - keeping Newstart below the poverty line. Way to go. I'm voting Green for humanity and social justice.

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