WE ARE BEING LEFT BEHIND
On the Queen's Birthday long weekend, while returning my daughter to boarding school, I waited one and a half hours at Wagga Railway Station for the Sydney bound XPT to arrive late.
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The situation brought back memories of the same problem I faced as a child 30 years earlier. This made me consider how in the same 30 years, our region and our economy has grown, yet nothing has been done to improve public transport for regional people.
Regional Air services have not changed, the same planes fly us to and from Sydney and the same trains run (late) between Sydney and Melbourne. We deserve better.
We need a new generation of transport to support Regional NSW. No longer should we be forced to miss flights because the planes are too small to cater for the demand. Nor should we be forced to pay exorbitant prices.
We rail and rail services that are reliable, fast, clean and safe. It raises the question - isn't it time that the state government steps up to the plate and leads a new generation of transport for Regional NSW?
Clearly, looking at the current landscape, private investors don't have the interest to do so. Nevertheless, whatever they decide, it is vitally important is that we have community leaders pushing this topic.
Without them focused on transport, it will not be too long before my daughter will be reflecting on her childhood while waiting for the same unreliable trains with her children.
Greg Adamson, Griffith
WHERE DO WE STAND?
As Australians, let's take a look at where we stand in our part of the world just now, regarding China's emerging policies and activities in the Pacific and beyond.
Firstly though, I'm sure you'll agree, are our observations fair dinkum and are attuned to what a great thinker, William James when he says "we may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all."
History is ever meaningful.
After Napoleon conquered Europe he visited China to assess her, on return he reported thus "China sleeps now, but when she awakes, the world will shake."
More memories, Australia, a very small nation in the early goldfield days, being fearful of Chinese immigration declared a White Australia policy, largely forgotten by us, but remembered greatly by the Chinese who were termed by us as insultingly the "yellow peril".
And now we find that alarmingly Chinese dominance in a region, of which we are a part has taken on such urgency of our nature we look for protection; that of Britain is long gone and our only hope is the US.
But the US itself now has problems looming large.
A senior UN security expert reports that the risk of nuclear weapons being used is at its highest since World War II and arms control is changing due to strategic competition between China and the US in that they are being eroded.
But, hope springs eternal.
From the Old Testament, Jeremiah; "what we greatly feared has come upon us" and the New testament "When you see the fig tree come into leaf, you know that summer is near".
Laurie Walker, Leeton
CHEERS FOR YOGA
I did yoga in the Sikh Games. I did three poses of Yoga, Suraya Parnam (salute to the sun god) and others poses. I did these poses every day in the oval when the sun is rising.
The announcers, one from Melbourne and one from Sydney, praised me very much saying that in spite being old I do the Yoga every year in the Sikh Games. The spectators cheered when I finished the yoga.