SHAME on those who want to take these areas, described as our ''city's lungs'', away permanently from the majority only to fill the pockets of the greedy few.

Sean Kolednik, Box Hill South

IT IS a sad day for Melburnians when Lady Hamer finds the need to defend her late husband Dick Hamer's vision for green wedges around our city (Letters, 5/8).

Elizabeth Meredith, Surrey Hills

THE gifting, in the late 1990s, of the eastern Strzelecki's mountain ash forest and cool temperate rainforest to a US insurance and logging conglomerate is one of the more moronic and naive political acts seen in this state. The destruction of Melbourne's green wedges will be seen in the same light by future generations, who will surely wonder at our folly.

Nick Mitchell, Boolarong

COULD I add a few words to the current controversy over Melbourne's green wedges. My arguments are not about money, so perhaps they have little weight today, and of course I am attached to the ideas of my late husband, Dick Hamer.

I believe that his ideas were firmly based on a system of city planning that emphasises restraint, for the purpose of allowing families a better choice for themselves and for the environment - which is now all the more important.

We should also bear in mind that any encroachment into our green spaces is irreversible.

Speculators, of course, will disagree, but remaining faithful to the original intention of the green wedges would give us all a more disciplined, sustainable and welcoming city for future generations.

Lady April Hamer, Alphington

 

Michelle Griffin

August 4, 2011 -->

 

Abigail Elliott and her three-year-old son Willem and daughter daughter Imogen. Photo: Joe Armao

ABIGAIL Elliott doesn't want people to feel sorry for her. But as the mother of a three-year-old boy with Down syndrome, ''damn it - people do need to know that, yes, it is harder having a child with an intellectual disability''.

Ms Elliott was among a crowd of carers who gave cautious support to the launch yesterday of the National Carer Strategy, a $60 million parcel of adjustments and reforms that aims to repair some of the many funding anomalies and shortfalls in the federal government's support for the more than 2.6 million people responsible for the care of someone with a disability.

2 Aug 11 @ 07:00am by Laura Armitage

KEW Cottages developer Walker Corporation has been fined $200,000 for unlawfully clearing native vegetation.

The multi-million-dollar development company was fined by the New South Wales Land and Environment Court for clearing 23ha of native plant species at a property southwest of Sydney in 2006-07.

FOR the best part of two decades, the state's number plates bore the simple but evocative slogan, ''Victoria - the garden state''. In 1994, Liberal premier Jeff Kennett characteristically made his mark by changing the slogan to ''on the move'', while the Bracks government spent $90,000 to come up with ''the place to be''. The use of number plates as a political sloganeering tool has obvious drawbacks, and the two latter variations have failed to match that first confident proclamation that we were, indeed, a state of gardens.

THE Productivity Commission has urged the federal government drastically change the way it provides long-term care to the disabled.

The commission has been examining Australia's disability support system since April last year and submitted its final report to the government yesterday.

"The report proposes significant change to the way disability services are provided in Australia," Families Minister Jenny Macklin said in a statement today.

It is understood to include the implementation of a no-fault national disability insurance scheme slated to start in 2015 following a one-year trial in Victoria, Fairfax reported.

The $6.3 billion a year scheme would provide long-term care and support to anyone who acquires a significant disability - one of the key recommendations in the commission's draft report, released in February.

Royce Millar

July 30, 2011 -->

 

Alan Hood is worried Melbourne's Hamer-era green wedges will be eaten into by developers. Photo: Angela Wylie

IN THE weeks leading up to the November state election it was hard not to notice Liberal candidates in the pivotal electorates of Melbourne's south-east.

Sporting big smiles, Donna Bauer, Lorraine Wreford and Inga Peulich beamed from prominent billboards and hoardings across their respective sandbelt seats of Carrum, Mordialloc and South Eastern Metropolitan.

Given the parlous state of party finances, it was a well-resourced campaign, generously bankrolled, as The Age reported this week, by property interests.

The Age

July 28, 2011

Opinion

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We ignore a crisis that could affect any one of us as we age.

'WILL you still feed me, when I'm 64?'' Paul McCartney, who wrote these words, was unusual and not just because his band became the Beatles. He wrote the song about enduring love and care at the age of 16, long before most of us think about who will care for us at 64 and beyond. And when we do, a common wish is ''just don't put me in a home''. The sad irony is that the term home refers to a place where residents depend on strangers, not family. And more than ever, the quality of care is a lottery.

The trends are almost all taking a troubling direction. There have never been more people with intellectual disabilities, mental illnesses and dementia. An ageing population points to a surge in the numbers requiring care because they don't have families or their families are unable or unwilling to look after them.

Last financial year, the number of elderly Victorians placed under the care of the Public Advocate rose by almost 10 per cent. The incidence of dementia, the most common disability which affected a third of the 1574 guardianship orders in 2010 - up 45 per cent from 2005 - is predicted to jump by 230 per cent by 2030. Yet the system can't cope now; these vulnerable people already face a growing waiting list.