If true, Mr Hendy needs to explain to his constituents how investor state dispute settlements (ISDS) in the China Free Trade Agreement and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) will strengthen the community. 

ISDS threaten local, state and federal sovereignty, being that foreign corporations will have the right to sue Australia in foreign countries if domestic regulations threaten future corporate/shareholder profits.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, negotiations of key aspects of the China trade deal were not complete, yet the Abbott government signed the treaty. 

Released government information reveals that Chinese electricians, cabinet makers, carpenters and mechanics will qualify for 457 visas without undergoing necessary skills assessments. 

Trade Minister Andrew Robb and Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng have agreed that eliminating regulations “for all occupations within five years” is their goal. 

Critics of the Trans Pacific Partnership, including chairman of Australian Super Heather Ridout, say Australia “will regret” handing over sovereignty and control of government policy to foreign corporations in the TPP.

All calls by the public, interest groups and community groups for transparency before the TPP is signed by Cabinet are ignored by the Abbott government, as are calls by the opposition, Greens and cross benchers to allow parliamentary scrutiny before the trade deal is ratified.

Three questions for Mr Hendy re the China FTA: 

1. Why did the government accept an unequal investment chapter on market access and non-discrimination, in China's favour?

2. Why did the government refer decision making about the most controversial aspects of ISDS to a future committee?

3. Why did the government ensure it could keep key documents and hearings in ISDS – especially in Chinese investors' claims against Australia – from the public?

Maureen Searson

Batemans Bay

Thank you for the two-weekly Bega District News.

It is lovely to see a baby column again, but I wrote this to congratulate Mimosa Meats from Tathra.

We won two trays, number one was prawns and oysters, number two the last tray of the night.

It looked great, but better than that, it tasted great and tender.

We didn’t know it had changed hands so congratulations to the manager and staff and good luck in the near future.

Hope Paul and his family have a good future too.

Johanna Ahkin

Bega

All this rubbish being proliferated about windmills being ugly! 

Take a look at the rest of the human environment, particularly around electricity, transport and communication for dog’s sake. 

For starters, Yallourn power station and its consequent hole in the ground belching smoke and pollution. 

When I was a child of nine I worked loading briquettes from rail trucks into bags. 

We were black every evening, the dust washed from our throat by a litre of milk. 

The people of Moe suffered smoke particles in the air many times over the World Health Organisation parts per million air pollution index requirement during last year’s bushfire, Feb 2014, that got into the pit. 

Fracking hell! 

Anyone visiting an airport should have noticed all those pointy metal things with propellers or turbines that look like a windmill lying down on wheels. 

When you happily ride up the NSW coast in one of these to Brisbane on a clear day you can plainly see the immense mining scars. 

Surely this alone rebuts these flighty condemnations of a wonderful technology. 

In Nimmitabel you can visit the original Monaro windmill, vintage 1860 which may explain the unfounded prejudice. 

This grain grinder had its sails removed by public demand as the windmill was scaring the horses!

Maybe Abbott and Hockey were on horseback when they visited Lake George. 

The reference to graveyards is certainly true in the US, but that’s a function of the development approval. 

Australia’s mining industry has rehabilitation requirement s so we are assured the coal mines will be filled in and the windmills taken down at the end of the lifecycle. 

Uranium has a very easily managed half-life as we all know. 

The world is also covered in abandoned decomposing oil mining hardware, which often also has Jed Clampett’s bubbling crude all over the surrounding ground. 

Don’t even think oil spill in the sea. 

One of my pet eyesore rants is the poles and wires in the landscape. 

If you want to find fault with landscape detritus cast your eyes at poles and wires. 

Imagine a landscape without them, I dare you, and then look carefully at the calm place that your imagination reveals. 

O Beautiful Windmills! 

I drove to Sydney last week past Lake George and here I am. 

Those windmills are a rare example of aesthetically beautiful power generators. 

In Denmark, similar objects are said to generate most days 100 per cent of Denmark’s energy and on many days 140 per cent, so they sell 40 per cent into the Euro market. 

Seems like the more development-approved windmill projects the better and if the unfounded tilting at could somehow be more objectively considered, that could be the outcome! 

Mike Wood

Tathra