Your say: week beginning September 15

Every day, we publish a selection of your emails in our newsletter. We’d love to hear from you, you can email us at yoursay@theconversation.edu.au.

Monday September 15

Reef SOS

“Yesterday we read in the Geraldton local newspaper of Premier Roger Cook’s welcome announcement of increasing the area of Marine Park dedicated to protecting Ningaloo’s waters and increasing funding for studying the problems associated with rising temperatures and resulting coral damage by bleaching events. Yet on the very same page of the newspaper was a paid advertisement by Chevron delimiting a huge marine area adjacent to Exmouth where it will be engaging in exploration and drilling for gas and oil. The advertisement is asking for public opinion, honestly where is the credibility? Climate change is real, reefs are dying up here. We are on a caravanning trip to the Ningaloo region and have been snorkelling off from Exmouth and we saw the alarming state of the coral, covered in green algaes. We will be opposing this project, but how many people will not even know it’s happening?”

Izzy Luescher

Not so united

“Surely the ‘United States’ of America is now an obvious misnomer. They are obsessed with red and blue states. The politics of the two political parties ensures they will never agree on anything, making it impossible to have an equitable, thoughtful democracy. 77,303,568 Americans voted for this.

Steve Bentley, Camira QLD

Tuesday September 16

Which type of disease?

"I worked on the National Public Health Partnership in the 90s and I am concerned that yet again most of the work of the Centre for Disease Control will become communicable diseases and not chronic diseases. This has happened time and time again in the public health space. Most money goes towards counting numbers and only what is left over, which is usually minimal, goes towards improving those numbers and promoting health, particularly in preventing conditions occurring, then limiting their progression.”

Margaret Bonner

Smoke screen

“Many films and TV programs display and therefore normalise smoking these days. It was understandable that smoking was common in film and television up to the 1970s when the harm was finally acknowledged publicly, however now it is completely irresponsible to be showing it.”

Manuela Epstein, Pyrmont NSW

Mixed-age childcare?

“Bundling babies and young children by age in childcare may inform poor outcomes. Infants learn from observation and practice. In family settings, infants with older siblings see more mature behaviour models in life. They are also more likely to be engaging one-on-one with older kids and adults which promotes development. This is not available to them if most of their waking time from early infancy is spent in groups of their own age in formal care.”

Marle Prunean