R Stone

Merimbula

Dental services

Thousands of your readers on health care cards and their dependants are entitled to public dental services.

The position of full-time dental officer at the Pambula Community Centre has been vacant for years.

Locum and part-time help has been available only sporadically.

When is the GSAHS going to get serious about this area of their responsibility and appoint a full time dentist?

Grant Keogh BDS MDSc

Merimbula

Coal-fired power stations

Coal-fired power stations will be with us for decades producing base load power.

So how does the industry plan to reduce carbon emissions and what is the present situation?

The aim is to separate (capture) carbon dioxide (CO2) from emissions and provide long-term isolation from the atmosphere.

Storage is envisaged in suitable deep geological strata (geological sequestration), or in the deep oceans, or in the form of mineral carbonates.

Geological sequestration is the preferred option and this solution is based on knowledge of the behaviour of oil and gas reservoirs gained over 100 years of petroleum production, and by using CO2 injection under pressure to enhance production from depleted reservoirs.

There are three large ongoing investigative geological sequestration projects.

In 1991 Norway imposed a tax on atmospheric CO2 emissions.

At Sleipner West gas/condensate field, 500 miles off the coast of Norway, Statoil produces gas with a CO2 concentration well above the limit imposed for European export.

At the offshore production platform the excess CO2 is stripped from the recovered gas and injected into a confined acquifer 800 metres below the sea-bed.

Since 1996 Statoil has injected about one million tonnes of CO2 per year.

The Weyburn-Midale project in Saskatchewan, Canada, is currently the world’s largest carbon capture and geological sequestration project.

Started in 2000, it is located above a depleted oil reservoir discovered in 1954.

The CO2 is captured at the Great Plains Coal Gasification Plant at Beulah, North Dakota, USA, where it is liquefied and pipelined 320km to Weyburn.

Initially the CO2 is injected into the reservoir beds to enhance production from the depleted field.

Final storage is within the water filled zone of the reservoir beds.

With an injection rate of 2-million tonnes of CO2 per year, the first phase completed in 2000, demonstrated that CO2 can be stored underground at the site safely and indefinitely.

The second phase, expected to last until 2009, is investigating how technology can be expanded to a larger scale and is progressing monitoring systems.

At the Salah gas field in the Algerian desert approximately 10 per cent of the produced gas is CO2.

The Salah project begun in 2000 collects around one million tonnes of CO2 per year compressing and injecting it 5900 feet into the water filled zone of the reservoir.

There are a number of smaller projects being initiated around the world, such as the Snohvit project in the Barent Sea and the Schwarze-Pumpe project in Germany.

Australia’s first experimental geological sequestration plant is located at Nirranda South in Western Victoria.

Operated by a Co-Operative Research Centre jointly funded by government and industry, it became operational this year.

The aim is to store 100,000 tonnes of CO2 extracted from a gas well, compressed and pipelined 2.25km to another well where it will be injected into a depleted gas reservoir approximately 2km below the surface.

Geological sequestration of CO2 is a reality, but obviously the cost of producing power will rise substantially.

What is clear is that the future does not have to be a proliferation of windmills, which do not produce base load power anyway.

Sep Paterson

Merimbula

Open letter to all councillors

As you are all aware of the sentiments, opinions and concerns of the greater population of our area, I trust that you all will hear the majority’s view on making sure that the Pambula Hospital remains open and all services including obstetrics continue at the Pambula hospital.

How much clearer does it have to be?

The BVSC must apply the wishes of its constituents.

Listen to the voice who placed you in ‘council’.

If the BVSC councillors do not get behind this...who will?

Trusting that all BVSC councillors will be present at the ‘rally march’ on Saturday, November 29, commencing at 1pm in the Alice Street carpark.

Barb Aggenbach

Merimbula

Festiv al artists

Wednesday’s News Weekly, November 12, had two photos of ladies from Bega, Tathra and Kalaru, the caption underneath read these ladies were watching Leanda O’Brien play the start of the Country Music Festival at Merimbula RSL Club.

I wish to advise our supporters and sponsors that Leanda O’Brien and artists appearing with her had nothing whatsoever to do with the Merimbula Country Music Festival by the Sea.

Keith Smith

President Merimbula Country Music Festival by the Sea

Pambula

Mayor’s absence noted

In general terms our councillors have let us down badly about our hospital, our health services and our health.

At last Thursday night’s public meeting I was astonished to hear that Graeme Wykes was the only councillor with the ticker to forcefully represent our views.

It seems he had moved a motion at Tuesday’s council meeting seeking to have all Pambula Hospital services reinstated and retained until a proper service audit could be undertaken when the so called ‘new facility’ is well underway.

Things could then have proceeded in an orderly and objective way and without the fear card of losing funding being played.

A common sense approach? But no!

Graeme Wykes’ motion did not even attract a seconder from our fearless councillor leaders.

Speaking of fearless leaders, where was our Mayor when our future health services were being discussed last Thursday night?

My information is that he ‘had a prior engagement’.

In fact he had chosen to attend a Group Council Meeting in Shellharbour rather than front his constituents at Pambula.

So much for priorities and leadership!

What was on the agenda for that Group Council meeting that was more important than the health service concerns of 800 to 900 of his constituents who attended the meeting and the many more who couldn’t.

If the Mayor doesn’t come clean I will make it my business to find out what the nature of the business at the Shellharbour meeting was that kept him away from his responsibilities to us.

This Group Council meeting occurs regularly.

If, as I suspect, there was absolutely nothing of critical importance on that meeting agenda then Cr Allen should stand down from his position and hand over the reigns to someone who is prepared to, and who has attempted to, represent our views.

Someone like Graeme Wykes!

Not good enough by a country mile, Mr Mayor.

Kathy Cumming

Merimbula

Hospital cutbacks

It is with considerable alarm and anger that we read about the downgrading of services at the Pambula Hospital.

My wife and I have lived in the Merimbula area for 32 years and have had cause to use many of the services provided at this facility.

We have always received excellent care provided by the dedicated staff in the hospital wards, emergency department and X-ray department, appreciating the proximity of the service in emergencies.

Thirty-two years ago the population of Merimbula/Pambula was approximately 1300, it is now in excess of 12,000.

This does not include the towns of Eden, Wyndham, Kiah, Nethercote, Wonboyn and also Mallacoota, though this town is over the border in Victoria it is also serviced by this hospital.

Pambula Hospital was efficiently servicing approximately 3000 people in the immediate area in 1990.

The services, equipment and staff should be quadrupled in 2008 to cater for the 12,000 people living in the immediate area now ‘not cut’ as proposed by the New South Wales Government.

What the State Government is proposing is ‘not’ more efficient servicing it is simply cost cutting to the overall health budget and the health and wellbeing of the people of the south-east corner of New South Wales.

The recent closing of maternity/obstetrics services at Pambula Hospital is a retrograde step disadvantaging the whole population in this area.

Local General Practitioners are dedicated health professionals who provide excellent service in their practices.

They simply cannot run these practices and service maternity patients at Bega Hospital, which is a one hour round trip from Merimbula and one hour forty-five minutes from Eden.

Pambula Hospital is a necessary and important adjunct and filter to Bega Hospital, providing much needed services for an ageing community as well as a young and vibrant developing community.

It frequently relieves the pressure on Bega Hospital and is close to Merimbula Airport for emergency evacuations to Canberra.

Please act now to reinstate maternity/obstetric services and upgrade hospital staff numbers and equipment to Pambula Hospital to adequately cater for the large widespread community of the far south-east corner of the State of New South Wales.

John and Laraine Clarke

Merimbula

School bus fee will hurt families

Our State Government has recently decided to slug children a fee for school travel, starting January 2009.

Families will have to pay for a service that has up until now been free.

Many families in the shire can barely afford school fees and uniforms on top of the inevitable Christmas expenses, let alone a possible $180 travel fee.

The timing of the introduction of this fee is doubly crippling as the Back to School Allowance is also being cut.

Of the 300 students attending Pambula Public School over 80 per cent use the school bus service to get to and from school.

It is a safe, reliable and environmentally friendly method of transport.

As soon as a service like this is fee based, some families will be forced to find an alternative.

We may see children walking or cycling unreasonable distances unsafely, relying on haphazard lifts from others, or spending long hours in the school grounds before and after school times to accommodate working parents’ schedules.

In the worst case, parents who struggle to pay this new fee may decide not to send their children to school at all.

Families are not the only losers, however, as the role of fee-collector and administrator looks to be going directly to the already overworked school office staff.

It goes without saying that if there are fewer children on a bus route, that route may become unviable.

Other services to that area are then compromised and risk being withdrawn thus disadvantaging the entire population, especially those less well off and the elderly, who rely on public transport.

No-one wants to see any child left at the bus stop.

Let’s hope it never comes to that.

If you feel passionately about this issue please lobby the people who are making these decisions on your behalf:

The Premier’s office phone 9228 5555; Fax: 9228 3522; Email: thepremier@www.nsw.gov.au

Pambu la Public School ‘P and C’

Pambula

Open letter to the Hon Mike Kelly, Minister John Della Bosca, Bega MP Andrew Constance

Wife owes life to our hospital

I am just one of many deeply concerned citizens over the planned demise of staffing and the cutting back of necessary activities at Pambula Hospital.

If the proposed and current action of the various government authorities had been in place three years ago my wife would not be alive today, please read on.

We chose Merimbula for retirement for a host of reasons.

Foremost among these was the existence of an airport with a well-equipped and fully operational hospital nearby.

One of our children is a well-qualified health professional at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne.

She checked out the Sapphire Coast hospital infrastructure as a pre-requisite for our pending retirement venue.

Her research paid off.

My wife Olive suffered cardiac arrest on eight occasions on the morning of February 22, 2005.

She suffered multiple Vasovagals at home and was transferred by ambulance to Pambula hospital there she was attended by Dr Barry Stevens.

Olive required and received excellent attention.

She had intermittent Asvstole documented by rhythm strips and was treated with atropine.

Later that day she was transferred by air ambulance (helicopter) to Canberra hospital.

The following day she was fitted with a permanent pacemaker, thankfully she is in full recovery and enjoying life.

Our home is barely 10 minutes away from Pambula Hospital I have been told that she would not have survived if a 40-minute drive to Bega Hospital was undertaken.

We do not wish to return to Victoria due to the lack of proper medical attention and hospital facilities at our chosen retirement venue.

Other infrastructure facilities in the area are keeping pace with development and a rapidly expanding population in the Merimbula district.

It is obscene that public health facilities are being ruthlessly downgraded by bureaucrats stemming from governmental apathy.

“What action do you propose taking on this matter?”

Thank you for your interest in this vital issue.

Kevin Cox

Merimbula

Handy advice for protest marchers

I am not a local bloke, but was visiting an old army mate of mine who lives in Oaklands Road, Pambula, at the time of the public meeting regards the amazingly ridiculous cutbacks to the local hospital.

It reminded me of just how a similar situation was handled back in my area away up in northern Queensland some time ago.

I would like you to take it on board and perhaps, after some thought, present this idea, which actually won the day for our town.

Suggest or ask your concerned citizens to attend the forthcoming street march, dressed in anything that identifies them with any community organisation that they belong to at this time, i.e. bowls uniform, fire brigade, rescue service, football clubs, cricket clubs, medalled ex-service personnel, the baker in his whites, uniformed shop assistants, ambulance officers, golfers pushing their buggies, sporting clubs, kids in school uniforms, kids marching bands...anyone who will support your everyday locals, with the aim of this demonstration being to show the powers that be, that these people are the residents of the town...’the town’s backbone’ as it were and not just another group of single-minded radicals.

It worked wonders up in my territory, some of those who marched, marched in tears, filled with pride for their fellow citizens who were courageously showing their peers that the Aussie way of exercising their civil rights, did actually change the stubborn minds of those who would test that right.

I am off back to northern Queensland on Sunday, but I hope that this idea that worked for us can be considered as another display of which shows yet again that good will always triumph over evil and unfairness.

Good luck!

Gary O’Donnel

Windermere

Queenslan d

Scare mongering

I attended the public meeting at Pambula on Thursday night and could not believe the one-sidedness and lack of debate allowed.

When I tried to debunk some of the half-truths that were being disseminated I was glared at and shouted down by the crowd around me.

I thought the whole region was invited to the meeting but obviously were not to have their own point of view.

My 19-year-old daughter, who attended Lumen Christi and has most of her friends in Pambula, Tura and Eden, asked me how it went.

When I told her, she replied that she and her friends cannot understand why some people seem so determined to stop something that is so much better than what we have now.

This is the generation that is going to either benefit from a new facility or lose out because some people can’t see past their own noses.

By the way, I have been talking to some retired midwives and nurses and have discovered that, until recent years, Pambula Hospital was bypassed by most people for maternity services and they came straight through to Bega.

Yes, even from Mallacoota.

This was on roads that were winding and narrow and much worse than today. (I can remember it taking 35 minutes to get to Merimbula when I was a child).

They also told me that, often, they would send women back to Pambula for post-natal care only to have them turn up in an ambulance in Bega the next morning.

Hopefully, this will help the scare mongering to cease.

Sharon McMahon

Bega

Open letter to Heather Gray CEO Greater Southern Area Health Service (GSAHS)

Child could die in 30-minute drive

Please take a minute to read my letter.

We desperately need to restore all services at our Pambula Hospital, how would you feel if your small child was suffering an acute asthma attack and you were on holidays at Pambula Beach?

You put your precious child who is struggling for breath into your car you drive at quite a pace to get to Pambula Hospital.

You are relieved to get there so quickly, however, you are turned away and told to drive 30 minutes more to Bega hospital because the children’s ward and facilities are not available to you.

I bet you would be devastated your child could die in the next 30 minutes as you drive to Bega.

This situation I put you in has actually happened at Pambula Hospital, which is absolutely criminal.

Pambula Hospital services a huge area from the Victorian border northwards, plus our influx of some 40,000 tourists each year.

I urge you strongly to put yourself and your family in our position we are not a third world country down here.

We have brilliant doctors and medical staff who are willing to work and perform surgery etc at Pambula Hospital.

The GSAHS has literally made our hospital facility a pathetic excuse for a hospital.

The doctors haven’t even got enough equipment to do basic tasks.

You have crippled the hospital system here so badly and its time you opened your eyes wide to our situation.

Come on down here with your family and I sincerely hope you don’t have a crisis in your health because help isn’t available at all times as it should be.

Full facilities for pregnant mothers and birthing facilities returned.

Children’s ward re-opened to care for sick and ill children.

Operating theatres available for emergency cases.

We don’t want our hospital to become just a ‘plonking spot’ for the frail and elderly, we deserve and expect the best.

Please listen to us. Our hospital because of your mismanagement is a dying facility, open your eyes, come down and see for yourself.

Ann Wright

Merimbula

Town planning dictates hospital should

be sited in population centre

Town and Regional Planning (TRP) is an integral part of the democratic process.

In any urban or regional settlement it is the democratic right of citizens to have a hospital, police station, post office and school, etc.

These are fundamental land uses and are normally inviolate.

The prime and critical factor in siting any hospital is that it should be located at, or as near as possible, to the demographic centre - usually the regional centre.

Merimbula is not only the demographic and regional centre, it is also the virtual epicentre, and as the crowning factor, it has a regional airport.

Tura Beach, Merimbula, Pambula and the satellite township of Eden, constitute a population of 12,129 (as at 2001 census) - Bega has a population of 5960 (2001).

Eden with a deepwater port is a growth area and, with the main Navel Munitions Depot on the eastern seaboard is of national strategic importance.

This factor alone should be of sufficient importance for the Federal Government to become involved.

Any depletion or closure of the Pambula Hospital is contrary to best practice TRP natural justice, and is undemocratic in the extreme.

In conclusion, as it may be presumed there is no judicial appeal available, it is in some degree obligatory for the Federal Government to intervene, and restore the democrative order in this case.

If the Federal Government has not the constitutional power to act, it has the power of ‘the purse’ as it provides most of the funding for the national health.

The Pambula Hospital must remain fully functional until a new regional hospital can be sited nearby.

Colin Wilkinson

Merimbula

Win-wi n by saving hospital

1) These are tough times and the State government needs to save money.

2) One easy and popular way of saving money would be to restore full services to Pambula hospital. Ideally a new Hospital Board would be reinstated as well.

3) The hospital was opened around 1980 for a community less than half the size it is now. This means all its facilities are fairly new and in good working order.

4) It was built as stage 1 on only one corner of a large piece of State land. It could therefore easily be extended. So there is no need for the State to buy new land for a new district hospital elsewhere in the shire.

5) The hospital has enjoyed the services of nine highly trained medical doctors as VMOs. Because this is a country hospital several of these doctors have upgraded their competencies to various specialisations. So there is no need to fly locums into the area for stop-gap and very expensive shifts at Bega hospital.

6) Many nurses and trained midwives would be happy to work at Pambula on a roster agreed on amongst colleagues, perhaps even on a part-time basis.

7) While the hospital is a going concern this skill base can be reactivated at far less expense than the recruitment for a new district hospital.

8) Ambulances have less far to drive and risk fewer calamities by heading for Pambula hospital.

9) Once Pambula hospital is downgraded the talented medical staff will look for alternatives, e.g. extend their private practices, move to larger cities. Health professionals are self-employed: they cannot afford to sit around idle; they must earn a decent living. Once the specialists are lost, any new hospital will be impossible to staff locally.

10) By restoring full services to Pambula hospital the facilities at Bega hospital would work better again, being less overcrowded. These two hospitals have always shared the work, catering to different needs.

Regine Kasper

Tura Beach

Bad for health, bad for business

I am writing this letter to share my many and varied concerns about the gradual decline in services at Pambula Hospital.

Obstetrics, children’s, cardiac monitoring and now emergency/ambulance services have all been downgraded or removed. There may very well be other services that I am unaware of too?

As a mother of three children it worries me greatly that if they get hurt or fall suddenly ill they cannot go to the nearest place for immediate treatment and also longer-term care if required.

Added to this is the fact that Pambula Hospital is a familiar place to them with staff that they probably know from around our local community.

Surely this can only help a child who would most likely be distressed already if they require hospital treatment?

As a business owner and employer of 10 staff in an industrial factory the downgrading of emergency services may also have further reaching consequences if one of our staff suffers an injury in the workplace.

Our factory is located at South Pambula, only minutes from the Pambula Hospital. To add 25 minutes travelling time to Bega in the event of a major accident may mean the difference between life and death for our staff.

My mother was visiting the area recently and required cardiac monitoring due to arrhythmia. She was taken to Pambula by ambulance and then shuffled to Bega, again by ambulance, as there was no monitored bed at Pambula.

Surely this is a waste of ambulance time and resources as the equipment to deal with this condition has been at Pambula in the past along with staff able to deal with the situation.

We hear at a public meeting held in Pambula on November 13 that Bega Hospital is cancelling elective surgery almost every day due to the overflow of maternity patients spilling into the surgical beds.

Why should the patients and staff at Bega Hospital be expected to have to deal with the angst that would be caused to patients by constantly having their surgery postponed?

We hear that locums are being brought into the area to try and plug some of the gaps in the obstetrics roster at Bega.

This is at a huge cost (apparently more than it cost to keep Pambula open?) These poor mothers, particularly first timers, must now also face delivering their babies with complete strangers looking after them.

We hear that ambulances are being directed to bypass Pambula Hospital and go straight to Bega. How must the people of Eden and beyond feel knowing that their ambulance will be out of the area for at least an hour longer every

time someone needs to be taken

to hospital?

This is not about Bega versus Pambula, as both facilities need each other to function efficiently.

They both have a very important role in our the shire, but the fact remains that a large part of the shire’s population reside in the southern regions, therefore it makes absolute sense to keep the previous services and facilities available to the bulk of the population rather than moving them further away.

As we know public transport is not as readily available in country areas as it is in built up areas.

The downgrading of services to Pambula Hospital will also impact on the economy of Pambula itself. If there are less or no staff or patients at the hospital then the local shops start to lose customers.

Staff ducking out on breaks to go to the post office, friends and family ducking out for coffee or picking up essentials for patients from the chemist or supermarket, flowers from the florist, accommodation and meals if people have come from Mallacoota perhaps? Then there are the suppliers to the hospital who would also lose out.

I’m sure there are many people in our community that could give plenty of other reasons for restoring the services that we have come to rely on in Pambula Hospital and I hope that with the combined information of all concerned we can see this happen.

Kim Hammond

Tura Beach

Credibility crumbling

I would like to reply to comments made by Dr Les Woollard, president of the RDA (NSW) last Wednesday on ABC radio in regard to the current debate over obstetric services in the Bega Valley.

His credibility as an intermediary between the State Government and Greater Southern Area Health Service over the matter has been seriously brought into question, in the light of those comments. And here is why.

Dr Woollard stated that he had consulted widely with doctors over the issue of obstetric services in the Bega Valley, including GP obstetricians in Bega and concluded that the only doctor satisfied with the single site obstetric service was myself.

I have confirmed with Drs Patti Salisbury and John Marshman, the two currently resident practising GP obstetricians that neither have ever had any communication, regarding this issue with Dr Woollard over the past several years.

Dr Marshman had phoned Dr Ian Kammerman, acting RDA president in Dr Woollard’s absence, to express his concern over the RDAs handling of the issue and to state that, despite the problems with maintaining the current single site service at Bega, a return to a dual site service (Bega and Pambula) would be even less sustainable at this point in time and a backward step.

Dr Salisbury informed me that she had sent a letter early last week to the RDA (NSW) criticising their biased stand on the issue and had outlined her reasons for supporting the single site service.

She has not spoken or otherwise communicated with either Dr Woollard or Dr Kammerman.

Dr Woollard did manage to contact a Bega GP, who has not practised obstetrics for some 10 years, and according to the GP, nothing he had said would have given Dr Woollard the impression that he supported a return to a dual service.

Interestingly Dr Woollard made much during his radio interview of my no longer being a GP in what I can only view as an attempt to undermine my credibility as a commentator on certain matters.

Yet the only Bega GP he spoke with, other than myself, has not practised obstetrics for over 10 years and did not support Dr Woollard’s stance.

In summary the extent of Dr Woollard’s active consultation with Bega doctors, has been a phone conversation with a former GP obstetrician from Bega.

Every other communication from Bega doctors, including my own, have been initiated by the Bega doctors themselves, and have been critical of the RDAs stance.

If these details are correct and I have no reason to doubt the word of my three Bega colleagues, then Dr Woollard’s credibility in this matter lies in tatters.

Dr Woollard has continually referred to me publicly as an individual and rarely as the Chair of the Bega Hospital Medical Staff Council.

I view this as another attempt to marginalise and isolate me by stating that no other doctor shares my position.

I am Chair of the Bega Medical Staff Council, and to the best of my knowledge I still carry a mandate to express the representative views of my affiliated colleagues.

If I am the only one who is on this side of the debate then why are all the Bega doctors, not publicly denouncing my stance and flocking to Dr Woollard’s side?

Perhaps they are content for me to represent them as I am doing and to take all the flak that goes with it.

With so much venom and spittle flying around, I don’t blame them.

It is a frequently noted observation that those who feel something is being taken away from them will collectively protest far more loudly and bitterly than those who are identified as the supposed beneficiaries and have nothing to gain from such protest.

Much has been made by Dr Woollard of my use of the term ‘medical terrorism’ I accept that it was emotive and unhelpful. I withdraw it and offer the more generic term ‘hardline industrial action’ in its place.

One last point Dr Woollard. Do the opinions of women from all over the region, represented by the community organisation ‘Birth Central’, figure in your assessment of the situation and subsequent campaign?

How many inconvenient truths will the RDA attempt to sidestep in the relentless pursuit of its political agenda? As many as it possibly can, I suspect.

Dr Gabe Khouri

Bega

Apology sought over comment

In reference to Cr Michael Britten’s letter, MNW November 19, ‘Hospital meeting fails to capitalise on support’.

I am personally affronted by the suggestion that a political party was involved in controlling the meeting.

I organised that meeting with the support of Jason Smith, and I stated to the 800 or more people there, that I did not belong to any political party.

I categorically deny that there were any political parties involved.

I hope Cr Britten is not suggesting I am being less than truthful; and I would be delighted to see any evidence he has to support his statement.

I know desperate times call for desperate measures, but really Michael you have gone too far. Please apologise.

Sharon Tapscott

Pambula

Open letter to Jason Smith

president Pambula

Chamber of Commerce

Congratulations to yourself and the chamber for conducting such a strong powerful meeting.

I do apologise for the comment of ‘grand standing’ it was not appropriate, however, the reality was Fraser Buchanan had been wanting to take a cheap shot at me all night, remembering the evening was about moving forward as a community to save Pambula Hospital.

I like many took a lot out of the meeting and was alarmed to hear that our children can no longer be admitted to our hospital and the heartfelt plea from our nurses of low staff morale was very disturbing.

I am more than happy to take forward the proposed motion that states “the return to all services including obstetrics” but personally I believe our children and the wonderful nurses deserve more than to be included in the word “all”.

Like I said on the evening, I wanted to hear from our community to go forward in the right direction as I believe we will only get one chance to put forward a motion at council of specific support for Pambula Hospital and we must get it right.

As the chamber was the organisation that conducted the meeting I ask you, Jason, if you could state the chamber’s position on this motion, does the chamber think we need to include the ability to admit our children and support for the morale of our nurses or does the chamber still think the word ‘all’ covers it?

Cr Paul Pincini

Bald Hills