Lonnie goes on to say he has personally received responses 10 to one in favour of a Frogs Hollow Airport. It would seem he did not canvass the Wolumla area, as I have not to date spoken to one person who would agree with him.

This begs the question as to the motives behind this push to relocate the shire’s airport. I dare say those canvassed were from outside the Wolumla locality, which would then make sense of Lonnie’s figures.

One thing that Lonnie has said that I will agree with, is that Wolumla does not want a crap-filled tip, but I would like to go one step further and say we also do not want the shire’s jet airport either.

At the recent proposed BVSC tip EIS meeting the residents of Wolumla were labelled as apathetic by one of council’s consultants and this may very well be a view council also holds.

To make matters crystal clear, I will again state that Wolumla has had its fair share of the shire’s manure covered stick over the last eight years and any proposal to relocate the Merimbula airport to Frogs Hollow will certainly not be met with any form of apathy.

Jeff Smith

Wolumla

Well done, Merimbula

We are two of the 96 touring bowlers from the Northern Rivers who just completes our 15th annual tour of many towns and cities all over Australia.

We significantly add financially to the local economy, as you will have noticed.

We visited many of your local clubs icluding Bombala and a home style welcome at Candelo.

We were, wherever we went, fed like kings. The welcome and farewell visits were both hosted by your magnificent Merimbula Club.

We did tours, saw whales and all your natural beauty spots courtesy of Chris, Rod and Ian our Deanes coach captains who were always punctual, courteous and knowledgeable plus excellent drivers.

We must also say that for the group of 46 that we belonged to who were accommodated at the Pelican Motel hosted by Terrie and Bruce and their two delightful sons Braden and Jacob, they really helped make our tour the great success it was. Nothing was a trouble to make us comfortable and every request was happily carried out by this lovely family including a surprise champagne and chicken breakfast one morning, wonderful.

Thank you Merimbula - we will recommend our experience to others.

Noela and Harry Long

Lismore NSW

Bill of Rights has

many wrongs

Re the letter “Bill of Rights” (Letters, October 14).

There are many reasons for opposing a Bill of Rights for Australia. One of them is that such bills are often so vaguely worded that it is impossible for people, and especially governments, to know how to behave so as to keep within the law.

For instance, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, states that no-one shall be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment. You could drive a 10 ton truck through this sort of provision. Any punishment could be described as cruel, inhuman and degrading by someone with a sufficiently twisted mind. For example, is the death penalty “cruel and inhumane” no matter how gently it is administered, e.g. by a lethal injection? How do we know it is (or isn’t)?

Where is the objective yardstick by which you can judge?

What about life imprisonment without chance of parole? What is to stop someone like Ivan Milat claiming that he is enduring “cruel and inhuman” punishment? What about very long terms of imprisonment? Sometime ago I heard that a court in Brazil had sentenced a drug trafficker to 444 year’s imprisonment. I suppose some people in Australia would say that was “cruel and inhuman” - but obviously the Brazilians interpret things differently.

Or supposing somebody as wealthy as James Packer fell foul of the law and was imprisoned, and claimed that he was “disgraced” by having to mix with rapists and burglars?

In short, the logical consequence of following this line of thought is that you would end up with no punishment at all, because there is no punishment, however mild and reasonable you or I might think it to be, which someone with a sufficiently twisted mind couldn’t claim was “cruel, inhuman and degrading”.

Regarding the claim about self-serving politicians, I don’t think anybody would claim that our politicians are perfect. The point is, however, that if enough of us think that the ruling politicians are fools, or rogues, we can vote them out of office. We have no such protection against judges who are fools or rogues.

Malcolm H Brandon

Merimbula

Liberals ahead of

Labor in CPRS

As Dr Richard Denniss of The Australia Institute points out, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) is increasingly looking like the answer to a question that nobody asked, namely, “what would be the best way to introduce a complex and expensive national scheme that sounds like a solution to climate change without really changing anything?”

It is, however, encouraging for those that are following the Government versus Opposition politics related to Mr Rudd’s CPRS to read that the Liberals now propose to measure voluntary action (eg the Bega Solar Farm).

In other words, they want individual contributions to reducing carbon emissions to be counted.

The question remains: why doesn’t the ALP?

Jack Miller

Bermagui

Save Pambula Hospital website

It has been almost 12 months since the Save Pambula Hospital website was launched. In that time the site has received over 17,000 hits from Australian, and internationally readers. Many have emailed messages of support through the site.

By far the highest proportion of Australian readers are from NSW but all other Australian states and territories are well represented.

The site contains a history of the current issue surrounding Pambula Hospital.

One page focuses on the nature of difficulties faced by all residents of the Bega Valley and beyond, both north and west of the valley and south into Victoria. These residents rely on public health services provided by the NSW Health Department through both Bega and Pambula Hospitals.

Audio, video, still photographs and text all illustrate the work being done by an army of health conscious volunteers. Together they have willingly striven throughout 2009 to achieve a fair go from the NSW Government for the whole population of the Far South Coast and the thousands of visitors who flock to the area each year.

A dedicated page represents Greater Southern Area Health Services.

A research page provides links to 30 published stories that each point directly to reasons why decisions taken by NSW Health Ministers over the past 24 months have failed. Additionally it lists 100 samples of local, interstate and international scholarly papers, each arguing the case against rural hospital downgrading and closure. Each of these articles can be googled.

Far from attending to local issues only, the site presents information on inadequacies in the provision of health services experienced by rural communities in all corners of Australia.

Closer to home, links are available to over 70 NSW newspaper articles that describe difficulties, similar to our own, being faced by rural communities across our State.

A “Recent Headlines” page highlights current actions and reactions as they relate to emerging local events. This page relies heavily on news told by Merimbula News Weekly, Eden Magnet, Bega District News, ABC News and other online sources.

One poignant page relates the story of Jane Hope, a fictitious character who represents hundreds of young mothers as she pleads for a safe journey through her pregnancy and childbirth.

The site is refined daily and additions are made continuously.

To gain a broad, in-depth awareness of the critical community issue surrounding Pambula Hospital readers of this newspaper are urged to browse this site at www.savepambulahospital.com

Gra ham Pettigrove

Pambula Beach

Politics of fear becomes more shrill

As we approach the Copenhagen Summit the politics of fear, used time and again by the Howard Government, this time driven by and paid for by the big polluters, becomes ever more shrill.

Thousands will be thrown out of work, whole economies, Australia’s specifically, will collapse and all for no purpose, since Australia’s pollution only amounts to a tiny percentage of the world total and our dirty industries will only move offshore or have their orders taken up by other countries.

It sounds convincing of course, but this is the same tactic adopted by interest groups every time the freedom to maximise profits, regardless of consequences, is challenged.

It happens every time a wage rise is asked for, for example.

The aim of business is quite simply (and legitimately) to maintain and increase profits, in the short to medium term, and questions of morality, concern for society and a world view are not considered. These are someone else’s problems.

It’s only interest is the board, the shareholders and the market. The shareholders can worry about the sort of world their children and grandchildren will face, if they wish.

Talk of climate change and its consequences are labelled as hysterical rantings by treehuggers, greenies or the loony left.

No one claims that the task is easy and no one who is honest will say that there will be no price to pay, but denial and delay will result in much greater cost (Nicholas Stern, Ross Garnaut)

This has been called the greatest challenge mankind has faced, has been caused by the “developed world” and it is the “developed world” that must take the lead. Australia is, per capita, a massive polluter. We must do our fair share.

The Coalition Government’s climate policy was actually designed and driven by the coal, cement and aluminium lobby (see Guy Pearce’s “High And Dry”) and the same MPs, Liberal and National, with the notable exception of Howard, are still controlling the agenda, and Malcolm Turnbull, in opposition.

Turnbull has been humiliated by these troglodytes in his desperation to hang on to the leadership.

Barry Stevens

Tura Beach

Plans indicate traffic issues unresolved

A new large scale supermarket proposal for the carpark opposite Woolworths has been submitted to Bega Valley Shire Council for approval and is on display for public comment until November 5, 2009.

You will remember that the last proposal was rejected by council due to major safety issues relating to delivery trucks conflicting with pedestrians and customer carparking and also because council had developed a strategy to limit the size of any single retail shop floorspace that could be built within Merimbula’s town centre.

This was backed up by a successful defence and subsequent appeal in the Land and Environment Court.

This strategy was designed to encourage the town to develop in a more tourism-oriented style, whilst at the same time attempting to alleviate some of the growing traffic issues that exist in Merimbula by limiting the size of these high traffic generating retail developments that could be built within town.

Council rezoned land at the entry to Tura Beach to allow a larger floorspace supermarket to be built there to cater for that growth area and to help alleviate the heat on Merimbula’s road system.

Woolworths are taking up this opportunity and have bought the site and will commence development shortly.

Council has made concerted attempts to try and negotiate much better truck and customer traffic access through the rear of the Main Street site, recognising the major problems the town would face if a development of this scale was allowed to be accessed from Main Street.

It appears that these negotiations have come to nothing because the developer has now submitted an application seeking approval for what appears to be an inferior design to the one previously rejected by council.

His proposal has all the trucks entering the site from Main Street, manoeuvring past 72 odd carparks where mothers with children will be trying to load their vehicles.

The trucks have to drive over the pedestrian crossing area at the entry to the shop before doing some very tight reversing exercise to get into the loading docks.

When the trucks exit the site they also have to traverse through the customer carparking area at the front of the shop and then attempt to swing hard left out into Main Street without taking out the oncoming cars on the opposite side of the road, then instantly hard right down into Market street without taking out cars waiting to turn right at the top of Market Street. A totally unacceptable outcome for the town.

Main Street is a residential width street already choked with cars trying to access the RSL.

The RSL has to provide a minimum of 127 public carparks available at all times on the proposed supermarket site.

This is also during the construction phase of any development on that site.

If this development is approved, the town will be incapacitated for a very long time affecting every business in town.

The Woolworths Tura supermarket needs to be built first to give everyone an alternate supermarket to use during any construction of the Main Street site.

The Main Street site should only ever be approved for another supermarket when truck accesses are out of Main Street all together.

Obviously the developer couldn’t care less, let’s hope our councillors do!

Fraser Buchanan

Pambula