Isn’t that the reason we already pay our rates to local council and isn’t this what their planning departments are supposed to do anyway?

If the council wants to railroad this levy onto the long-suffering ratepayer, what staff efficiencies and/or productivity gains have been identified by the council that could offset this cost, and therefore provide a zero-sum solution which would be considered more equitable?

Why for example, do BVSC continue to purchase plant and equipment when sub-contracting with adequate supervision provides a more cost-effective method?

Additionally the council wants to impose Sapphire Coast Tourism’s view of the world on the residential ratepayer’s bill at an ongoing initial cost of $230,000 per annum.

SCT has been involved in many ‘turf wars’ since its inception with other tourism promotional bodies and has caused considerable discontent and ire within the industry.

Why has SCT been foisted on the community at the behest of the Bega Business Forum and then subsequently recognised by BVSC as an appropriate organisation, to promote tourism?

Residential ratepayers are asked to contribute funding to SCT, but cannot become members and are therefore unable to comment on the way it is spending the ratepayer’s money or indeed its management or direction.

These levies have been forecasted for the next five years. What happens then? Do the ratepayers still have to pay these levies?

At the current capped rate of 3.5 per cent, $800,000 pa will compound to $950,150+ per annum.

BVSC likes to take credit and bask in the acclaim by drawing the community’s attention to projects to be implemented under their jurisdiction. However, in reality a considerable number, if not most of these listed projects, are actually totally funded by Federal Government. It should clearly say so.

The Deferred Benefit Superannuation Scheme was briefly alluded to by the BVSC General Manager is his presentation of the Draft Management Plan. It was rather hastily explained that the shortfall in the scheme funding of some $1-million per annum to fund ‘the gap’, has been referred to the Local Government Association for action and is currently deferred. ‘Deferred’ means postponed. Is this a cost that will be subsequently borne by the ratepayer at a later date? When the council was queried last year on this matter, it was stated by the Mayor and staff that there were 63 staff members currently on this scheme and numbers would reduce in the following years.

It has been publicly stated recently by a councillor that there are now 68 staff members still on this generous super scheme. Are the BVSC financial staff telling the councillors the true facts and figures, or are the councillors unintentionally misleading the public on the true details of this explosive issue and probable financial millstone to ratepayers?

BVSC should perhaps remind themselves on a regular basis that they are public servants charged with delivering decent services at minimal cost. Rates collected are our money and we want it spent wisely.

Although submissions to council have closed, you are still able and are urged, to voice your opinion on the rate increases and levies to the NSW Minister Barbara Perry via: office@perry.minister.nsw.gov.au. She makes the decision.

Merimbula Area Ratepayers Group

Geoff Jones

John Tait

News Weekly champion of the residents

Well done Merimbula News Weekly for sticking up for the residents in the rates debate unlike the disappointing reportage in the other two shire newspapers.

You hit the nail smack on the head when you said that council’s planning department should do the work that the council wants us to pay extra for. Did they think using the words economic development would bluff us? The council should exercise some commonsense; there will be no economic development here if the rates continue to skyrocket as they have done in previous years and again this year.

Keep up the good work; no wonder your circulation continues to increase you are giving the readers what they want.

S Black

Bega

Vandals

First it was the soccer oval, then it was the AFL/cricket oval, now it’s the rugby league’s turn to fix the mindless vandalism of their ground.

I hope these idiots feel good about themselves and got their rocks off.

If they want to do things like this why can’t they go somewhere that the only thing they will hurt is themselves and the volunteers (who spend countless hours improving the grounds) won’t have to clean up their mess.

Mick Sandling

President MPMRLFC

Proposed changes for qualification for Centrelink Youth Allowance

I am stunned and dismayed at the recently announced changes to the Centrelink Youth Allowance as published in the media, proposed to be effective as from January 2010.

The changes proposed, yet to be passed by the Senate, will affect our young country Australians currently pursuing a ‘gap year’ to earn what they thought was necessary under the current Centrelink system (ie earning approximately $19,500 in the 18-months after finishing School) to then qualify for the payment of Youth Allowance as an independent student after they leave their country home and then travel to a city to start their tertiary studies next year.

The changes proposed by your Government seek to impose only one test for Youth Allowance: you must work 30 hours each week for 18 months.

Finding a job in this global recession and drought is hard enough for some students. Many are only able to find part-time work and often compete for jobs with adults.

In our local tourism industry-based communities, regular and continuing 30 hour per week employment opportunities are hard to find.

Some of our young country Australians who can’t contemplate a 30 hour working week whilst completing their first year of study away from home will now have to consider a finding 30 hours per week of further work in yet another ‘gap year’.

Other students may simply now decide to abandon their dream of pursuing tertiary studies.

Some students are seriously thinking...”I don’t think I can go to Uni now because I can’t work the 30 hours each week and my family haven’t got the extra money needed to send me away.”

Your Government has not taken into account the significant financial difficulties and serious educational challenges currently faced by our young country Australians in leaving home to pursue their studies in a city tertiary institution. These young aspiring Australians from country communities do not need to make any further sacrifices such as those which will need to be made by them if the Senate passes the Bill.

For every minute that this prejudiced and biased policy or Bill remains in your Parliament you need to be aware that some of our young country Australians, many of whom come from working families, are at risk of falling into to serious depression. We can’t sit back and let this happen.

Many of these young country Australians actually voted for you and your Rudd Labor Government. They would have hoped that a Rudd Labor Government cared enough about the difficulties young country Australians face when they leave home and go on to pursue tertiary studies in the city.

If your Bill starts as from January next year then these young country Australians will feel seriously ambushed. The 18-month 30-hour per week test is retrospective. Many of them have already worked hard to satisfy the 2008-9 Centrelink Youth Allowance test.

Their hopes and aspirations are all aimed to starting their tertiary course in a city next February. What does your ambush and new proposed Legislation expect them to do? Defer their tertiary course for another year and keep finding whatever work they can.

Many of them will not have the opportunity to defer their course; instead they will have to surrender their tertiary place and re-apply!

Surely, you can’t possibly want our young country Australians to defer or surrender their tertiary place and delay their learning and education for yet another year, or worse, to give up the possibility of further education completely. Your party has not seriously considered the impact this Bill, if passed, will have on young country Australians and their families.

If it is allowed to be passed without satisfactory amendments you will definitely lose the votes of young country Australians, their families and other voting members of their respective impacted country communities.

We need to really care for our young country Australians. We need to show each and every one of them now that we really care about them and what they think. Each of us and our Government must do everything we can to encourage our young country Australians to pursue their education without any bias or prejudice.

The educational future of our young country Australians should not be decided on whether they:

• live in the city or the country or

• come from a wealthy family

If your Government is seeking to bring in these changes to stop students from qualifying for Youth Allowance and then remain at home whilst they study at a tertiary institution then surely there is a better way to refine the current system without causing such a burden on genuine young country Australians who seek your Government’s financial support to help them with the significant rent and other costs associated with them moving away from home and studying at a tertiary institution.

I now challenge you and/or your Minister Julia Gillard to debate the Bill and its changes with all young country Australians from our Far South Coast communities at our local Town Hall next week.

Please be prepared to hear some serious passionate submissions from our most respected and promising young country Australians.

David Freestone

Merimbula

GSAHS remains stone deaf to community concerns

Further, to your comments in the MNW 27.5.09 I would like to respond.

You state that the GSAHS and the NSW government is committed to maintaining services until the new hospital is built and your letter does not mention paediatrics.

On the 25.5.09 meeting, we the action group members, inspected and saw the near completion and newly renovated paediatrics ward.

You do not mention this in your letter.

Does this mean when the new hospital is built, we again lose this service?

This outside area is to be built and constructed via the goodwill of community service organizations...will it ‘bulldozed’ when the new facility is built?

I sincerely trust not!

We are, not a ‘bunch of whingeing nutters’ and as a threat to the ‘new hospital’ but, a community of people and residents who want to save our Pambula Hospital.

There is very little credence given to our arguments.

Our aim is to keep and maintain the Pambula Hospital fully functional forever.

Maternity services must be returned to the Pambula Hospital because the new hospital may not be built for many years due to economic and political conditions.

Barb Aggenbach

Merimbula

Just another number

In response to Mr Ken Barnett’s letter last week trying to justify the Greater Southern Area Health services closure of the maternity service provision at Pambula District Hospital.

I am sure Mr Barnett would have read the other letters in last week’s paper defending the value of having not one, but four locally based GP obstetricians who have been providing a comprehensive and highly valued service to our community for many, many years (these letters said it all).

Mr Barnett and his colleagues have made the decision that they want these locally based professionals to carry out these duties at the existing Bega Hospital with very limited capacity to cope. They expect these doctors to be continually traversing back and forth to Bega possibly many times per day and night to carry out these duties. All of these doctors have their own hectic existing GP practices locally looking after their many loyal patients, who quite often have to wait prolonged periods to see them anyway.

Despite our local professionals explaining to Mr Barnett and GSAH that they are not willing or able to compromise their local practices and that they have real concerns about all the travelling involved to service the Bega Hospital exclusively.

Minister Della Bosca and the GSAHS said that these issues would be overcome as they would make it attractive for these doctors to carry out these duties in Bega (obviously some financial incentive).

I don’t believe any financial incentive will satisfy or compensate for the personalised service these professionals have been providing to our community.

Our doctors chose to establish themselves here because of the lifestyle and the professional services that they could and can provide locally. Not everyone on this planet looks only at the bottom line of how much money they can make; people also care about communities, families and lifestyles.

This philosophy of looking after the bottom line is what GSAHS is all about as they are a bunch of bureaucrats focused on reducing expenditure all the time to the point of having to eliminate existing services from many hospitals or rationalising them to one centre as in our case. This rationalising philosophy may have some merit in areas that are not growing and reducing in population. But as our coastal strip has been and will continue to be one of the fastest growing areas in the country, this logic is flawed.

As you know full well Mr Barnett, there is no possible way that our local community can be better off without maternity services at Pambula and without the services of our four highly sought-after GP obstetricians. Fly-in fly-out locums with who knows what sort of qualifications at a cost of $2 to $3000 a day is totally unsatisfactory.

These locums wouldn’t know their patients from a bar of soap and the patients can only hope that the locums are going to be professional, well qualified and equally well versed on any personal issues relating to their pending child birth that their local GP is. This of course is impossible.

No financial incentives or rationalising can ever replace proper holistic care, which involves and covers pre pregnancy, pregnancy, child birth, after care and the first-hand knowledge of the mother’s previous medical, family and social history.

How can John Della Bosca, Ken Barnett and the GSAHS keep defending this illogical, financially burdening, unsafe, risky, poor quality provision of a service to a growing community that is used to having so much better?

Get it together before it is too late and hurry up and reinstate these services before we lose these doctors’ services forever or even worse the possibility of losing a child or a mother as a result.

Fraser Buchanan

Pambula

Sloppy pseudo-science

Climate Minister Penny Wong, the media and environmentalists are creating confusion by using loose abbreviated terminology in their pronouncements on global warming.

Such terms as carbon emissions, carbon capture, carbon trading, carbon economy and carbon footprint surely imply carbon is at fault.

This is misleading rubbish.

The element carbon is not the cause of global warming.

Emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas, are supposed to create the problem

Planet earth has naturally occurring carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere and its presence maintains our livable climate by preventing some solar energy from being reflected back into space.

Without this natural occurrence the earth would surely be in an ice age.

The theory of global warming contends that man’s activities are producing additional carbon dioxide, which increases heat retention.

With the media deluge, let us stay on track.

It is not carbon but carbon dioxide emission together with emissions of methane and ozone that are in contention.

Sep Paterson

Merimbula