ORANGE CITY
NEWSWATCH
LOCAL NEWS DELIVERED WITH — INTEGRITY — WISDOM — BALANCE Saturday 13 March, 2021
www.orangecitylife.com.au
JOBS KEPT?
ISSUE No. 40
FREE
Talking POINTS
with DAVID DIXON • Federal Health Minister, Mark Coulton — here for the recent launch of the new CSU medical school at Bloomfield — got a fair grilling, by local media standards, on delays to the coronavirus vaccine roll-out. One young local television reporter did herself proud as he “ummed” and “awed” over delays to announced second-stage roll-out of the vaccine.
Sunday March 28 — our new postCOVID economy starts for real.
While we have had a fairly tardy start to the number of doses available in Australia, we also haven’t had the plaguelike death tolls seen overseas with the pandemic.
What happens to Orange businesses — and local employment — when JobKeeper goes in the next two weeks? Opinions vary on whether Orange’s relativelyunscathed economy sales through or we hit the proverbial wall. “I shouldn’t think so,” Orange Business Chamber President, Jack Evans said. “It’s not going to make a lot of difference; I don’t believe so, anyway. Most businesses that I speak to, aren’t still on JobKeeper as it is.” He said that the few local cases of the coronavirus, our relatively-mild lockdown, and stimulus measures at Federal, State, and local level, have left Orange in seemingly good-shape. “Most are doing pretty good, that’s what they tell me.”
In that sense, we have again, been “The Lucky Country”. • The Medical School is emphasising the number of kids from the bush with 100 percent of the first 20 student intake coming from rural areas.
• Turn to page 4-5 for our full story MACQUARIE PUMPING HALF-CAPACITY
FOR WHOM THE AD TOLLS? IT TOLLS FOR TREE! Quotes to chop-down hundreds of trees at Bloomfield are now being sought by Orange Council.
Not enough water is being pumped from the $45 million Macquarie River pipeline, a ratepayer believes.
• Turn to page 7 for our full story.
• Turn to page 8–9 for local Geoff File’s study
CSU has obviously learnt the lesson from the Dental School, whose seemingly citydrawn students are rarely seen outside the campus and who, when they do venture out into the Colour City, seem to view the locals as another species worthy of avoidance. • Small Business Ombudsman Kate Carnell — always eminently-accessible for small-fry media like ourselves — told Newswatch recently that country newspapers have been one of the hardest-hit of the industries affected by the coronavirus lockdowns. “Because, of course, when small businesses are distressed, they stop advertising” she said. Her advice for small businesses on the ending of JobKeeper in a fortnight (with her interview in next week’s paper); get a health check for your enterprise because it may be on life-support and you don’t want your dreams to die with it!
WHO WILL YOU VOTE FOR IN SEPTEMBER? Between now and then, we’ll keep you up to date with who’s who and what’s what... ORANGE CITY
NEWSWATCH