Probus at its best

Contributed by Gordon McCormack

THOSE members who attended the lunch/Birthday bash last week were privileged to witness a Probus Club working at its best. The occasion was catered by two of our members, whose boundless energy prepared both the venue and the food. This fabulous duo quietly got on with the job with smiles and clockwork precision. Any of the 26, or was it 27, attendees will vouch for the quality and quantity of the meal.

The weather was cooler than expected, and with a little help from electric fans, there was no fear of heat exhaustion.

The demonstration of Probus in action came about in response to an invitation to lunch at a private venue. Those who participated brought their own chairs and cups and dined in the garage.

The most wonderful part of the day was the interaction of all members, who moved from group to group to share news members out of their homes to gather in the company of others, newly retired, or newly come to the area, and naturally a mix of ages. This day will go down in our club history as memorable for energy, co-operation, smiles and sociability of all present. It was amazing how the nontalkers found a voice. Our Annual General Meeting will be held on March 8 at 10am at the Glasshouse R.S.L - what a time to join Probus. If you are interested, call Norma on 5439 0446 or Dagmar on 0402 076 410.

$1.6m boost for kids’ health

APPLICATIONS are now open for $1.6 million worth of grants through Health and Wellbeing Queensland for community-based projects and research focused on nutrition, physical activity, sleep, health equity and wellbeing.

Queenslanders with exciting ideas to improve the health and wellbeing of children and young people can apply for a share of funding to bring their projects to life.

Applications for GenQ Health and Wellbeing Queensland Community Grants and GenQ Health and Wellbeing

Queensland Impact Grants are open now and will close on 22 March 2023. Further funding rounds under the Health and Wellbeing Grants Program will open later in the year. For more information about the grants and how to apply, visit www. hw.qld.gov.au/grants

Mooloolah Night Market... Another great success! Have a whale of a time

THE second Mooloolah Night Market was held on Saturday, February 18 in Mooloolah. The event is organsied by the Mooloolah Valley Community Associaiton Inc.

“We have been bowled over by the support the community has given us, not only in Mooloolah but in Glasshouse Country,” said events officer Jason Carroll.

“We had some great local accoustic bands and locals singing along with some cracking food trucks! which we will be adding even more food to the event.”

SCHEDULED to open in April, Whale Park will be the first park in Banya, a suburb in Aura. The park incorporates an ocean-themed design, drawing inspiration from the whale.

The park will also be equipped with BBQ facilities, making it the perfect go-to destination for a family get together or birthday celebration.

Stockland project director, Josh Sondergeld, said: “It’s great to be working on another park for the Aura community.

“Our residents value a healthy lifestyle, and Whale Park is another recreational space in Aura where families and children can enjoy the outdoors and stay active.

“We look forward to celebrating the opening of the park with the community in the coming months.”

Regions continue to be discriminated against

Former PM Tony Abbott and his then Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull made the decision in 2013 to commit Australia to a 2-tier NBN. Those living in the large cities would have an adequate but not good Tier-1 internet while those in the regions would have an inadequate (but hey, they’re just country people) Tier-2 internet. Tier-1 being essentially copper/fibre and Tier-2 being wireless/satellite. Some households and businesses on the main streets of country towns got copper/fibre but the majority did not. As usual, this decision was made on financial grounds (don’t spend too much money on the regions) and not on what was best for the regions.

PM Albanese promised to upgrade the regional NBN on forming government by improving the NBN infrastructure in country towns. These upgrades are being done now around the country and due to be completed next year.

Disastrously, there is a major flaw with this upgrade. Because the initial regional NBN rollout was done on the cheap by the Coalition government, thousands of households and businesses suffered badly because they were forced to adopt either wireless or satellite – both inferior technologies for large parts of the bush where sparsely placed Wireless towers often offer poor line of sight to the antenna and vegetation/poor weather means frequent patchy internet reception, especially around the Sunshine Coast hinterland with its inclement weather. The current upgrades, costing $2.4 billion, promise better download speeds, up to 500mbps, for those lucky few who have received a copper NBN i.e. FTTN connection. For the rest, the upgrade involves the installation of supplementary equipment that is supposed to improve the signal from the sparse wireless towers and the unreliable satellites system. Even NBNCo is somewhat dubious of its success. Critically, for the thousands of unfortunates around regional Australia who are still on 20 year old ADSL technology (because they cannot get wireless or satellite), there is no upgrade path and they are condemned to an uncertain internet future, locked in at 12mbps download speeds. It is important to note that forcing Australians to buy the expensive US Starlink system is akin to forcing Australians to fly to the US for health care. We have already paid for the NBN through our taxes!

So in keeping with the history of inferior servicing of regional Australia by federal governments, to the great shame of the National (Country) Party, the internet will remain second-rate i.e. Tier-2.

A better solution would have been to do it right in the first place i.e. to extend FTTN (copper) in all regional towns (not just the main streets) and then rollout the upgrade to FTTP (fibre) Australia-wide.

This is a bad miss by Labor.

Richard Proudfoot Maleny

The mind boggles

Isn’t it amazing what alarmists like Ken Dyer see as the future (The Future is Here, Feb 7 issue of GC&M News). He often refers to a website or paper written by selfproclaimed experts we have never heard of, and they are usually from America, and have produced a video or written a paper, and we are expected to believe what they say is factual, and if we don’t listen to these “academics” as he calls them, we are all doomed. I’m sure Mr Dyer is a nice guy and has our best interest at heart, but when people make statements and write garbage like what he wrote in his latest letter, clearly they are delusional, these clowns have been proven wrong so many times it would take a series of books to cover the subject matter he and all his so called “academic” mates are wrong about.

On a brighter note, in Shane Daly’s article (Doomsday Passed By, also Feb 7 issue of GC&M News), Shane has hit the nail right on the head. I too am old enough to remember all the alarmist predictions through the years, and as Shane points out, not one of these predictions have come to fruition in the last 50 years, but as long as governments, who have no mind of their own (like our current labour governments at both State and Federal level), continue pandering to these clowns, they will keep coming up with ridiculous theories and getting ‘Government Research Grants’ that will do nothing but bolster their bank accounts.

I’m not a scientist, I’m just an older citizen who has been around for a long time, I’ve been lucky enough to experience many aspects of life, I’m proficient in the application of a variety of trade and academic skills, and have achieved certificates of accreditation in different fields of expertise, that most of these doomsday clowns can only dream about, and I’m an ex-servicemen, but that does that make me an “expert”, no it doesn’t, it just means I have skills in those particular fields, a willingness to learn, and some common sense, and over the years that common sense has taught me enough to recognise garbage when I read it, and the things people like Mr Dyer write about is just that “garbage”.

These self-proclaimed “experts” have been proven wrong so many times, on so many different levels, it’s almost laughable, but we all know the definition of an expert don’t we, ‘ex’ is an unknown quantity, and a ‘spert’ is a drip under pressure. In my humble opinion, all these alarmists suffer from what I like to call, “ID-10-T” Syndrome.

Peter Bowles

Glasshouse Mountains

Unwed and pregnant

I was saddened to read the story about Jack Wilcox’s father and grandmother. This was an awful practice that carried on well into the 1980s. An estimated 150,000 babies were forcefully adopted between 1940s to 1970s.

It has similarities to the Stolen Generation although maybe for different reasons, the pain is still the same.

We have more in common with First Nations People than we thought.

Derek Browning

Opinion piece: Growth and housing on the Sunshine

By Sunshine Coast Business Council Chair, Sandy Zubrinich

THE Sunshine Coast is recognised as a high growth region when measured both by population and economic growth. Over the past decade the region has seen its population boom, a strong increase in Gross Regional Product (GRP), higher improving household income, a diversifying economy and a strong investment pipeline leading into the next decade.

During the three-year Covid period from 2020 to 2022, the region experienced higher than average growth in housing prices, largely due to migration from southern states, with the regional housing market continuing to perform well despite the expected national market correction. The flip side of this good news, however, is the resultant pressure on rental cost and availability to accommodate families and workers.

Housing availability and affordability remains a growing problem and demands meaningful actions by state and local government. The big question for the wider community to grapple with is, do we want to live in a region equipped with affordable housing and accommodation, social, health, education and other sustainable infrastructure required to support a growing population and a diversifying economy.

Or do we want to somehow stop or slow population growth, understanding this will limit employment opportunities, limit investment in housing and all other classes of infrastructure including hospitals, schools and the social infrastructure to keep our community engaged. Both options have consequences that need to be understood within the wider community and that is the responsibility of our regional political leaders.

This is the time for pragmatic, decisive regional leadership that ensures we have the most effective policy levers, including competitive incentives in place, to attract new investors and encourage those already here to continue to deliver the vital infrastructure required to create the jobs and keep our economy prosperous well to the future.

We know with a great deal of certainty, that investors place their funds in regions where growth is planned for and not limited. We must remain that region.

Box 99, Beerwah 4519 or text to 0488 444 525