Letters

LETTERS, FEEDBACK AND OPINION

We’d love to hear from you!

letters@nrtimes.com.au

Please keep under 250 words & include address and phone number This material from the originating organization/ author(s) may be of a pointin-time nature, edited for clarity, style and length. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s).

THANK YOU

It was a fun afternoon in Evans Head catching up with all my friends from Line dancing. We met we danced for the next two hours, I then headed home back to Casino. Whilst on my way home I was involved in a car accident, all it took was one second and in a blink of an eye another vehicle swerved on to my side of the road and collided so please drive carefully

I would like to make a very special thank you to the Police, Ambulance, Fire Brigade and the VRA and whoever else was involved in the accident rescue. A very big thank you to you all I would also like to say a very special thank you to all my family and friends for all the support, best calls and emails. I can’t thank you all enough for your support it’s helping me through my recovery. I would also like to say a big thank you to the Intensive Care Unit at the Lismore Base Hospital and all the staff. Thanks again everyone

Allie Connolly (Alma)

Casino

IN RESPONSE TO G. MACDONALD (NR TIMES APRIL 14, 2022): I AM NO ‘AGENT’ FOR ANY PARTY.

Far from standing as any sort of fake candidate, I’ve deliberately chosen to stand as an Independent who will represent the community and not the party platform of either major party.

I do not have to toe any party line.

I’m standing as a community Independent because the people of Page are telling me their concerns are not being heard in Canberra.

They want action on climate; they want a Federal ICAC; they want integrity and honesty in politics, they want the housing crisis addressed; they want more funding for aged care, health care and mental health programs. They want climate action.

I’m proud to have received funding from Climate 200, because it makes electoral success possible. They would not fund me without substantial local funding (over $40,000 of my funding is local). All I had to commit to in their eligibility criteria is that I will act with honesty and integrity in government. If I was anything else, there would be no point in my running.

Far from standing as some sort of ‘stooge,’ I intend to go to Canberra as an independent who will work with other independents to keep the major parties honest. We will call on them to represent the wishes of electorates who are fed up with their failure to listen; their constant negative attack style politics and their hypocrisy and dishonesty.

I will vote for the issues my community asks for and needs. I housing and local industry, climate action and a federal integrity commission with teeth to hold all politicians to account, including me.

Warm regards,

Dr Hanabeth Luke

Independent for Page

CRANKY

Readers may recall my previous letters critising all MPs and the way they treat the aged in relation to the reduction of their aged pensions.

It is blatant discrimination and bastardry.

I am considering standing for the Senate with the following objective policies.

If there isn’t enough money to pay adequate aged pensions in the Treasury and the disgusting assets and income tests is to remain, then I will obtain the required funding by:

Selling Kirribilli House to provide for accommodation to victims, incapacitated and the unemployed rather than see them have to visit snake oil bankers for mortgages on their homes as MPs expect of aged pensioners.

I will have all MPs have to travel by public transport on a 12 month $250 travel card.

Cut MPs travel and allowances and they can stay at local hotels.

Reduce MPs salaries according to their other income and assets in the same way as for the Aged Pensioner.

I will sell the PMs jet and he can travel by train or bus. Sell off the fancy motor vehicles used by MPs. Plenty of 2nd hand vehicles out there and they can drive themselves.

Increase taxes on the rich by reintroducing the progressive taxation system.

Sell the Australian Ambassadors residences in the USA and GB. The Bronx and East End are available for their new homes.

Immediately sack those that want to use Parliament House for their sexual activities.

Have independent candidates declare where their preferences are going.

Health Funds will stop rorting with extortionate premiums or I will have legislation introduced to do so.. No more health by wealth.

Tax the Governor Generals salary as the Queen now pays income

TNL logo

tax.

Am I on a winner so far?

CRANKY

Claire De Ellae

Urbenville

HOMELESSNESS ISSUE AFTER FLOODS

There are many property owners in the Northern Rivers who leave their houses / apartments empty for a good portion of the year and only visit occasionally.

As a result of the have an even bigger homelessness crisis on our hands. This is a plea to any owners out there to consider renting out their properties to those in the community who desperately need somewhere to live for a period of say 3 – 6 months, which will give them time to get their houses cleared and cleaned and while they await building inspections.

If you are not in a position to do so, please make a donation to local community organisations. Our generosity at this time is vital.

Liz Friend

Ocean Shores

THANK YOU BARRY WALSH...I’M WITH YOU 100+% (NRT 24/2)

Once upon a time. Something truly really wonderful happened. It was an historic land hand back decision to the Widjabul Wiabal people that established Lismore City Council as a Regional Leader in reconciliation with First Nation’s People.

HOWEVER, an Apprentice, newly learning, Councillor to Lismore City Council, has proposed that this historic gesture be... well, kinda cancelled ‘cos Lismore City Council needs to sell things to get themselves out of the $$$ pothole

What the hell have the Widjabul Wiabal people have to do with the incompetence of Lismore City Council over many years? Truly unbelievable. What I had naively thought might have seen a change in Council direction is once again in a faraway land.

Benni

Girard’s Hill

SHOCK HORROR!

Albanese didn’t know the unemployment

So what! What is the that don’t show the true picture?

Frydenberg won’t tell us how many hours a week someone must work to be considered employed. He won’t tell you how many people have a job that doesn’t pay a living wage.

He will campaign using these dodgy takes’ Scomo tells you he will create 1 million jobs maybe we should ask him how many of these will be permanent and pay a living wage.

L.Clarke

Ballina

TNL

tnl.net.au SERGE KILLINGBECK for PAGE

Donation milestone for

More than $1.2 million worth of critical items have now been affected communities across the State through the NSW Government’s partnership with online donation hub GIVIT.

Minister for Emergency Services and Resilience and Minister for Flood Recovery Steph Cooke said it is heart-warming to see people digging deep to help those who’ve lost everything in the recent weather events.

“The show of affected communities is remarkable. The generous donations are going a long way to helping residents right across the State get back on their feet,” Ms Cooke said.

“I’d like to remind people who want to dig deep to donate through communities can get the help they need without overwhelming on the-ground-serviceproviders.”

The NSW Government arrangement with GIVIT allows councils, local charities and community groups to request what they need. GIVIT then works to meet these needs through an online warehouse or by purchasing items locally using donations.

GIVIT CEO Sarah Tennant said is encouraging people to donate cash and other channels to continue communities. donations GIVIT has been able help many people including a single father who lost items in said.

“We were able to provide him with mattresses, bedding, and car seats. He can now collect his children from school and have a place for them to sleep safely.”

Other organisations providing assistance effort include Good360, St Vincent de Paul, the Salvation Army, Lifeline, Foodbank, Red Cross and Lismore City Council via the Lismore Flood Appeal.

To donate to GIVIT’s givit.org.au/storms-and

Helms and White Dental, since 1935 – ‘We are here to stay!’

LARA LEAHY

Helms and White Dental, Lismore, are pleased to announce that they are back up and running this week. Graeme Helms, one of the practice dentists, said, “Thank you for your patience, and we are ready to welcome everybody back.” into the surgery and affected some of their equipment. Patient safely intact. Surgical equipment and computers have been replaced, and certain furniture repaired. Graeme commented, “We wouldn’t be in this position without the volunteers and staff helping clean up and supporting each other. The community has been fantastic.”

All patients will be contacted to discuss rescheduling appointment times, however if you have an urgent situation, please contact them to discuss your needs.

New patients are welcome - the surgery is situated opposite the Post

CONSIDERATION – THE STAR OF THOUGHT by Nigel Dawe

In life, over the long haul, you see many different things undertaken for many different reasons - but it’s the actions prompted by consideration, that rise to the top in terms of things you’ll ever see.

Relatedly, the word ‘consideration’ stems from an old Latin term that broadly meant ‘to observe and contemplate’; mysteriously hidden within this concept’s explanation linage is also the ancient root term for ‘star’, denoting the act of staring up at the night sky in awe.

Little wonder, the headstone of one of the thinkers, Immanuel Kant reads: “Two ever new and increasing admiration and awe… the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

English is a funny language, or perhaps I’m just a funny user of the world’s most broadly applied means to make ourselves known. As such, I remember thinking as a child how strange adding one simple ‘in’ to the front of a word turns that word into its opposite, i.e. ‘inconsiderate’, ‘inability’, ‘insensitive’; a shame when we say: “I am in debt”, that the same rule doesn’t apply!

The Ancient Greek philosopher Plato, once noted: “The love of learning is more than just a mere pretence”, in a similar vein: a deep regard for consideration, and incorporating this quality into your behavioural repertoire, is more than just a mere The American civil rights activist, Marian Wright Edelman once reinforced: “Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree.”

Consideration is one thing, but being considerate at the right time, perhaps when the odds are stacked – is quite another. I remember reading Oscar Wilde’s ‘De Profundis’ and he explained whilst being led amidst jeers from the courtroom (that condemned him to twoyears hard labour), one of his friends doffed his hat in respect to him as he walked past, and how it was the most touching gesture he’d ever received.

On any given day, you so often see the ‘cheap shot’ unleashed between people, which is just the feeble-rant offshoot of consideration. They are observations made and then expressed that have an abject lack of decency and social grace, and scream inadequacy or threat of some kind in the mind of the person who makes these ‘worthless’ comments that simply aim to demean or offend.

The considerate person makes their way through the world like a gentle interactional of decency and regard, thoughtful harbingers that help to raise life to a level of being supremely worthwhile. There is a natural air or default certainty to consideration that can’t be feigned, as Robert Brault once suggested: “Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.”

Relatedly, as if he were re-drafting the 10 commandments in a modern guise, Earl Nightingale once formulated the notion: “Our rewards in life will always be in exact proportion to the amount of consideration we show toward others.”

Independent antidote to decline in democracy

TIM HOWARD

Australian democracy has been in decline and one of the few hopeful signs was the rise of independent candidates in the federal election says former ABC journalist Kerry O’Brien.

O’Brien and former Independent Member for Indi, Cathy McGowan, were in Grafton earlier this month to lead a discussion about the role of independents in the upcoming election.

The discussion was organised by the Independent candidate for Page, Hanabeth Luke, and attracted a crowd of about 120 to the Grafton District Services Club on April 3.

Just before the event, O’Brien spoke to The Northern Rivers Times about the state of Australian politics.

A career spanning 56 as a journalist and political advisor has given O’Brien an insight into the national scene.

He was press secretary to Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and his deputy Lionel Bowen and has fronted the national broadcaster’s flagship current affairs programs, Four Corners, Lateline and the 7.30 Report.

O’Brien, who now lives in Byron Bay, said the malaise gripping Australian political life goes back 20 to 30 years and has been exacerbated by a fall in media standards over the same time.

“II think it’s about the decline of the effectiveness and the relevance of the major parties,” he said.

“They have become disconnected from their bases and what happened to Labor maybe 25 years ago, where the old left of Labor walked away disgruntled and became part of the Greens is now happening with the with what you would call the small ‘l’ or moderate Liberals, who feel they’ve no longer got a voice in the Liberal Party.”

O’Brien said he was not interested in aligning with any party, but had fears for what he described as “the decline of democracy”.

He said the major parties had lost the support of the public.

“Today … there is enormous cynicism, disillusion and confusion amongst the broad Australian public about what has gone wrong with government,” he said.

“(It’s) why it is less responsive than it needs to be, why so many people no longer feel they are enfranchised.”

On the media scene O’Brien said his old employer, the ABC, has never been so important in the digital age.

He said the collapse of the funding model for traditional media meant resources for quality journalism had been stripped away and it struggled to remain relevant.

But he said while Auntie’s newsrooms while they were not under those commercial pressures, they still came under attack from government cutbacks.

O’Brien said the major parties took too many people too much for granted and had become obsessed with power for powers sake, rather than a goal like “running a country”.

“There are too many areas where policy vacuums have been created, climate change is the obvious one,” he said.

The role

of factions in the party was another area where O’Brien said politics had changed radically in the 21st Century.

“The major parties are too caught up in their own internal politics,” he said.

“They have become rigid with their factional games and the electorate is forgotten.”

He said Labor’s factions had once served an Important function as vehicle to run its policy debates.

He said this was demonstrated in the Hawke/Keating years (1983-96), where there was a lot of serious policy and a great deal of reform resulted.

“Over time those factions became more interested in using their influence inside the party to promote members inside the faction into ministries.

“It became a career device more than a policy-driven device.

“In both parties now the branches are deeply factionalised and those factions are more about using the numbers to get their person up into the parliament and in many cases it is regardless if they have abilities that can be used constructively in the parliament.”

Falling party membership has also become an issue.

“Any membership drives you now see have little to do with reinvigorating the party and more about branch stacking to get a favoured person into the parliament,” he said.

“It’s all about the use and abuse of power. It’s not the use of power for serious democratic outcomes.”

O’Brien has watched the rise of independents and saw them as some sort of antidote to the decline of democracy he feared.

“What I’m seeing is healthy debates being sparked by the presence of independents in the process,” he said.

“What I’m interested in is genuine grassroots discussion which is putting the spotlight on what democracy means and how the atrophying of the veins of the major parties can be countered.

“At the least they’re driving healthy debate and asking the questions that need to be asked.”

O’Brien has not written off the major parties, but he would like to see a multi-party system develop here.

“There are no rules about how a democracy should be in terms of how many parties there should be,” he said.

“One of the key requirements for a healthy democracy is stability and one thing you can absolutely say – regardless of what side of politics you come from – the politics that emanate from Canberra these days are deeply unstable and you only have to look at the number of leaders in the last 20 years to see the evidence of that.”