My question is, why burden an industry promoting public health and limit consumer choice in healthcare to give a leg up to industries producing harmful and unhealthy products such as alcohol?

The government is blurring the line between luxury and necessity for political brownie points. Seems a little bit short sighted. 

Leila Siiteri, Millingandi

Despite getting $2 million for a new shared path from Rotary Park to the Wharf, Bega Valley Shire Council prefers closing the outbound lane of Lake Street and making it a path. Low cost, unsafe and unexciting for tourists. More importantly, it would close one bushfire escape route from Long Point - leaving only one: narrow Wyeebo Street. And Wyeebo Street would carry all traffic coming to Long Point along Lake Street - a possible tenfold increase, with no proposed traffic control measures.

And so soon after the Tathra tragedy. Not good enough Council.

Michael Britt, Merimbula

I wish to thank Jim Kelly for his thought provoking poem, a sobering reminder of war’s often ignored collateral damage. My father lost his brother, killed in battle in September 1914, aged 20. His mother died soon after of a broken heart. He lived a resentful and angry life and died in solitude, one of millions of forgotten casualties of that senseless slaughter glorified as the Great War.

Bernard Lagarenne, Merimbula

I started professional abalone fishing in 1974, mainly in the Eden area. In the 70s I decided to fish further north in mid winter to escape the freezing south coast water.

My parents lived at Toukley so I stayed with them and dived around the central coast usually in June and July. One of the places I dived is called Winnie Bay, located next to Avoca Beach. The first time I dived there I got a near record catch of about 300kgs, so I came back the next year and caught nearly as much. It was a near perfect abalone and crayfish habitat.

Soon after I heard the local council intended building a sewage outfall in the middle of Winnie Bay. A year later I returned and discovered the dreaded outfall pipe. The reef was already looking sick, the weed was dying and there were hardly any abalone.

A year later I returned to a scene of devastation. The whole reef was coated in a grey sludge and there was nothing left alive. An excellent reef destroyed in under two years.

If you Google ‘ Winnie Bay Sewerage Outfall’ you will see council’s claim that the effluent discharge is treated to the highest standard but many locals complain that it continues to pollute Avoca Beach.

Years later Bega Valley Council built a sewage outfall on the middle of Pambula Beach. The first big pump out caused a red algae bloom that went from the beach out to beyond the end of Merimbula Point and across to Haycock Point.

Every pump out after this caused another large algae bloom yet for years council officers claimed that the effluent was not the cause, saying it was a natural event. In regard to the proposal to build an effluent pipe to Haycock Point I say we don’t want another Winnie Bay. The whole attitude of council to this effluent is wrong. They see it as a waste product to be disposed of as cheaply and easily as possible when in fact it is a resource ie fertilised water.

With this area already in drought it could be extremely useful as the droughts down here tend to be long and hard.

Dennis Watson, Pambula Beach