Spare a thought
The government has saved face and avoided a humiliating defeat in Parliament, while children and their families suffer ill health and appalling deprivation on Nauru.
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Morrison and Co deliberately manipulated party politics while debating a bill put up by Independent MP Kerryn Phelps, that would make it easier to transfer people needing medical treatment from Nauru and Manus. Evidence from many doctors has stressed the urgency required to treat these people with specialised care but the government has again resisted on the fatuous grounds that the boats will start arriving again.
So while we enjoy our Christmas dinners, safe in the knowledge our borders are protected from marauding hordes of 'illegal' asylum seekers, spare a thought for those who are languishing in hopeless misery on unwelcoming islands somewhere in the Pacific.
Olwen Morris, Tura Beach
Merry Christmas message
Thank you Bega Valley Shire Council for your Happy Holidays posters, but I can assure you we will be having a Very Merry Christmas.
Ken McCoombe, Merimbula
Get off the train
Andrew Constance – you’re (supposedly) our voice in Parliament. Just quickly hop off Gladys’ fantasy fast rail to Nowra. It’s going nowhere. And don’t even think about extending rail to Ulladulla, Bega or Eden.
Numerous inquiries have examined these possibilities in the past, each and every time very conclusively determining that to do so would be the equivalent of economic lunacy. But, we note, your government is, yet again, now spending $1million of our money to simply conclude that extending rail to our part of the South Coast will be absolute stupidity.
And now you suggest that extending a rail line to this area will stimulate more local development than the cost of the line.
It’s time you and Gladys added a lot more water to whatever it is that you’ve been drinking! Because, sorry, you’re absolutely, absolutely, absolutely wrong.
Please provide us with just one example anywhere in Australia where a government building a railway line in the past 150 years has provided a positive economic benefit to a local community. You’ll be unable to find one – so why should the NSW South Coast be any different?
Please concentrate your efforts on fixing our roads. Simply widen roads, simply re-mark all the overtaking lines that we have noticed have been removed from our local highways over the past few years while you’ve been our local member supposedly looking after our interests.
And as a first priority fund a decent four-lane road from Canberra to Batemans Bay rather than spending your time fiddling while the community suffers and an inordinately high number of people are killed on what should be a world-class major highway.
Peter Lacey, Quaama
Celebrating year
The University of the Third Age Sapphire Coast (U3ASC) celebrated the end of another great year of learning and laughing together at its Christmas party at Pambula Town Hall. Around 120 members crammed into the hall for a delicious lunch catered by Cheeky Mango and an afternoon of entertainment provided by U3A members.
President Fleur Dwyer thanked all of the many volunteers who make U3ASC possible, and especially the wonderful course leaders who provide more than 900 hours of fun, friendly and low cost learning experiences for around 530 U3A members every term.
We at U3A SC wish everyone in the Bega Valley Shire a safe and happy Christmas and New Year, and we hope to see some of you as new members, enjoying what U3A has to offer, in 2019.