Letters To The Editor

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One fine day

The Lismore Tattoo Show, held on Saturday April 3 at the Italo-Australian Recreational Club, raised $3,800.65 for the Lismore Soup Kitchen.

One hundred and forty one people paid $10 each to enter and the rest was made from auctions and raffles.

Armed and Dangerous, who hailed from Coffs Harbour, played three sets of rock and roll and blues, and did an excellent job. Thanks to all who showed up and to all who donated goods and money. It was a great day.

Pete Davidson
Creative Tattoo Art
South Lismore

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Sense and sensibility

Oh dear, RJ Poole, you sadly mistake the meaning of "Freedom of Speech". The editor's job is not to publish everything that comes to hand, but to select and edit material according to the policies, standards and conventions of the publication, and the perceived preferences and sensibilities of the readership.

Freedom of Speech means that you, or anyone else who disagrees with the editor's decisions, is free to express your opinion, or to publish your material yourself, without fear of arrest and incarceration. You may initiate public debate on any topic you choose, but not necessarily in any media outlet you choose.

Rosie Gibbons
Lismore Heights

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Sideshow tally

With only 18 votes separating the final candidates for the Lismore City Council the Acting Electoral Commissioner would not waive the extortionate bond of $6000+ apparently necessary for a recount nor did they offer to extend the time to raise that sum, although we note that the Electoral Commission required an extension of several days to complete the count.

There were over 600 'above the line' versus 'below the line' discrepancies, 1170 informal votes and the whopping 67% of Democrat votes (467), which amazingly 'exhausted' themselves whilst four of the major groupings were still in the race.

The State government, having stolen the right to do the count and the paid work involved with the count, saw fit to treat us in this fashion. Indeed, we are left with the distinct impression that our State public servants see democratic institutions as rather annoying sideshows, which merely get in the way of their effective and expedient control of public policy.

Laurence Axtens
North Lismore

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Show me the money

The Carr government is really displaying their true colours towards rural and regional NSW following the government's announcement last week of the demise of your XPT rail service. Not to mention the tax increases, and the delays to road bypasses like Alstonville and Ballina, also the replacement of wooden bridges in the Kyogle Shire, now on hold indefinitely.

So where is the money going which was promised for these bypasses? You guessed it - to fund Sydney's suburban trains with air conditioning. All up the taxpayers of NSW will be forking out $1 billion plus for rail funding in Sydney. Mr Carr's temper tantrum, according to him, was the short fall of $376 million from the Federal Government. But wait a minute, this is only 1.5% of the state's budget, so why the tax increases and cutting of rail services?

What the people of NSW should be asking Mr Carr is what happened to the $8.6 billion budget surplus they previously boasted about, and what about the $1.5 billion which the Carr government squandered in the first six months after the State election last year.

Mr Costa has been reported as saying that there would be a review of the Murwillumbah XPT rail service after a year (ie. this December), and that the patronage of this service was only 184 people a week from Casino to Murwillumbah, which would equal 26 people a day. I find this figure very hard to believe. The $188 million over the next 20 years for the maintenance of the Murwillumbah line equals $9.4 million a year, yet it has been budgeted since 1997 on only $5million a year. In the financial year 1997-1998 only $1.7 million was spent on the line out of $5 million, so where has the remaining money gone?

In the 2003-04 financial year only $3.4 million was spent, again where is the remaining money? Capital investment between Cityrail and CountryLink since 2000 have been like this: Cityrail's investments have increased from 2000-2003 from $238 million to $420 million, while Countrylink's investments have decreased in the same period from $10 million to $1 million.

What a lot of people may not be aware of is that mid-year the Australian Rail and Track Corporation will be taking over some of the NSW main lines on a 60-year lease, and that the line from Casino to Murwillumbah was considered a residual line to the ARTC. What this means is that the ARTC would carry out maintenance on the line, but at state expense. Bearing this in mind, here are some of the cost differences between the ARTC's and RIC's, (the state's Rail Infrastructure Corporation), maintenance per kilometre. RIC's costs work out between $28,000 to $44,000 per km, while the ARTC indicated a per km cost of $13,000 to $20,000 was possible. This would reduce the cost of maintenance on our line considerably.

Mr Costa seems to be giving misleading information and grossly padded figures and deliberately lying over a number of issues, and as a result I call upon his resignation as Minister of Transport. As for Tweed MP Neville Newell, I call upon him not to be just angry and disappointed, but to display some guts over the situation to Mr Carr and Mr Costa or have a motion of no confidence in the current government. If you can't do this then you should resign as we have no confidence in you.

The leadership of the State Government is displaying nothing more than contempt for the people of the Northern Rivers, as well as the rural and regional communities of NSW. With the demise of the XPT rail services to our region don't think that you are going to receive a tax break, as your taxes pay for this service now, but expect more tax hikes in the future without a rail service.

Neale Battersby
Goonellabah

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Grateful councillor

I would like to thank you, the people of Ballina, for my re-election. I consider it an honour to represent you for the next term of Council. To the little old lady who handed out for me, I thank you wholeheartedly and hope I am able to offer the same service to candidates when I am your age - 92 years old!

To the WATER Group, who ran my campaign, I thank you all. I will be declaring in my election expenses return that I paid WATER's insurance liability premium to keep the group in business as a community watchdog, as I firmly believe in this group's charter to ensure public waterfront access is retained.

To John Hannaford and Ralph Moss, it was a pleasure to stand against you both, as you were complete and utter gentlemen.

However, let it be said, the elections were a dirty business! I would like to see the claims in the election paraphernalia of some candidates substantiated, and I think the low act of another candidate needs to be exposed.

At the March 25 'Meet the candidates night' in the Richmond Room I put my election leaflets down on a chair. A candidate then sat on this chair and refused to move until the evening was at an end and the people had gone home. Finally, when the chair was vacated, I was told "you can have your leaflets back now as I've farted all over them".

At the final Council meeting of the old Council on March 25, I asked for it to be recorded in the minutes that despite being censured more than any other candidate in Ballina's history, I had attended more Council meetings than any other councillor.

Having now had two Council meetings of the new Council, I would say that the experience is becoming a lot more pleasant, I am not being constantly riled and ruffled, and I didn't go home feeling as if I had been put through the washer and the tumble dryer.

The new Council appears to be a lot more businesslike and I hope that the best can be achieved for the people and their very valuable assets.

Cr Margaret Howes
Lennox Head

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Flood praise

Just wanted to congratulate NORPA and all performers/production crew on the staging of 'The Flood'. My friends and I enjoyed the opportunity to walk Lismore's streets in the name of art and entertainment rather than shopping.

One small request though: if 'The Flood' is ever staged again, please use the animals more! Their masks were amazing, and even the way many of the children moved like their animals was delightful; they could have walked up the central aisle of sandbags in the finale and given us all great pleasure.

Thanks for a great night, definitely better than the telly.

Irene Smith
Lismore

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What is it good for?

It was exactly one year ago when George W Bush was taunting all Iraqi freedom fighters and everyone else who was resisting the American invasion of Iraq to "bring it on".

He did it in a manner that reminded one of boys behaving badly at the old school yard.

Sadly, what Bush and his followers (such as our own Prime Minister) don't realise is that Iraq is not a primary school yard or some kind of chess board. Rather it is (or at least it was before the war) the home for over 22 million people.

But then one day the self appointed guardians of freedom burst in there united with their tanks, B52's and trigger happy cowboys to free the Iraqi people. Free them from their oil that is.

In the process that Iraqis had to endure the destruction of their houses, factories, indeed the destruction of their whole country. They had to witness the death of tens of thousands of their countrymen, the death, the injuries, the agony and the horror on the faces of their friends, relatives, their dying children. They had to endure constant harassment and humiliation.

Such as their doors being kicked-in in the middle of the night by gun wielding, screaming marines.

Their family members and neighbours being carried away for interrogation (euphemism for torture) perhaps never to be seen again. Parents' and grandparents' houses bulldozed down by marines just because the old folk's son or grandson got involved in the fighting. No doubt the Americans got this one straight out of the Israeli army's manual for serving justice.

So how did the population of Iraq respond to all that? Well, as any self-respecting people would. They didn't just take it lying down. Or to put it in Bush's words; they brought it on. Against vastly superior technology, firepower and against overwhelming odds, but they brought it on by whatever means are available to them. They did what anybody around the world with any degree of dignity would do under the same circumstances.

How many of us Australians would accept the invasion and occupation of our county by another? Would we just accept obligingly the rule and the law of any puppet government the invaders might impose on us? Would we just cheer and throw red roses to their soldiers as they are riding their tanks and armoured carriers up and down the streets of our cities and towns? Would we just run the other cheek to the destruction of our homes, to the atrocities against our people, to the stealing of our natural resources?

Or would we (or at least some of us) fight them with all available means? I have no doubts that the answer is a resounding "yes we would".

And we cannot therefore expect anything different from the Iraqis, the Palestinians or anyone else living (living?) under brutal occupation.

On the other hand there is plenty we citizens can do to bring about a positive outcome. We can put pressure on the government to bring our troops home from Iraq as soon as possible. And if they don't, then vote them out of office and give the opposition a chance to do the right thing. Bringing our troops home would be obviously good for them, since here they would be our of harms way. It would also be beneficial for us as citizens, because keeping our troops over there is an expensive exercise we are paying for. And last but certainly not least; we will all be sleeping better knowing that we are not part of this outrageously immoral affair any more.

Tom Koo
Alstonville

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What's your vote worth?

So the numbers have finally come back from Sydney with a few surprises for Lismore council including a bonus right-winger. The clear winner was nobody, who received a total of 1173 informal and over 3000 exhausted votes in the election.

Was the high rate of informal votes the confusion over the changed voting system or just a general vote of no confidence in the political process? Probably a bit of both.

All the voting systems - local, state and federal - are presented to us as 'democratic', yet the only system even vaguely approaching being truly representative is proportional representation, usually reserved for upper house elections and some councils. The most democratic electoral system in Australia is probably the NSW Legislative Council, which has a single electorate with 21 members, which means a quota of approximately 4.55%.

In contrast the federal electoral process is simply atrocious. How can an electoral system, which routinely exhausts - read trashes - huge numbers of primary votes be considered democratic. Look at what happened in the last three elections for the Australian House of Representatives.

In 1996, 5,315,494 primary votes [48.84% of the total of 10,883,852 formal votes] were exhausted. In 1999 and 2001 52.29% and 50.63% respectively of the total of were likewise exhausted.

From these figures it is plain to see that our electoral system has chronic fatigue.

All we get to vote on is which selfish improvident minority group is going to rule us for the next 3 or 4 years. It doesn't matter much who comprises the ruling Cabinet. In either case they are controlled by strings, pulled by much more powerful, unelected interests.

So what hope for change? Who can change the electoral system? The government.

The NSW Government intervened to delay the local council elections, and changed some of the electoral rules along the way, but not to increase the value of your vote, Some speculate this was deliberately staged in order for Labor to get a stranglehold on Sydney's suburbia. Whatever the motive, it all went wrong for them and instead the Greens made a huge surge - including the election of Byron Bay's first woman mayor, Jan Barham. And the overhaul of our dilapidated democracy is part of green policy. So despite all the machinations, hope springs eternal. Congratulations to Vanessa Ekins, the new Greens councillor in Lismore. Maybe in four more years we will also have a green woman mayor in Lismore. Because I just can't picture Merv King going surfing with Michael Franti, can you?

Andy Gough
Larnook

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