Letters To The Editor

Timetable tragedy

I am horrified at what has been happening with the new Kirklands bus timetable. The bus that my children catch to school is now considerably later to pick them up in the mornings, making them at least half an hour late for school every day. I have been driving them to school as a result. I know of other parents that are having to do the same. This is going to cause traffic congestion if this is to continue as more people are going to have to take their children to school.

I feel very sorry for the children I am seeing everyday that are being forced to wait for their afternoon bus in the late afternoon. I have heard stories of very young children not being able to get home until well after 5.30pm and of students not getting picked up at all.

This is very disturbing to me and I think that Kirklands needs to rectify this problem. It is affecting almost everyone I speak to in some form. My kids like to catch the bus but I feel that their education is being compromised if they catch the bus as they would miss out on at least two and half hours of their education a week. This is unacceptable to me. Our family is fortunate in that we can afford to drive to school but there are many who have no other choice than to catch the bus. They are suffering when they should not need to.

Adrian and Amy Labone
Alstonville

Costly and unsafe changes

There is yet another aspect of the Kirklands school bus changes that warrants concern by all Lismore ratepayers. It would seem that some bus shelters and bus bays installed at considerable cost by Lismore City Council are now not being used. One example is the shelter in Blue Hills Avenue. Students are now picked up from the side of the busy Taylor's Road where there is no shelter or bus bay.

Setting aside the safety issues, a bus shelter costs approximately $10,000 while a bus bay, to allow buses to pull off the road, costs approximately $30,000.

As a councillor, I would like to know from Kirklands how many other bus shelters and bays are now obsolete or require relocation - also at considerable cost to our ratepayers.

The NSW Minister for Transport only announced on March 10 grants of nearly $70,000 for bus bays in Pleasant Street, Goonellabah, and a further $53,700 for covering of a section of the interchange in Dawson Street, Lismore. With so many disgruntled parents now removing their children from Kirklands' school bus runs, there is also concern that the interchange, which is a blueprint used by many councils throughout the state, will be underutilised.

Of course my primary concern will always be the safety of children travelling between homes and schools. Bus shelters and bus bays help make bus travel the safest form of travel for school students.

Children's safety is also being severely compromised as parents try to make the best out of unworkable schedules. Taking children directly to the interchange to save extended times on buses is making the interchange more congested. I understand that some parents are parking on the opposite side of the road and sending their children rushing across between the traffic. This is clearly unsafe.

Every way I look at this new route and timetable it is a debacle and I urge Kirklands to go back to the old system while greater consultation takes place to come up with a better plan.

Cr Jenny Dowell JP
Goonellabah

Have a heart

During my morning walks along Rous Road, Goonellabah, I pass a man, a disability pensioner, who attends Lismore Challenge activities Mondays to Fridays. He had for years waited around 7.30am on the eastern side of Rous Road and he is always bright and friendly asking what time the bus is coming.

However on Thursday last he was not at his usual spot but across the road outside Caroona. He was not his cheery self and his minder said that as he has no road sense he has to be escorted daily across this busy road as the bus passing his former stop arrives two hours later. This man has been developing a pattern of self-reliance and socialisation for some years and now he must depend on others to help him safely negotiate a very hazardous road. Surely that does not enhance his quality of life and self dependence.

When the JA Gilbert group bought Kirklands they bought the name and goodwill of a highly respected, viable local transport company which not only effectively serviced greater Lismore but also daily services to Sydney. Well Peter Shepherd, your mob has abandoned the Sydney run, appreciably reduced the non school run and now apparently is trying to combine a very lucrative school bus service with a town bus run of dwindling numbers because of commuter dissatisfaction.

If I hear one more bureaucrat justify service reductions with glib statements of "greater efficiencies and service improvements" I'll scream. Only idiots create chaos and then set about fixing the mess one by one as complaints arise. A restructuring should never begin with the premise "what is the worst service that consumers will tolerate?"

The Gilbert group bought Kirklands name but not its heart and they have realigned their service focus from people friendly to profit driven. The people of Lismore need to tell Peter Shepherd and his bean counters that they won't tolerate a service that places its users in a position of risk, whether it be a lack of adult supervision at a drop off point or the negotiation of a dangerous road by a vulnerable person.

Like the Tin Man, Kirklands, go and find a heart.

Tony Madden
Lismore Heights

Kirklands chaos

The Kirklands bus company timetable changes are a fiasco!

Fair enough the parents of primary school and high school children have a right to complain. But there is one sector who have not been represented in the media and that is the TAFE students and staff, especially at Wollongbar. Twenty students a day are now not able to make it to Wollongbar TAFE due to the changes. This is from the Lismore area. Just imagine the effect this is going to have on local industry! Kirklands used to have an 8.35am service from the Transit Centre to Ballina via Wollongbar. It would pick up at Lismore Square, which was very convenient for a lot of us TAFE students. This service has been scrapped. We are now forced to catch the 8.05am service from the Transit Centre. It doesn't stop at Lismore Square and now takes 50 minutes to get to Wollongbar TAFE instead of 25 minutes! Several students have been left stranded at the bus stop because some drivers haven't pulled into TAFE when they should have. Not everybody has family close by to pick them up when needed. This is especially not fair on the disabled students who need the bus. I have been reduced to tears three times this week due to the chaotic changes created by Kirklands' senior management. Yesterday (May 5) I rang Kirklands several times about a bus that simply failed to show up despite me getting to the TAFE bus stop 15 minutes early. I was forced to cancel an appointment because of this muck up. I am embarrassed to say that I burst into tears in front of four TAFE staff members out of frustration and stress. They hear complaints almost daily now about the buses. I did receive a nice apology from a Kirklands representative called Geoff but I shouldn't have had to go through that.

I feel sorry for the drivers! They have no choice but to carry out Kirklands' ridiculous timetable. One teacher is now forced to catch a bus one hour earlier! Please Kirklands give us back our old timetables and fix this bloody mess now!

Helen Coyle
South Lismore

Emotive Mungo

Whilst I have generally admired your forthright political comments, I do believe your non-political remarks in the The Northern Rivers Echo on April 28 regarding the late Pope John Paul II and the now Pope Benedict XVI are inaccurate, unrealistic, totally negative and apparently calculated to stir up long dead sectarian emotions.

You are surely not serious in blaming the late Pope "for the death of a hell of a lot of trees." The blame for the loss of so many trees lies squarely with the media who choose to sensationalise such events. Not to mention the vast number of trees sacrificed for the sake of extravagant media advertising and even sometimes worthless commentaries over a long period of time by certain political commentators.

Your snide allusion to Cardinal Ratzinger failing to take the name Pope Adolf I completely overlooks the facts, namely that he was forced to join the Nazi party's youth organisation and at the age of 16 was drafted into the army from which he deserted, finally being captured by the Americans and spending some time in one of their prisoner-of-war camps. I seriously wonder what you would have done in similar circumstances.

The nonsense about the only useful spin-off being "that we now know which newspapers have Roman Catholic editors and senior staff" I leave to your media colleagues to answer.

Neville Johnson
Ballina

Support for aerodrome home

Richard Gates is not the spokesperson for the whole community and does not reflect the majority view.

At the request of the airfield committee, the RSL Sub Branch supported and requested the [Richmond Valley] Council adopt a Council scenario for the development of the airfield which is identical with Council's current plan. Richard is aware of this.

Three of the most important issues for the village are health, aged care and jobs. The proposed aged care home will provide all these.

Richard has said he is in favour of the home going ahead, but he doesn't seem to want it on his aerodrome.

There is nothing wrong with the Council being concerned at the loss of the development when the first site fell through. It was then natural that action would be taken to help find another site.

The area selected on the aerodrome had been fenced off for years. It was earmarked and developed for housing, as approved, being surplus to requirements.

The development of the aerodrome and the home can co-exist without any problems as most residents want. However, if a choice has to be made, I am sure there would be overwhelming support for the home.

In any case, how do the two hangars rate with the heritage values of the site? Especially the one on the west of the Bellman hangar. Under the Draft Plan of Management, this area is sacred and not to be built upon.

Should further delays occur, then the bed allocation for the proposed retirement home will be lost forever. It is now essential for all concerned residents to write to the Richmond Valley Council supporting the proposed Plan of Management and the Noise Assessment Draft so that we can have both the home and the Memorial Aerodrome.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill: "Never in the field of a community's needs have so many been obstructed by so few."

No matter who or what, the final acceptance and approval is up to the Heritage Council, and as such we should all sit back and wait for a decision.

Kevin Saville
Evans Head

Social scurity fears

After speaking with some concerned and fearful friends about the upcoming changes to social security, I asked a Centrelink officer for more information. Unfortunately she said she knew as much as I did until the budget came out. So, I phoned the Minster for Social Security and his secretary put me on to his adviser, a Mr Michael Tobey. Remote and unforthcoming, I managed to pry from him some information that was a shocking confirmation of my fears. I explained how I have a six-year-old and I plan to go to uni next year. Would I be able to stay on the sole parent pension? "Well, you would be required to do more than that," was his exact response. I found this quite shocking, though not entirely unexpected, as everything I had read in the Sydney Morning Herald about the changes never mentioned education, only "work and training."

I suppose we will have to wait until after the budget to be sure, but no doubt we will see further steps toward an Australia that rides on the back of the working poor, like America - a country without free education or health, little mobility between classes and a vast concentration of wealth at the top. Is that what you really want Australia? Is it worth it just to keep the foreigners locked up? Or to keep that international bully on side?

J Rengel
Lismore

Fighting against injustice

I've just been doing what the lunchtime news (of Wednesday, April 27) has told me that Bob Carr has urged people like me to do - lobby the Commonwealth to stop grabbing $1 extra from NSW for every $3 they're entitled to. It was Sally Loane's program which inspired me, though her focus should've been on the grey Senator Nick Minchin, not the colourful Peter Costello.

I've rung Minchin's office urging him to desist as soon as practicable (despite the present agreement being struck as recently as February last year and which would normally apply until February 2009.) I've also rung the ABC TV's Stateline, asking them to host an 11 minute debate between Minchin on the one hand and three regional representatives - from the far South Coast, the far west and our Northern Rivers - on the other.

I've rung Sally Loane's program noting the principal role is Minchin's, not Costello's, and letting them know of my efforts. As I have both Bob Carr and Andrew Refshauge's offices.

Further, I've rung Kim Beazley's office noting that this is a strategic war, that it's not partisan and that, were he to help lift its public profile, he would better embed himself electorally in Australia's biggest state as well as contradict those who assert that he raises his political profile only in election campaigns!

The proposition is simple and just; unlike the needs of Australia in 1905, Australia in 2005 does not need to steal an additional $3 billion per year at the behest of Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania.

The yet-to-be declared regions of Bundjalung, the far west and the far south of NSW desperately need their shares of that $3 billion.

Next time you're driving on that 200m of no less than Arterial Route 44 - the Bruxner Highway (joke!) - between Dawson and Keen streets (in either direction), quietly contemplate this continuing contemporary injustice!

Charles Lowe
Lismore