Letters To The Editor

Causley questioned

Has The Echo morphed into the PR arm of Ian Causley's office?

Instead of publishing his propaganda, could The Echo instead ask him some real questions. It is called journalism.

Some possible questions include:

• Do you understand ecology?
• How would you feel to be jailed for years for fleeing poverty, war and persecution?
• Do you get a say in decision making or do you just vote how you are told?
• What was the last issue that you felt so impassioned to speak out against your party?
• Why do tax cuts favour the wealthy when there is a growing disparity between rich and poor?
• Do lower paid workers work less hard than higher paid workers?
• Are you going to speak out about proposed welfare changes which will impact heavily on our region?
• Why are a few hundred job losses to save Tasmanian forests from pulp unacceptable while 4500 job losses for NAB corporate greed is okay?

Maybe Ian Causley could respond to these questions (and stay tuned for the next installment). But then again, I don't think I could handle the lies, evasions and standard answers. We deserve more.

Anthony Neenan
Larnook

Thanks for nothing

Ian "Do Nothing" Causley's four-page piece of self serving, Labor bashing propaganda in your pages last week epitomises the cavalier attitude the Howard and Cronies Ltd Government have in respect to our tax dollars! They spend it on whatever they see fit, especially if it means maximising their chances of getting re-elected. The hard sell by Causley on the supposed "benefits" from the latest Costello flim-flam, called euphemistically a "budget", shows how desperately ingratiating the Nationals have become in their efforts to cling to power at all costs. The cost in this case is no doubt shouldered by the taxpayer. How much did Causley's four-page media blitz cost us this time? Would Causley please answer this on the public record. In this paper would be fine thanks.

So while Causley and his mates spend up big from the public purse in their pursuit of entrenched power, our roads go begging for work, our dental system remains one of the most expensive and least accessible in the world and our universities have become privatised cathedrals to the cheap and shoddy tackiness that these pork barrelling scaremongers seem to be particularly adept at. Meanwhile workers are expected to say a big thank you as the Coalition of the Stealing's "superior economic management" doles out a pitiful $6 per week to them and thousands of our taxes to their rich and greedy mates in business. The rich poor gap in Australia has just become bigger. Thanks Causley - for nothing!

M Mizzi
Tabulam

Gem Fest success

Through your newspaper we would like to congratulate the hard working people who stage the yearly Gem Fest. This event is now by my way off thinking the best in NSW, if not Australia. We have never seen as many people attending any show, and as rocks and minerals dealers we attend many! It's a credit to all the proud club members who together made this event the best there is around. We would not miss this yearly show for all the tea in China. Thank you all for a most enjoyable time. Looking forward to next year.

John & Cecile Steenbergen
Gympie

Timetable mess

If my daughter Katie wants to get home before 4.50pm on a school day, the only other alternative open to her is to catch an earlier bus to Wollongbar and then get off and walk the rest of the way home, which is about another 700 metres along a busy but isolated country road, lined with knee high grass and in some places there is no place to walk at all except on the road where traffic regularly travels well in excess of the speed limit of 80km/ph.

The new Kirklands timetable is inconvenient and not safe for my child and I, like many other parents, want whoever created it to go back to the drawing board. How is it that a child that lives less than 5kms from the school as the crow flies has to wait one hour and 20 minutes to get home. And when my daughter is dropped home she and the other children at her stop have to get off the bus on the opposite side of the road to their homes and then try to cross a very dangerous section of road.

Before this new timetable there were no problems. The kids were picked up safely on our side of the road at their driveways at 8.40am and then dropped off safely on our side at 4.10pm. The buses were on time, and they were not overcrowded.

I feel very annoyed that the only safe way to get my child to and from school will be to drive her myself, which of course is very inconvenient and will just cause more havoc in Alstonville in the mornings and afternoons. Other parents like me are also going to resort to this if something is not done soon. Our children's right to have access to a bus service that is safe and effective must be addressed, so if your child is affected keep writing to the powers that be to get this timetable mess sorted out for our kids.

Meredith Cameron
Wollongbar

Total incompetence

The Kirklands bus timetable disaster has raised these following major concerns:

• Much longer journeys for most children.
• Much later arrivals home for most and earlier starts for many.
• Bus overcrowding at dangerous levels for young children left standing.
• Poorly coordinated interchanges.
• Major breeches of safety with young children being left stranded and on three separate occasions children returned home by unknown "strangers".
• Little children being dropped off at dangerous sites, then having to cross major highways.
• Buses consistently arriving late for school.
• Children missing "after-school" sports and academic coaching because their late return home prevents them from keeping previous arrangements.
• Reports of parents having to stop work to provide their children with transport or to resolve major safety problems.
• Teachers having to extend unpaid after-hours supervision sessions to watch over young unattended children who are waiting for buses.
• Reported psychological distress for bus drivers, students and parents from such major community disruption.
• Kirklands disrupting our local community and placing our children at risk, at many levels, while stating they were going to provide a better service.

In 35 years of working in the public sector, private industry and being self-employed I have never seen such gross and dangerous incompetence.

As Donald Trump would say, "Someone should be fired!"

Kirklands have lied to us and breeched their duty of care.

All we want is a safe, reliable bus service with a simple timetable. One would think it would be easy.

C Bryce
Alstonville

Time's up, Kirklands

At our meeting of Wednesday, May 11, the members of the Lismore Branch resolved to write to Kirklands, its parent company Buslines and to the Minister for Transport, John Watkins, to urge them to reconsider school bus timetables and routes in the interest of student safety. The following day, the Minister for Transport announced that the director-general for Transport would visit Lismore on Friday. Subsequently, John Lee has requested that Kirklands improves timetables within one week.

Our members are concerned that child safety has been compromised by the extended travel times and new unsafe pick-up and drop-off zones. Parents are choosing not to put their children on early buses but driving them to the interchange to put them on buses that will take children more directly to their schools. This alone is creating dangers as children dash across busy Brewster Street between buses. In addition, children are waiting at their schools or at the interchange for up to an hour after the end of the school day and then not arriving home until after 5pm in some cases. No doubt, Mr Lee witnessed these occurrences on Friday.

Our members are also aware that a number of the bus shelters and bus bays, some of which have been funded by the Department of Transport, are now underutilised, unused or require relocation. We regard this as a misuse of public money and consider that it will place an intolerable burden on ratepayers in the Lismore City Council area.

We have urged Kirklands to adjust its school bus timetables by Friday, May 20, to fulfill its duty of care to its most precious cargo. If Kirklands does not respect the community that has supported it for so long, then there is no alternative but to re-tender the contracts and award them to a company that understands the meaning of community service.

Mark McDonell
President
Lismore Branch
Australian Labor Party

A poor choice

So, Council has fouled up again when the sporting fields, or some of them, were closed on Friday and some opened on Saturday. It is obvious that no consideration was given to the fact that we only had two inches of rain and that we have had a stint of bad weather, which made the grounds like a sponge.

I inspected the four baseball fields at Albert Park on Saturday morning. I had considered they were all fit to play on and by 12.30pm they would have been perfect.

When I questioned a groundsman he said, "Council had spent a lot of money for the recent carnival and would not allow the ground to be damaged".

Apart from ground fees, the baseball association spend an additional $8000 to employ a man to keep the facilities. This saves Council a considerable amount of money and person hours.

Why couldn't decisions be made on Saturday morning? Or why not leave it to the discretion of the sporting association?

Casino and Ballina took the sensible approach, leaving the decision up to the discretion of the clubs. This system has been working for quite a few years. Perhaps the grounds people did not want to come in on Saturday morning.

While I am in a "bitchy mood", allow me to make comment about the recently elected committee. How in the name of heaven was it elected?

How did rugby union get a member when it does not hire grounds from the Council? How did rugby league miss out when it hires Lismore's most expensive oval and would have the biggest spectator attendance?

Apparently someone did a fair amount of lobbying.

In addition, how did Barry Davidson miss out when he is interested in all sports, and has previous experience on the Sport Trust Committee?

Laurie Cooper, who worked for 35 years on the sports association, was a logical choice. Perhaps they were sick of the stirrers. Another logical choice that missed out was Paul Parry, who was secretary of the LDSA for years.

I believe that councillors did not give enough thought to the election of the committee and the sporting people of Lismore are going to suffer for it when decisions are made by people who don't know what it's all about.

Reg Baxter OAM
Lismore Heights

A week constitution

I believe the State Government ministers are starting to get it right, now to fine-tune it! Perhaps if we were to tell Mike Costa, for instance, that he had a week to get the police sorted out when he was Minister of Police. Or maybe even the train situation - please make me stop! No, I must continue. These two situations are past tense. Lets tell Mick that perhaps he should tidy up the Pacific Highway in the next week!

I realise that Kirklands have made a mistake with their bus schedules, but the government, not just the State Government, have made mistakes, make mistakes and will continue to make mistakes and no one has given them a week to sort it out.

By the way, maybe the director general of the Ministry of Transport should have taken a train to the North Coast instead of an airplane, or better yet, just to tell Kirklands to lift their game, he could have used Telstra and rung! Is the government starting to feel embarrassed?

Michael Wright
Nimbin

A sign of things to come

This budget has dealt a severe blow to families on low incomes and single parent families in particular. Do we really want to outsource our parenting responsibilities (and joys, too!) to some anonymous childcare centre? Why should we put the care for our kids into the hands of a business, over which we as parents have no control whatsoever?

Where are the jobs that accommodate the needs of single parents: flexibility of working hours (10am to 3pm), ability to work less during school holidays, generous parental leave etc.... The only people who seem to have these jobs are higher university staff or public servants.

In the end, it appears that the stress of single parenting will escalate even more, with parents stressing out trying to juggle childcare, school, job, household, sick children and Centrelink reporting. School holidays - a nightmare already for single parents. All the time under the threat that the foundation of their existence can be pulled from under them if they can't find work or not enough work. Parents will be forced to accept any job, no matter how badly paid they may be, in order to keep their benefits. And the new rules will open the floodgates for even more jobs on US-style minimum wages (A$6.60 per hour!).

Instead, good family friendly policy should focus on removing the financial stress from two parent families, and thus removing one of the main reasons why families split up.

The system we are going to have has been tried before in the former East Germany: government-run childcare centres because the mums were needed in the factories.

It had the added benefit that the government was completely free to exert whatever influence was considered desirable over the children. It worked well until the state went broke, and it produced a generation of citizens where one in five was a government paid spy.

This budget continues the trend to take from the poor and give to the rich. It will put extra financial and time pressure on those families who need it least. This budget is disgusting, unfair and a sign of more nasty things to come.

Michael Qualmann
Modanville

Owning up

So if the states cannot give Mr Ruddock a valid reason as to why companies should not be entitled to the same legal protection as individuals, he will push the national defamation code through as soon as the Senate becomes superfluous. So I'll have a go as an individual. Companies should not be entitled to the same legal protection as individuals because it would make it a crime to own them.

Marcus Davis
North Lismore

B-double blues

Lismore City councillors expressed concern over an item in the minutes of the Traffic Advisory Committee at this week's (May 10) Council meeting. It contained an application for B-double access on Bangalow Road (Bangalow to Lismore) and Lismore to Woodburn via roads through Gundurimbah, Wyrallah, Tucki and Tuckurimbah.

Concerns were raised regarding the viaduct at Binna Burra (that's the one our train used to use) being too low, the lack of passing lanes and impact on the Wyrallah Bridge.

It was also recently reported in a Sydney newspaper that Roads Minister, Michael Costa, said the Government would now allow B-doubles to increase in length from 25 to 26 metres. The 26 metre B-double plan is a major turnaround from the position held by former Roads Minister Carl Scully, who strongly opposed it.

Looks like Mr Costa, the Minister responsible for stealing our train (the Murwillumbah XPT) is now about to fix the problems of the transport industry.

There has been a guarantee by the new Transport Minister, John Watkins, that our rail corridor to Murwillumbah will be preserved. Will this become just another broken promise by the NSW State Government for our forgotten corner of the state?

In the meantime, keep an eye on our railway viaduct at Binna Burra!

Ken Wallbridge
Richmond Hill

Train anniversary

May 17 marks the first year of the loss to the communities of the Northern Rivers of its XPT rail passenger services on the Murwillumbah corridor. The full effect of this disadvantage has not fully impacted upon us as yet, but some residual effects have occurred in the form of cost shifting from state to local government.

The communities of the Northern Rivers must be aware that the line is not closed, it's just not in use. Therefore anyone using the disused line as a walking track or cycleway are in fact trespassing. I was informed at a conference in Ballina back in March of this year by the Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources (DIPNR), that the line from Casino to Murwillumbah will remain as a rail corridor.

Local campaigning by Northern Rivers Trains for the Future (NRTF) and the Tweed Rail Society (TRS) is continuing with the TRS preparing to institute a commuter rail passenger service when approval is obtained from the proper quarters.

The reasoning behind the ceasing of rail services on the line remains very questionable, with the results of the Parliamentary Inquiry bringing into question the legalities behind the Government's actions. I would like to encourage all members of the communities of the Northern Rivers to obtain a copy of both the Federal and State Constitutions, as they make for some very interesting reading.

I believe that the future holds a positive outlook for the return of rail passenger services on the Murwillumbah line, either in a state or private operating system, or maybe a combination of both.

The efforts of the TRS and the NRTF are being watched very closely by other communities outside this region, even in Sydney, as I believe that these two groups will not let this topic slide by at the next state election.

Neale Battersby
Rail Consultant and locomotive engineman
Lismore

Support for cancer campaign

I definitely support Mr Fittler in his campaign to ensure that we do not lose Dr Holt's marvellous cancer radiowave therapy machine, which has previously helped and cured so many cancer patients. As a cancer patient myself, I am prepared to help Mr Fittler's cause in any way I can. It would be a tragedy to lose such expertise, as shown by Dr Holt over many years.

S Goldsmith
Lismore Heights