Letters To The Editor
Nimbin's Issues the Same as any Town
M William's letter (Echo, Sept. 5) relates confronting, intimidating experiences that are all too common for visitors to Nimbin's main street. They are experiences that not only encourage visitors to never return but cause concern for many local residents.
Unfortunately the negative impacts of a letter such as this are compounded by comments made publicly by our elected representatives, by community leaders and by sensationalist media. They provide a wonderful opportunity for broad criticism of alternative lifestyles and serve the ends of those they complain about by advertising drug availability and an illicit drug trade. They do nothing to empower a community trying to deal constructively with its problems.
I can relate to the writer's sadness. I feel saddened by the fact that the community I admire, love and enjoy, and which has given me so much in return, is often seen in such a negative light. In any community there are the drug dealers, the drug abusers, the dysfunctional, the abused, the violent and the loud-mouthed.
In many communities these things are often hidden down back streets, blend into larger environments or incidents occur under cover of darkness. In Nimbin it's all too often in your face, concentrated into 100 meters of main street during daylight hours. For the visitor, witnessing incidents such as those described by M Williams detracts from our considerable strengths.
Nimbin has an extraordinary sense of community. What M Williams failed to experience on her walk up and down the main street is the power of community that characterises Nimbin. This community unity, effort and sense of purpose gives us the amazing array of talent and artistic expression that is synonymous with Nimbin. It gives us the community centre that houses a range of community activities and services far beyond that of any other rural village. It gives us a local hall that is vibrant and alive when so many others are struggling to survive. It gives us a skate park that is being constructed through considerable community effort and enormous support. It gives us a wonderful soccer facility, paid for and run by the community. It gives us three active fire brigades. It puts on an agricultural show every year. It gives us hundreds of people who volunteer their services to the community for the satisfaction of helping others.
Nimbin gives all this and so much more that the day-tripper to Nimbin is unlikely to ever experience. It provides an extended family, youth to be proud of, elderly to look up to, farmers, hippies, lawyers, accountants, teachers, health workers, ordinary people living extraordinary lives.
Being part of Nimbin is about being part of a community, warts and all. It's hard to find solutions to drug laws that create an attractive black economy for local youth and addicts, are impossible to effectively police and do nothing to curb the problems of drug use and abuse.
Currently Nimbin is experimenting with all kinds of wart removers with varying degrees of success. Maybe we'll eventually find solutions that will serve to help other communities.
I invite M Williams and her friends to return to Nimbin with open minds and eyes and I'll show you reasons why so many of us chose to live here and rarely contemplate leaving. Don't judge a book by its cover. Tatty covers can bind the most inspiring literature.
Cr Diana Roberts
Nimbin
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Great Show
What a memorable way to spend a golden afternoon and cool evening in spring. Last Sunday evening in the leafy green village of Clunes I was honoured to be a member of a large enthusiastic audience who met to watch the Clunes Village Community Productions present their version of Living Next Door to Alice. To all involved take a bow, take an encore, take any number of encores! You charmed me with the natural talent and enthusiasm of your Alices, your fairies, oysters, the many characters from Lewis Carol`s stories, and his songs (and your variations), plus the excellent live music, good singing, snappy dancing, and what a wonderful welcoming White Rabbit full of exhuberant charm you had, to draw it all together. Congratulations.
Valerie Axtens
North Lismore
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Profits From Drugs
Reply to M Williams (Echo, Sept 5) I too feel that Nimbin is going down the drain, but why? Ever since the great and all mighty government and police closed the self regulated cafes in Nimbin it has brought out these unsavoury intimidating drug pushers making large quantities of untaxable cash.
The biggest drug pushers in my opinion is the NSW and Federal governments. They allow cancer causing tobacco to be sold over the counter, why? Because they make approximately $25 million a week! Every week, what hypocrites.
You see an ad on TV telling you it's in your best interests to quit but what if they did not get their $25 million a week? Increase the tax on alcohol and petrol? Alcohol and tobacco are the two biggest killers in this country and the highest taxed items any working man (if they can afford them) can buy over the counter.
Alcohol is the biggest killer on our roads, it causes domestic problems in homes and roaming drunken kids on our streets. How much money, sorry, revenue, does the government make in tax on alcohol? Who knows. Even the government's own pamphlets on marijuana states that there has not been one recorded death. So why is it illegal? Is it because they cannot collect tax on it? Control its sales? If it was legalised we would not have drunken pushers on our streets. Ninety per cent of users smoke at home hurting no-one but themselves. Then M Williams and others may return and enjoy Nimbin again. This outdated law was introduced in 1933 under the influence and lobbying of an American company called Dupont as it was a direct threat to their new product called nylon, teflon and rayon which is a by product of crude oil.
I for one would like to know who and which politicians were paid off to pass this law in 1933.
CW Douglas
Lismore
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Anti-terrorist Laws
Some weeks ago, The Echo published an article I wrote concerning a new Legislation relating to the need for stronger anti-terrorist laws in Australia. To the people who responded with howls of protest at my proposal?
All I can say is that I respect your opinions, you are entitled to them, as I am. My only interest here is in clarifying my motives for the said article. It was a response to some anti-government propaganda handed to an acquaintance. They suggested that I write a counter argument as an English assignment, I did, and feel that my response more than adequately countered the accusations against the Labor and Liberal parties.
However, it was purely an intellectual exercise and not necessarily my own political beliefs. My reply is in no way an attempt to support any Government party or criticise the people who responded to my article.
To set the record straight I have very little trust in any political party though I have on occasion found some representatives of various parties worthy of my respect. If you believe everything you read in the papers and see on television, I think that you are possibly being misguided and gullible.
My teacher implied that my reply was very confronting, but also a good argument to the anti-government propaganda, which I consider, was bordering on being defamatory. I sent my response to The Echo with the intention of making people think, I believe, I have achieved my goal.
As a further note, one of the replies to my article was worded in such a manner that I question whether the author of said reply wrote the original document against the Government. Did you? By the way, I am of German heritage and my forefathers left Germany to escape tyranny. I resent the implication that my motives are based on Nazism as I am a pacifist and proud of it.
Bill Leader
Lismore
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Ballina Library Funding
In recent weeks there have been a number of statements from the public regarding Library funding from Ballina Shire Council. Some folk are stating the Council has cut the Library budget by $25,000 - this is not correct.
Ballina Shire has resolved in this financial year to allocate $659,518 for library services. This is a $21,000 increase on the last financial year contribution, not a reduction.
In the five years since the '98/99 budget there has been a 26% increase in the council's contribution to library services. On top of these figures, council continues to service loans for the library facilities and maintain the buildings.
Each year council is making a significant and increasing contribution to what I consider an important community service for our shire.
This money is passed onto and managed by Richmond-Tweed Regional Library Service as a regional approach to libraries.
Did you know in March 2002 the Regional Library Service purchased a new regional headquarters in the Tweed and granted the Regional Manager a performance bonus?
I am amazed that while having established a new headquarters and being paid executive bonus', the Regional Manager is now talking of reducing service to Alstonville and Lennox Head. More disappointing is that he is rationalising this talk by pointing at Ballina Council.
Those community members, who rightly and passionately argue for more open hours and more books on shelves, need to take the issues of budget up with the Regional Library Committee.
It is not right that you instead take pot shots at those councillors who have consistently supported budget increases to the regional library service, year after year.
For you $659,518 plus loan repayments may not be enough. For community groups who receive substantially less and in many cases nothing at all for their service to the community, it must look like a huge amount.
Cr Peter Moore
Mayor of Ballina
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Self-Inflicted
So J. Lenon of Evans Head (Echo, Aug 15) wants a 'turkey shoot', eh? Doesn't that mean he'll have to shoot himself?
A Seer
Green Pigeon via Kyogle
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Lake Compromise
Last weekend about 25 people walked around Lismore Lake to celebrate Council's decision to leave the lake as a bird habitat, and it was a great pleasure to see four black swans again joining the jacanas and other bird life on the lake. We were privileged to see three of the swans in flight from one part of the lake to another, and although they are beautiful birds anyway, they are truly majestic in flight, with the white on the underside of their wings providing a spectacular contrast.
Although many people in the community were involved in the fight over the past two years to achieve this outcome, it was a pleasure to see Don Bailey, who has been working for at least six years towards this end. Apart from his efforts to protect the bird life on the lake, Don has constructed and installed breeding boxes for birds in many locations around the area, including some at the lake. The perch outside one of the boxes has slipped and Don was trying to manoeuvre it back into position when a rosella popped her head out from the box to see what was happening. How rewarding to know that his efforts are working.
There is a great deal of energy in the community from people who want to do some hands on work at the lake, and over the next few years we can look forward to low-cost improvements that will make the lake even more attractive to birds, residents and visitors. The lake was not constructed with this in mind, but times change and we live in a world where thousands of species of animals and birds continue to disappear every year because we remove their habitat to achieve our economic, social and recreational objectives. Council's decision goes a small way towards redressing that imbalance and ensuring that future generations see and enjoy the gifts that nature has given us. To me that seems like a wise and fair outcome.
Cr Ros Irwin
Lismore
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Compassion UnAustralian?
I am concerned about the health of G Wallace. Being so eaten up with hate and fear eventually leads to serious illness of body and mind. One day you may feel the need to ask for help, G Wallace, and therefore belong to the same category as asylum seekers. Only then perhaps will you realise that it is not illegal to ask for help.
Fortunately I will never have to read anything you write again, G Wallace, because I will simply take the precaution of first checking all the subscribers names and thus be able to remove your letters to the editor unread and dispose of them appropriately-in the dunny where they belong.
A bleeding heart, fair dinkum Aussie!
V Mendelson
Nimbin
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War Worries
Hearing Tony Blair saying the UK needed to 'cement its special relationship with the USA in blood" I hoped he was talking about his blood and not the blood of Britains and the civilians of Iraq and surrounding countries. But he was just on TV standing shoulder to shoulder with George. They looked like a couple of gunslingers, and acting like boy's from the 'hood. Saddam is bad, they want him bad, he does bad things with bad weapons and he's trying to get badder ones, we'll show him what bad is!
How can we tolerate such transparent power plays, dressed up as good against evil? I'm alarmed at the prospect of Australia being party to an unjust massacre that could engulf us all (World War 3?), all because US interests are insatiable!
The US ambassador says we're naive and we're sitting ducks for a terrorist strike. He's right if we join an invasion of Iraq!
So Iraq wants nuclear weapons, didn't Pakistan develop them against the wishes of the US but they never got invaded. And how come the link with the terrorism of 9/11 and Saudi Arabia has been proven yet there's been only silence about that? It's not rocket science why.
Our man in Washington, John Howard, wants us in the war but doesn't want a debate about it. We should know if the US has us by the short and curlies. And whether it has or hasn't, we should recommend spending the cost of a war on foreign aid, health, aged services, R&D on alternate energy, etc.
At the same time Howard says the UN resolutions on Iraq must be enforced, but snubs UN ambassadors and ignores and belittles the UN's condemnation of his own government.
PS - Funny how Ruddock and Howard are sending Iraqi refugees home, yet are supporting a war against that country? No offence meant to people who voted for them, but it seems evident to me that the Howard Government is toxic, and in no way represents what I believe is in our national interests on so many issues.
Instead the relaxed easy going country he told us he wanted in 1996, we're feeling uneasy and divided. Oh yeah that's right, we're good at sport.
Stephen Henry
Jiggi
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Wrong, by George
Wow, G. Wallace really got steamed up (Echo, Sept 5).
That depth of passion would be inspirational in someone better-informed [hands up everyone who believes, as does GW, that all Moslims are Arabs].
I wonder if he (intuition leads me to believe GW is male) displays the same depth of hostility to the many Christians imprisoned in our immigration detention centres as he does towards their Moslem brethren - all People of The Book.
It's more than a little ironic that, claiming to be a defender of hard-fought-for freedoms, GW proceeds to pay lip-service to the kind of ideology that twice plunged the world into war last century. Are you as curious as I am to know with whom GW identifies?
To quote from his letter: 'We have to look after ourselves first". Who's this 'we"? White-skinned, blue-eyed and blonde-haired? Aryan, Christian and Right Wing (and heterosexual) - no one else need apply?
Many may agree with him how shocking it is that our 'decent" Australian way of life has been wrecked by 'infiltrators' over the years. I bet flag-waving GW never touches curries, calamari, kebabs, spaghetti and pizza. Nasty foreign stuff!
But I suspect the fact that one of our most cherished icons, Vegemite, is now USA-owned and generating profits for its giant tobacco-company-owner Philip Morris won't bother GW too much.
For his xenophobia does not apparently extend to things North American. But his USAnophilia falls well behind that of his Beloved Leader who's so besotted that he's prepared to sell out our farming community in order to score more brown-eye - sorry, Brownie - points with Bush.
Whilst not advocating its opposite, USAnophobia, I recommend the following steps towards a cure for mindless USAnophilia: (a) acknowledging that God's Own would be better off not greedily sucking down every damned thing that emanates from the God Zone on the other side of the Pacific; (b) realising that Bush is not particularly concerned about our wellbeing (nor our agriculuture); and (c) a reassessment of the myth that we owe the Yanks big time for their part in 'rescuing' us during WWII (another debate, another time. GW).
There are a couple of other delusions to which GW falls prey. One is that democracy is 'great". With all its foibles it's actually crap. But since it's the best crap anyone's come up with so far, like the proverbial blanket we'll probably have to stick to it. The other is that it's always laudable to be a patriot.
I waver over Samuel Johnson's declaration that 'patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel". But I sympathise with the [often misquoted] speech from the US Senate (1872): 'Our country right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right!"
Much in our country is thoroughly wrong, GW, and you do no one any favours with your unthinking loyalty to the people who made it so.
If I love Australia, how can I honour any politician who puts the interests of big (often multinational) business before the protection of Australia and its people against the ravages of rising pollution levels in our air, water and soil.
Or before the protection of our coastline - not from the arrival of a few traumatised human beings, but from devastation by freak weather patterns and rising ocean levels caused by global warming.
Had John Howard been truly devoted to Australia's (and global) welfare wouldn't he have signed on to Kyoto right from the start?
Or is he waiting for the say-so from The Boss?
Cloud
Kyogle
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Dems Dilemma
The Democrats are a mess and mainly and obviously because of Miss Scotty-B-Destroyer. What a misinformed arrogant little twit this turn off is. Why in God's name they chose her surely is beyond any thinking persons comprehension. Andrew Murray to my mind is probably the pick of the bunch and they are trying to get rid of him because he so rightly supports 'Meg Lees" for the rotten way she was treated by this hopeless bunch. The utterly pathetic language used to describe Andrew Murray by the bearded foul-mouthed Andrew Bartlett defies description. Respect, decency, right out the window!
This mob told the electors they are there 'to keep the bastards honest." What a joke that is. All they want to do is make sure the elected Government doesn't keep their promises by just blocking and spoiling what the democratically elected Government was put there to actually do! Hopeless bigtimers and Despoja 'Destroyer" is the worst yet. Every time I see her spoilt immature dial on the 'box" I want to kick it in!
If this lot ever thought they were going to win over the youth vote well how wrong can they really be.
Since this little dill has been (shock horror) leader their support has nosedived, with the emphasis on 'nose', and is it really any wonder? I mean, what's to like about her? Zilch!
In any case they really are just another branch of Labour as their efforts in the 'Senate' will attest. All she ever seems to do is rubbish John Howard at every turn and in so doing completely disregarding the obvious fact that most voters elected him to carry out his policies which he made clear to us long before the last election. Well maybe it's payback time for these Democrats for all their arrogance and blocking tactics!
To me anyhow it just shows how totally dumb and arrogant Despoja really is when she allows that disgusting Andrew Bartlett to stoop to such below the gutter language he used against Andrew Murray recently and in print in Sundays 'Sun Herald." Despoja says or does nothing!! No demanding of an apology, nothing, which tells me she approves of such filth by her inaction. If her ignoring of this pitiful behaviour by Bartlett is just because he supports her just proves to me anyhow how utterly hopeless and immature she really is. I believe she couldn't lead an Indian to a 'Curry" Convention.
Let's face it, this rabble have lost the plot. You could argue how could they have lost something they never had in the first place. Fair enough.
I also think Senator Murray should sue the pants off this Bartlett low life. How can we expect our youth anyhow to have respect for politicians when they witness this sewer speak from an Australian Senator for God's sake! Just pathetic rotten behaviour. This bearded Turkey is starting to make Labour's Mark Latham look like an amateur! I thought he was pitiful enough and of course he is!
Well folks that's my two bobs worth regarding the darling 'Demos' which should be good for a few ruffled feathers. But you know maybe these chooks were pretty well 'plucked' some time ago!
PS - Any fry's with that sir?
G. Wallace
South Lismore
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Proudly UnAustralian
I wish to add my voice to the growing chorus of protest at the damage our Prime Miniature and his cronies are wrecking on Australia's image as a tolerant, egalitarian and fair society. The billions of dollars squandered on the 2000 games-wash, and our so-called border protection, is all in vain if we demonstrate to the rest of the world that we are a bunch of fascist drongos, desperate to punish any so silly as to think we would honour our obligations under UN conventions. Asylum seekers are not here illegally.
Why is our society so sick as to put the boot into the most defenceless: Those who have been the subject of such persecution that they flee their homes and countries. They even risk their lives in leaky boats just to get to a country which has signed up to accepting refugees. Silly them, why didn't they realise Little Johnny was in need of another scapegoat just before the election, with S11 trumping the anti Islam card trick. How co-incidental! Now the refugees & 'could-be' dangerous terrorists!
That our political leaders have not the brain to work out that Osamma's crew were quite able to produce passports and visas, is understandable, but that the general public swallowed the bait, hook line and sinker, is deeply disturbing. ( That the so-called opposition went along for the ride greenified me, but is understandable as Labour was the original bastion of the White Australia Policy.)
If one wanted to be cautious about asylum seekers ,whatever their means of entry, one could have an electronic bracelet or implant, which could record every movement of the applicant, via the mobile phone network. One could establish learning centres where asylum seekers could gain the skills needed to fit in, for a tiny fraction of what we spend on razor wire alone, let alone the obscene (and unseen) amounts we pay ACM to do our dirty work. After this they could be assessed as to their ability to be of benefit to the community, and accepted or rejected on this basis. This period of probation and infield assessment would no doubt set up a positive pattern which would persist as the applicant becomes a valuable member of the community.
It would also help prevent such acts of ignorance which followed the lengthy sentence that was handed down recently for a gang rapist. The brother of the rapist summed up our lamentable lack of guidance and integration; we don't know how to behave'.
I fear that I will remain a disillusioned optimist, after all, if the Government is willing to sell their own childrens' future out to dead Carbon interests, what hope have I that they'll close the concentration camps. Instead, we'll be running after Dubya to our doom, just so the worlds biggest polluters can secure the massive oil assets of Iraq. And, as an added bonus they can get rid of thousands more tonns more of depleted uranium, from a great height. Hip Hip Hooray for Uncle Sam and the WTO. Well G. Wallace I hope you sign up to go and fight those evil Muslims out there, so you can experience U dust first hand. I just wish Little Johnny and his cronies would head the charge, instead of directing our misguided youth from behind.
Simon Cripps Clark
Gundurimba
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