Issue 819
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At the time of writing, I am one of the many Australians waiting for the Treasurer, Peter Costello, to deliver his budget. Indications are that Defence and Border Protection will have significant increases in funding, while pharmaceutical benefits and some social security benefits will have funding decreased.
The 'War on Terrorism' has no doubt been a prime motivator in this budget; obviously if we are going to participate in such an exercise, there will be costs. If we are going to continue to pay an American profit making company to lock up asylum seekers, then there will be costs.
No-one wants Australia to be over run with Terrorists, including myself. But ask yourself realistically, who are terrorists? Some of the most brutal terrorists in the last 100 years have had the full support of the United States, including Pinochet, the Contras in Nicaragua, Idi Amin, et al. Many terrorist organisations have been funded and trained by the United States.
Surely the recent attacks on refugees in the Jenin refugee camp in the Palestinian Territories, by Israel, is the action of a rogue state, who refuses to allow United Nations observers or the world's media to report on what is really happening.
It's no wonder Palestinian children grow up to become the next generation of suicide bombers, after all, children learn from what they see around them, and what these children see is oppression, occupation, and military aggression.
If we want to take a look closer to home, the most brutal attacks to ever occur on Australian soil, were at the hands of our Governments, and their war on the Indigenous Nations of our country.
Our borders need protecting, like any sovereign nation. But 4,000 boat people a year (only 1 in 12,000 found to be any kind of security threat) is not a threat to our nation. The big threat to our nation is from our Government, and it's brutal, inhuman policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers, which encourages the 'us and them' mentality and politics of hate.
If you're listening out there, Howard/Costello et al...popular decisions are not always good, good decisions are not always popular.
Lisa Bartholomew
Lismore Heights
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No wonder the employment is so high in this area. The amount of businesses in this area that treat their employees like dirt (to be polite) and use the system to their advantage for slave labour, to be able to harass and abuse people that don't know how to stand up for themselves is disgusting.
Joining the work force is hard enough without every second job asking for three years experience or must be 16-18 years old. Whatever happened to the best person for the job? It seems to me that personality and work ethic doesn't count for anything now days. In my opinion employing someone with a sense of loyalty, honesty and the ability to learn on the job and do it well is much more cost effective for the business in the long run.
But I am one of the lucky ones to have a secure job and work for a fantastic, understanding company where your not just a worker, but a friend and a valued employee and I respect my employer more because they respect me.
Also these employment agencies that replaces the CES are a joke, claiming to be there to help unemployed people find work, my partner has been on 'intensive assistance' for 12 months and has been sent for three interviews. When he asked for work experience in any area of employment he was told 'work experience must be paid'. Funny how the case managers can't find you a job, but they have no problem in recommending that Centrelink breach any client that doesn't follow instructions to the letter.
In the last month my partner has applied for over 40 jobs through newspapers and door to door and received 13 responses, because he is desperate to find work and has given up on these so called job agencies.
I personally know what it's like to be unemployed and go to these employment agencies it is degrading, embarrassing, you feel worthless and self esteem is so low without your 'case manager' telling you, 'you're not suited for any of the positions on file'.
The Government is telling us the taxpayers 'unemployment is going down' Bulldust. Unemployment is going 'down' because of pointless work for the dole programs, that don't teach anything, just degrade people even more. When these programs are finished do any of these unemployed people receive jobs?
No they receive a certificate certifying that the Work for the Dole Program was successfully completed. How is this going to help you get a job?
I have no idea how people are supposed to achieve anything with this government gearing everything towards the wealthy.
B Ferny
Goonellabah
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Many involved in the current debate over medical insurance have surely missed the point. What we are faced with is neither a litigation nor an insurance crisis, but a crisis of competence.
It seems that the AMA and various governments have not got the guts to face up to a simple undeniable fact: the current situation has arisen simply because the medical profession is riddled with incompetence and an appalling lack of skill. Our courts of law are not handing out money for nothing.
They are justly compensating the victims of dangerously high incidences of medical ineptitude and negligence. We in Australia are faced with a golden opportunity to put the long overdue cleaners through the medical industry. We could structure our medical insurance scheme to reward competence and skills and, by imposing appropriately high premiums, drive profiteering incompetents out of the market place. So let us not be deluded nor sidetracked by the current chattering and babbling by the AMA in its pathetic attempts to street blame home to everyone but some of its own members. Let's just do it!
Tom Henderson
Urunga
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Intoxicated by their own exuberance, ego tripping or a vexatious litigant?
It would be a pleasure to be able to read, to pick up a paper, without Ros Irwin's letters, and her whingeing and bitching in it. What next is revved and going to meow about! This Lismore councillor is also an employee of Southern Cross University! One would ask and wonder, how she has time to meet her commitments, with everything else or anyone, now she writes triumphs and goes on about!! This, I say, is not adding to her fading popularity! Give us a break from this 'one man band'. Get a life, fly a plane, go surfing, whatever.
Your articles are boring, attitudinal and paradoxical, with seem-ugly overtures of grandeur. She expresses radical views yet carries on like a paragon of virtue! Is it a case of missing the pleasures of control and can't regain them. No pork counselling will help the cause!
W. Nelson
Goonellabah
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Re: Jim Lee's letter (Echo, Apr 18) and his uninformed description of a foetus (up to 3 months) as 'indifferent embryo cells.'
Even a female kangaroo is aware that the very small immature and barely formed creature climbing through its fur, after only 40 days in-utero. In order to reach the pouch where it completes the final two months of growth, is actually its offspring and not a bunch of wayward 'indifferent cells.'
Further, the 'breath of life' should not be confused with oxygen inhaled at birth. The 'breath of life' is given by the Author of Life at the moment of conception when the generation process is initiated and a tiny individual heart, as distinct from its 'host', starts beating (at 24 days). Unless of course it is extinguished or dies.
Ironically, the more caring we become about the plight of animals, the less caring we appear to be of our own humanity or its very inception. A current TV ad implores (for animals) '— please take away all this pain, don't be cruel to creatures that God has made!'
Women on the other hand, have been 'sold down the river' by the contraceptive pill and abortion, on a 'private' voyage of discovery.
According to the World Health Organisation, 50,000,000 surgical abortions are performed annually. Talk about the massacre of the innocents! What happened to the principle on which the doctors medical practice is supposedly based, 'first do no harm?' And what of men who cared and had no 'choice' when their offspring was eliminated?
Our society is in crisis and people are asking 'what justice?' and 'what law?' Even headlines screaming 'Have we gone mad?' No less in the area of sexuality and life issues, and we are labouring under the illusion that we are in control and free of constraints when in truth we are out of control and morally bankrupt.
Genuine concern for women should come in the form of encouragement towards virtue for the young, instruction on the consequences of contraception and abortion, pregnancy help and a massive need for grief counselling of women who are also abortion victims.
As for freedom Jim, a final thought from a very wise and holy shepherd - 'Real freedom is found only in obedence to the truth.' (John Paul II)
Mary Mason
Lismore Heights
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Letters from Edda Lampis and her fellow Social Alliance, Refugee Action Collective, and Resistance campaigners for illegal migrant detainees as part of their propaganda campaign, have spoken out continually, demanding our Federal Government change its position, and 'show compassion', etc.
Fellow Australians are berated for various so-called 'racist heartlessness', whilst they themselves engage in 'civil disobedience', inciting detainees, pulling down security fences, and holding rowdy demonstrations.
It is unfortunate for these local Marxist Front groups that the same issue as Edda's letter, featured a front-page story on the plight of the homeless in Lismore, and how the Christians who had accommodated and cared for these people, were now Council-forced to seek re-location.
Then on an inner page of the same Echo, the East Lismore Op-Shop run by the Life Community Church, was reported to have extended its operations so that its increased proceeds could more greatly benefit local welfare groups such as the Lismore Soup Kitchen, Darcy Goodwin's Five Loaves Mobile Soup Kitchen (both involving dedicated Church-attending workers), and the Nimbin School of Arts.
Likewise locals have long been served by the Salvation Army's Red Shield Op-Shop and welfare work, the Catholic's St. Vincent de Paul's, and the United Church's Lifeline Op-Shop and Counselling Services.
These and other practical, caring, dedicated, Church people are the representatives of those who are being weekly letter-attacked by other Marxist-in-training individuals, who continually fill The Echo's Letters pages.
Readers can only ask where is Edda and her campaigners in relation to compassion when it comes to demonstrated factual practicalities? How many of these prolific letter writers do we see helping the unfortunate amongst our own? Where is their credibility? Perhaps solving problems is not their Marxist-masters divisive goal list, since these genuine practical events don't attract new, gullible people, prepared for Marxist philosophical indoctrination.
The fruit of their Marxist endeavours is seen in the civil disobedience demonstrations expressed in S11, M11, at Refugee Detention Centres in Australia, and similar overseas activities, such as is being seen presently in France against a perceived opponent, even though he was a democratically chosen candidate.
Y Messon
Lismore
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A disgraceful Budget, the only way to describe it. It plays entirely on the irrational fears and imagined dangers, claims to be forward looking but makes no provision for that, is in no way reformist, assists the rich, again, penalises the needy and does not address the real dangers facing Australia.
Does this Treasurer really have leadership aspirations? He has failed the test already. A safer Australia? He has no idea at all how to achieve that.
Do we now have a real Opposition that has the guts to fully expose the unspeakable incompetence and mendacity of the Howard Government, provide the effective policy alternatives and Block Supply in the Senate to force a new election?
Australia can do much better than this.
Klaas Woldring
Pearl Beach
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Re: Mayor Gates' lack of community consultation regarding the proposed new pool for Lismore: as the mother of a young child, I would not use an outdoor aquatic facility without shade covering on all pools, regardless of its location, and neither would any of the other mothers I know.
Please refer to the Cancer Council for statistics on skin cancer among Australians, which we all know are among the highest in the world.
Gabrielle Smith
Corndale
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For some weeks, the Lismore City Council has been upgrading the cutting on Koonorigan Road, Koonorigan.
We would like to acknowledge and thank all the team of council workers, for their constant courtesy, and their tireless efforts.
It was a pleasure to see, and thanks again for all you have achieved.
Jack & June Crawford
Koonorigan
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