No koalas in Death Valley
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Mr David Newell's suggestion koalas will have “…access to higher nutrient browse and potential fire refuges due to the relatively fertile soil substrates along the Bermagui and Coolagolite rivers” (Koala habitat connected by Crossing students, Aug. 28, 2013) are consistent with claims made by State Forests in its 1997 koala management plan for Eden.
More recently the Forestry Corporation released maps of forests subject to die-back, indicating that most trees are dying on what historically were more fertile soils and more than two thirds of the remaining forests in the Bermagui River catchment are also declining.
Back in 2009 the former NSW Primary Industries Minister Ian MacDonald acknowledged these very negative environmental impacts are the result of reducing soil fertility characterized by increasing soil acidity and aluminium availability.
Like State Forests koala plan, the information on soils in the Bermagui River catchment was first made publicly available in 1997.
Regrettably there is no acknowledgement of these issues in the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, particularly the NPWS and this failure is reflected in the draft “Yuin Mountains National Park” management plan, the recent Review of Environmental Factors for the proposed Dignams creek highway re-alignment and their koala recovery plans.
So while some may get a “good feeling” planting some ultimately doomed trees, an understanding of what happens to a catchment when these issues are not acknowledged and addressed is why koalas from Dignams to Wapengo were nominated as an endangered population in 2001 and why some believe we are rapidly heading toward a “Death Valley-Saline Coast” scenario.
Robert Bertram
The Murrah
Gallery needs new shows
WHY has the SoArt gallery been so empty for so long?
Last summer members from the School of Arts and MACS were blowing their trumpets at the success of the gallery.
But it doesn't take a genius to work out if a gallery is empty for four months of the year then it can’t be very successful.
Is this a sign of things to come for the new art centre at Narooma?
Empty for four months with trumpets and fanfares during the summer.
Seems like a load of codswallop.
Two million dollars worth of codswallop to build an arts centre.
Creative artists don't need a concrete box in order to create.
Creative artists need a challenge.
The greatest challenge for artists in the Eurobodalla Shire would be to revive a rural region through art and art alone and make Narooma an economic boomtown.
Is this possible? Can it be done? Only creative artists know the answers and only they can meet the challenge.
So are there any creative artists in the shire and if there is would they enlighten me as to why the SoArt gallery has been so empty for so long.
Keith Curtis
Narooma
Moving defence would be a disaster
What a disaster Mike Kelly is proving to be as Kevin Rudd’s Minister for Defence in waiting.
This week Mike Kelly clearly demonstrated what little regard he has for official advice from the defence department or for jobs here in NSW or indeed in Eden-Monaro.
He has endorsed Kevin Rudd’s latest $6 billion thought bubble to move the naval base from Sydney to Brisbane, despite a Defence department white paper in May arguing against this.
The move doesn’t actually give the defence forces any extra capability although Labor’s defence budget cuts means there is an urgent need to remediate our capabilities.
Mike Kelly needs to explain why he supports cutting 4,000 jobs here in NSW, why he supports slashing the economy and jobs in Nowra associated with the removal of naval facilities there and particularly for us here in Eden-Monaro, why he supports the removal of the naval armament facilities in Eden up to Queensland.
What is that going to do to Eden’s economy? I think Mike Kelly is the Defence minister Eden Monaro cannot afford.
RK Flynn
Liberal Party member
Dalmeny
Australia’s population just keeps growing
AUSTRALIA'S population grows by over 1000 people every day, from both natural increase (births over deaths) and from immigration.
That is equivalent to a new town the size of Narooma every eight days!
Each of these people have to be fed and watered, using resources. They have to be housed, with increased demand increasing house prices.
They have to find employment: jobs growth is not keeping pace with the increase in population, causing unemployment to grow.
Most of all, these extra people put pressure on infrastructure: new schools, more childcare and hospital services, more roads, increased energy usage, sewerage and garbage disposal.
Our natural environment suffers, with environmental sustainability indicators worsening each year.
In addition, we are losing valuable farming land to urban sprawl.
It means any efforts to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions need to be greater than if our population growth was stable.
While our area may not suffer from the overcrowding and traffic problems experienced in places such as Sydney and Wollongong, our taxes and resources go towards providing the infrastructure required to accommodate the rapid population growth.
The only political party willing to address this issue - the "everything" issue - is the Stable Population Party, which stands for a stable, sustainable, open and tolerant Australia.
Eden-Monaro is lucky to have a Stable Population Party candidate in Mr Martin Tye.
A vote for Mr Tye will show the government that you are concerned about the impact of population growth on our way of life, and your number 2 vote will pass to your candidate of choice at full value.
The Stable Population Party is also named on the Senate voting paper.
Karen Joynes
Stable Population Party member
Bermagui
Watch out what you vote for!
AUSTRALIANS voting on September 7 need to be wise.
Wanting a change for the sake of it may take us accidentally to a dream come true for the Coalition.
Hypothetically when they win the lower house and the senate, the Liberals will also rule all the powerful states.
I don't know how often that has happened in the past, but is it desirable? I feel it is not!
I also wonder about the Liberal Party's idea to scrap the carbon tax.
They still want us to keep the compensation given to us by the Labor Party.
But prices always seem to defy gravity, and they only go up (inflation).
When the carbon tax is eliminated prices should come down on our electricity bill.
If not, the electricity companies are raking it in, not the public.
According to the vote barometer most Australians believe that this climate change is manmade.
What our Liberal politicians are concerned about is that we have enough work and a surplus in their budget. What for may I ask?
They Coalition also say that they will create 2 million jobs.
Then there will be more jobs than workers since there are not enough unemployed people at the moment to fill those job vacancies. Is that what they mean with giving workers “work choices”?
Zero unemployment is fantasy. The Senate should be our safety net, so to make common sense prevail, choose your own preferences.
K. Krueger
Tilba
Mayor's say… Spring is in the air!
SPRING is well and truly here and those of us that are lucky enough to be out and about on a daily basis will be enjoying the vibrant colours and sounds of spring. And the whales!
If you’re a very keen whale watcher and a tweeter, you can follow council’s tourism alerts on twitter @whale_watch (I don’t tweet myself, but I’ve been told you can do this by sending a text to 0198 089 488, with the message - follow whale_watch).
If spring has given your community group some ideas about activities that will improve the health and wellbeing of local people, council’s Healthy Communities and Seniors Week Grant may be just what you need to get the ball rolling.
Grants of up to $500 are available for groups that meet certain criteria and you can apply till the end of October.
We are inviting Tuross residents and the wider community to let us know their thoughts about a request to remove one of almost 100 Norfolk pine trees at Plantation Point.
The request has come from the group of local volunteers who look after the Tuross Memorial Gardens.
They are concerned about the damage the roots of this one tree are doing to the brick monument to returned servicemen and women.
A consultation will be held on Tuesday, September 17 at 4pm at the Tuross Head Memorial Gardens, Plantation Point, off Tuross Boulevard.
Another council event coming up that many of you will be interested in will provide information and a discussion for people with a disability, their carers and local businesses about the benefits and opportunities that will be provided by National Disability Insurance Scheme and Disability Care.
Did you know that 19 per cent of people in Eurobodalla are living with a disability?
In addition to talking about how the new scheme will work, the second day is devoted to the opportunities that will open up for businesses who can employ people with a disability, or deliver services to them.
“Voice, Choice and Control” will be held on September 11-12 at the Moruya Golf Club. It’s free but you need to reserve a place, details on council’s website.
The upcoming election will be important to Eurobodalla and rest assured that whatever the outcome, I will be working closely with the successful candidate to move forward on projects such as the Moruya Airport.
Please let me know if there is any issue you feel Eurobodalla Shire Council may be able to help you with. You can email me at mayor@eurocoast.nsw.gov.au or phone me on 0418 279 215.
Clr Lindsay Brown
Mayor of Eurobodalla Shire
Why Baby Boomers should ‘Give a Gonski’
NOT just Baby Boomers but Gen Y and retirees in the Eden-Monaro electorate need to consider some of the implications of education funding in the current election campaign.
Many observers have seen Mr Abbott do a backflip on this issue saying that he supports the Gonski recommendations.
This is an attempt to “neutralise” the education funding issue in the current federal election campaign. There is no doubt that the Liberal leader has come under community pressure and so he has agreed to a four-year deal.
This is a piece of sleight of hand that would have made Harry Houdini very proud. In the magician’s bag of tricks, the audience is deceived by the use of psychology, timing and misdirection.
Spectators are likely to look where the magician wants them to. More importantly, they do not look where the performer does not wish them to look!
The real deception is in the time frame, previously Mr. Abbott had promised only to guarantee any deals Labor struck for the first year, why has he now moved to a four year time frame?
This is because most of the benefits to the public school system would not accrue until the fifth and sixth years of the program.
Indeed, in the first few years, the private schools would get the lion’s share of the increased funding.
Let’s put pressure put on Peter Hendy, Liberal Federal Candidate for Eden-Monaro, to publically support the full six year Gonski funding agreement.
If he doesn’t, Peter Hendy is complicit to stripping $33.4 million allocated to public schools in the Eden-Monaro electorate.
If Mr Abbott and Mr Peter Hendy are genuine about providing quality education for all students in the Eden-Monaro electorate they must reject the Abbott agenda, which will effectively cut funding from all rural schools.
We need to urge Peter Hendy to stand up and demand that Mr Abbott commits to implementing the full six-year, NSW Gonski school funding agreement.
The full six-year Gonski is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to address the disadvantage of many small and rural schools. We cannot afford to lose it. Go to http://igiveagonski.com.au
Christa Mood
Narooma Teachers’ Association president
Loyal customers are key
WITH the election looming I must point out, that it is not the political parties out there assisting very small businesses, but our loyal customers who turn up regularly to support us, so we also can have a reasonable existence.
As a very small business owner, I can guarantee everyone that there is absolutely nothing that either party has done or promised that will assist the very small business owners out there.
Consumers need to be aware that when the political parties talk of small business they don't consider that below the small business operators there is the micro business operators.
Generally a small business can employ 10 to 20 staff with a turnover of $2 to $4 million dollars.
Micro businesses are usually husband and wife with maybe one or two staff and with a turnover of less than $500k.
We are the businesses that employ a very high percentage of people in the local area and in many cases renumerate ourselves well under the minimum wage but still don't get any support from the Government whether state or federal.
To some this might sound like a whinge and we are told if you don't like it then do something else.
We choose what we do and love it and my point here is to remind voters in the upcoming election, that they need to ask the parties what they are going to do for the micro businesses that are out there.
Then vote for that party that will at least give us a fair go. That way these micro businesses might survive and have a chance to employ some locals.
I would like to personally thank the members and friends of the Narooma Dalmeny Kianga Garden Club for their continued support and my many faithful customers who travel to Tilba to support us. Without you, we would just be another statistic.
Keith Mundy
The Spires Nursery
Ridiculous new name for highway
ELECTION brouhaha might have distracted readers from noticing that city officials decreed our Princes Highway is now the A1.
This must be a joke on country yokels. Nothing is further from A1 than the inadequate strip of bitumen this region depends on so desperately. Much of the road, certainly the bridges, was designed for 1950's transport.
Only delusional politicians and disinterested officials in remote centres of power would have such effrontery. We contribute overseas aid to countries that have better highways than the dangerous thing now on world maps as Australia's A1.
Our region gets no portion of billions of dollars Federal and State governments quibble over for railways, harbours and freeways.
No significant funds are pumped into making our air services more viable. And few residents can access public transport. So the A1 is not only the lifeline that connects our communities and businesses, it provides the one feeble artery that links us to the nation.
Many governments have come and gone. Passionate promises have been dishonoured the morning after.
The four-lane bridge to have been completed at Batemans Bay by 2000 went missing about the same time the Australian government donated such a bridge to Vietnam.
Our bellwether district is now so disregarded that major parties only offer loose change.
Maybe we should despatch our Mayor to plead to the United Nations for aid to a distressed and oppressed region. We might qualify for development funds sooner than respect from Canberra or Sydney.
Don Burns
Tuross Head
Abbott’s gospel truth
FOR those who need reminding, this is Mr Abbott’s view of the “Gospel truth”, as revealed in his interview with Kerry O’Brien on 17 May 2010:
KERRY O'BRIEN: “One month you say no new tax, the next month you say a $2.7 billion tax. ... Is that why your colleagues over the years have come to call you "The Weathervane"?”
TONY ABBOTT: “... in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark, which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth are those carefully prepared scripted remarks.”
So, unless he puts it in writing, it ain’t necessarily so! Just when is the media going to take it up to Abbott? He has had a free ride for far too long - smiling and waffling.
The full interview can be found at http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2010/s2901996.html.
And for a little more balance, last Saturday's edition of the Sydney Morning Herald (at page 5) provides an answer to Abbott's incessant question: "Are we better off than we were six years ago?". The answer, according to a new study completed at the University of Canberra, is an emphatic "Yes". We have had "the smallest increase in the cost of living of any Australian government for at least 25 years, despite the introduction of the carbon tax.
Moreover, Australian households have seen real incomes ... rise 15 per cent ...since just after Labor took office ... or $105 a week".
Peter Cormick
Deua River Valley
Bottom 80 per cent to pay
THE ALP has been accused of being negative because it has publicized some of the measures the Coalition has promised to do if elected.
Voters need to be clear what they will get from the Coalition.
The Howard Government operated on the 20/80 principle ie: their compensation arrangements gave the richest 20 per cent, 80 per cent of the compensation.
The 80 per cent got the crumbs. This applied to the GST, refund on Medibank payments and grants to school.
Thus the Kings School got a greater increase in funds than all state and private schools in Eden Monaro put together.
Mr Nairn did not look after your interests so why should Mr Hendy do so?
Coalition stated policy will take away payments to school children, payments for the lowest paid for superannuation while at the same time giving a person earning $150,000 five time more than a person earning $30,000 when they have a child.
Firms will get a tax cut. All this is stated Coalition policy. They scream “negative” because they don’t want you to realize it is their policy.
They have not said how they will balance the budget. On past experience it is not going to come from the top 20 per cent or firms.
It is going to come from the bottom 80 per cent. If you are in the bottom 20 per cent you need to be a masochist to vote Liberal
David Goss
ALP Life member
Broulee'
'
Tag team Libs
Ah, Mr O'Brien, welcome back to the fray.
As I was just saying to your friend and fellow Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes Lodge No. 26 member, Mr Hughes, you are wrong.
Deniers like yourself (I use that word because it is both accurate and able to be used in polite company, unlike other words I could use) are in a minority not because of political pressure like Mr Hughes claims in his recent online comments, nor because of a vast conspiracy theory, but because it is patently obvious to reasonable humans that pollution is bad!
Your ilk sit there and decry the big bad science conspiracy, like loud bleating sheep, because you are too blind, willful, or ignorant to see the truth.
You say that I am “a believer” but you then go on to ridiculously claim that “climate change sceptics...are those who see that climate change is not man-made but the result of natural phenomena” I believe, but you see.
I am the blind zealot and you the visionary taking in the obvious truth with your senses. What nonsense.
I am sure Neville Hughes will claim that this is once again an Ad Hominem attack, but honestly when all is said and done, if one cannot be led to the truth, then they can only be ridiculed for their ignorance.
Per your request, I am not a member of political party, nor do I intend to become one. I am an intelligent, rational human being, and as such I know when I am being lied to.
Michael Ian Kocwin
Potato Point
Climate change and election campaign
THE “single greatest moral challenge of our time”, climate change and our part in it, seems to have dropped off in importance in this election campaign.
Are we seriously about to elect Tony Abbott who once called climate change “crap” and is now proposing policy that will see $4 billion in private funding to be lost to solar and other renewable energy funding.
This is also the policy that falls $4 billion short in government funding required to meet its promise of a 5 per cent cut in greenhouse emissions by 2020.
The reason climate change has been described as a moral challenge is that by not acting sufficiently to curb our fossil fuel emissions we are condemning our children and children’s children to catastrophic temperature rises. We are all responsible. If our politicians won’t be responsible we need to impress upon them the real urgency of this matter. It is getting too warm too quickly. “How can we sleep while our beds (earth) are burning?” Peter Garret once asked.
L. Mayne
Mossy Point
Water
By John Petherbridge
When I was a kid I walked the hills,
and camped with other kids beside a stream.
I always liked to drink the water
that trickled over pebbles,
and in and out of tadpole pools.
I thought it must be the cleanest and the purist
and the more I drank the fitter I would be...
But now the story’s changed
Too many sheep and cattle graze nearby
infecting the stream, we’re told, with ugly germs.
My beautiful water has turned sour
Boil it first to drink it, if you must....
Yet I still like to think
that drinking such pure waters
from those hill side streams,
gave me strength to endure
life’s afflictions in a changing world.
Strength to I go on living
to a ripe old age...