MY mother was put into care in early April. I have not seen her room, been able to sit and have a coffee with her, or just be with her for all this time. I and my brothers went out to her on a daily basis, sometimes twice, to care for her for months before we had to leave her at the front door of the hostel when a room became available due to COVID-19.
And still today it is the same rules; complete lockdown. Can somebody please tell me why some nursing homes have visits to their family and others won't? I have been told it's a health department ruling but the company has the last decision. We have had no cases in the Hunter for easily a month. And why is one suburb a high-risk area when one just a few kilometres away is not?
My mum has early stage dementia; she keeps asking us why can't we come in. Last week was her 90th birthday; only three of us were allowed to stand outside a window for half an hour and watch her at the afternoon tea they gave her. All she could say is "can't you come in and have a cup of tea?"
All I can say now is I miss you mum and hope to see you soon.
Cheryl Valentisch, Elermore Vale
Virus data is failing to help us
WHEN this coronavirus pandemic started I thought we were in good hands, but now I wonder. That's for several reasons. Being an older and thus more vulnerable citizen, I wonder whether I am now allowed to participate in society or only to vote? There is plenty of news about dismantling old history at the moment but bugger all about what older citizens should or could do.
We are not apparently out of the woods yet, but in my opinion any meaningful or relevant information is totally lacking.
Look at any government COVID-19 statistics and they are all meaningless generalities to our current situation. We need to know all recent daily cases, particularly those pertaining to and including local transmissions and where they are. All the current statistics do is fill the page with data.
I believe it's nothing meaningful but demographic bunk about when it started and how many males and females, etc. The good news, apparently, is that we don't discriminate by breaking them down by race like I understand the US public statistics do.
Still, we're left with almost complete bunkum. We need to know where we are exactly now and how many new cases we have, both from in quarantine and without.
While the Ruby Princess saga languishes in legalese, we would prefer the current and immediate truth. I'm okay with others making the final decisions, but I would like to feel a part of it.
Vic Davies, Tighes Hill
Asylum policy deserves equal rage
THE Tampa election ushered in the politics of fear, demonising refugees; a politics that now threatens us all. On Sunday night, the start of refugee week, I heard Zaki Haidari in conversation with author Zac Quinn. At 17, Mr Haidari had to flee from the Taliban who intended to kill him.
Most of us in Australia expect tomorrow to be much the same as today. We can have expectations, and plan ahead. For Mr Haidari it's different. His temporary protection visa runs out in September. He said "I don't have a future. My life is on a daily basis. I really don't know what will happen. I can't make plans for my life, I can only dream of it".
How can Australia deny permanent residency to someone who fled here for safety, who after three years received the NSW government International Student of the Year award? Such unjust denial has no place in these times. The challenges we are facing across the globe, demand that we either all respond together, or else we will perish. If we deny sanctuary to those who need it now, then tomorrow we will deny it to each other.
Niko Leka, Hunter Asylum Seeker Advocacy convenor
Focus on improving the future
Should statues of Thomas Jefferson, one of the architects of the US Declaration of Independence, be removed because he owned slaves?
Should statues of Winston Churchill, revered for his leadership during World War Two, be toppled because but he held racist views? Should statues of James Cook, a courageous and compassionate sea captain, not be allowed to stand because he claimed the east coast of Australia for Britain?
Going a step further, do we tear up the US Declaration of Independence because its exhortation that all men are created equal is demonstrably untrue? Do we rip up the Old Testament because it condones slavery?
Damaging or tearing down statues, in anger, is virtue signalling and a denial of history. Yes, some statues may be offensive to our First Nations people, but I am sure their priority is addressing issues of health, education and violence in their communities - and being recognised and treated as equals.
I believe those protesters who wish to damage a statue, in anger, should instead devote their time, with a cool head, to agitating for the Uluru Statement from the Heart to be adopted in full and for Aboriginal people to be given a voice in their own destiny, to be empowered. We cannot change history, but we can change the present.
John Ure, Mount Hutton
Desire to share is why we care
IN response to questions raised by Jeff Corbett ('Supercars backlash unfair', Opinion 13/6), we're happy to let Ms Cummings claim a "vastly superior elite rank" to the rest of the people who live in the East End.
Yes, we have been to the Newcastle Show, Knights games and horse racing at Broadmeadow and thoroughly enjoyed it. We're not "rich elites", hopes for a lottery win aside.
We work hard to pay our rates and we need to know why so much is being spent on the race zone. Mr Corbett muses that "Newcastle's inner city is to be shared", and this is absolutely our point.
We believe it is a place for all people to enjoy for all of the year, including the nine weeks that the barricades are in place and the parks are unusable.
As the writer of an opinion column, Mr Corbett is not bound by the normal investigative guidelines of hard news journalism. Yet if you had done your research more thoroughly we believe even you Mr Corbett, as you stayed home and watched it on TV, would know that there were no "hordes that flock into the city" for this event.
This has been evidenced by past Herald articles revealing GIPA documents that showed significant discrepancies in attendance figures.
Let's all have a bit more fair discussion and a little less sensationalism.
Articles such as Mr Corbett's serve only to further divide and separate a community from the truth. The true economic cost (sought under GIPA) of this event - not the economics spouted by Supercars - reveals who actually profits from this race. In our view, it's not Newcastle.
Keran Davis and Cate Turner, Newcastle
SHARE YOUR OPINION
Email letters@newcastleherald.com.au or send a text message to 0427 154 176 (include name, suburb). Letters should be fewer than 200 words and Short Takes fewer than 50 words. Correspondence may be edited and reproduced in any form.
SHORT TAKES
THANK you, Sharon Claydon, for speaking in Parliament against the intended live export from Western Australia of 50,000 sheep to the Middle East. They'd be sailing into the northern summer more than two weeks after the government's regulated cut-off date. It's being challenged in the federal court but the departure date is looming.
Jules Jones, Adamstown
CARL Stevenson (Letters, 13/6), let us talk about the cost of producing electricity with nuclear fuel. The costs over the life of the power station are reported as costing 25 cents per kilowatt hour of power. I think that businesses that are signing up for 15 year renewable power deal contracts for less than 5 cents per kilowatt hour would say no to nuclear power generation as a power supply. It is reported that firm renewable power costs around seven cents per kilowatt hour. My solar system bought many years ago supplies power at nine cents per kilowatt hour for the approximate 30-year life of the system, and since then the cost of solar has gone down. There is a 25-year warranty on the panels.
Agner Sorensen, Teralba
REGARDING updating monuments ('Rights, wrongs and monumental challenges', Opinion 15/6), in Purnell Place is the celebratory 1909 Newcastle Coal Monument. Now is the time to attach to it a plaque stating: "The continued burning of fossil fuels is causing massive destruction to humans, animals, plants, and to the land and ocean. Life is imperilled on our fragile Planet A." (Union of Concerned Scientists)
David Rose, Hamilton
CARL Stevenson (Letters, 13/6) insists that nuclear is the only possible solution to our energy needs, on the basis that solar energy operates only six hours per day. It's a tired, discredited argument which ignores much - for a start, wind generators work whenever there is wind day or night. Then there is the storage factor, with several pumped hydro plants already operating or under construction, and still cheaper than new coal or nuclear. Mr Stevenson asserts our world "works 24 hours a day without rest", the old baseload argument. But in fact most of us are fast asleep while dinosaur off-peak electric water heaters guzzle waste energy from coal generators. Renewable energy is perfectly viable and far less dangerous than toxic nuclear energy. It just requires political will.
Michael Gormly, Islington
PRIME Minister Scott Morrison wants us to focus on what's happening. So let's do that. It's happening that he wants everyone to stay away from protest marches because of the risk of getting the virus. At the same time, he wants state borders reopened so that the tourist industry can be profitable. It seems that the virus will spread only among lots of people close together in certain streets and plazas; those outside Brisbane City Hall or the Town Hall in Sydney, for example, but not by lots of people close together on the main street of, say, Cairns or Coolangatta. What about at the movies, at concerts, plays, sporting matches, in brothels and so on? Those, um, industries are also part of our economy and they too need to be profitable but remain closed. Somebody, please explain.
