AFTER travelling around Australia twice I'm convinced that NSW is the Cinderella state and Newcastle is the Cinderella city. NSW has the most expensive national parks with little infrastructure compared to other less populated states. Even Sydney Harbour National Park lacks proper pathways and public facilities.
Newcastle transport must be the worst of any major city in Australia and has no major arterial roads like Canberra linking the scattered growing suburbs with no real plans for the future.
Cairns, being about one third the size of Newcastle, recently got $174 million to renew its convention centre, which was magnificent when built in 1997. Newcastle Entertainment Centre cost $12 million! Townsville, also a third our size, gets a new $250 million stadium. I can't ever see Newcastle getting the same. Meanwhile Sydney considers demolishing a not too old stadium that cost $800 million.
Newcastle had to beg to get our airport runway upgraded for international standard whilst Townsville and Cairns have had that capacity for so many years. Our airport has no plans for rapid transport connection.
Newcastle and the Hunter New England area with its mining and agriculture bringing in enormous wealth sees its wealth spent on Sydney. It begs for less than $10 million for our art gallery whilst Sydney gets hundreds of millions. Our botanical gardens had to be placed in an area where most people don't even know how to find it and need a car to get there. Older Novocastrians will recall the referendum of years ago which narrowly missed being approved to create our own State called New England, with Armidale as capital and Newcastle the financial centre.
It's time for another referendum so we have our own state with double the population of Tasmania and if we had it now I doubt we would be in our present mess.
Darryl Stevenson, Coal Point
Fury over baths change runs deep
OUTRAGED, disempowered? It is difficult to adequately represent my response to City of Newcastle backflip on the refurbishment of the iconic ocean baths, ("Plan confirmed for ocean baths refurb", Newcastle Herald 25/8). No explanation, beyond a caption to a new diagram showing the "confirmed" concrete capping over the bottom.
After months of community consultation and final agreements, we are now informed that the original sandy rock bottom will be concreted. This was one of the key points of difference the community wanted to preserve. The council seems intent on obliterating such points of uniqueness in our city. The caption notifies this change based on safety concerns. I believe there's no evidence over the past 100 years that the sandy rock platform is a safety hazard, and that it is council code for cost savings and ease of maintenance. In my opinion safety issues have arisen from decades of council neglect and minimal maintenance.
As a year-round user of the Newcastle Ocean Baths, I wonder whether those making these "generational investments" have ever actually been there? Are they aware of the variety of different users; swimmers, pool-walkers, exercising, those recovering from injury? A key feature is the different pool depths. I am so weary of this council's tick-the-box form of community consultation, then reverting to their primary intention. I'm worn out with accumulating examples of their disregard for the community they are supposed to represent.
There is one forum, however, where they have no such control: bring on December 2021 local council elections.
Bronwyn Agnew, Newcastle East
Walk a mile in premier's shoes
I READ recently somebody calling for Gladys to resign. Hands up all those who would like to take over. I said hands up all those that would like to take over right now. Anybody? No? What about one of you journalists out there, you seem to have all the answers? No, nobody? Well how about hands up all those that would like to be NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant right now. Anybody? No?
I also read somebody was asking where the NSW Opposition Leader was as well, that he appears to be missing in action. What do you expect? The last place the Labor party - or any party for that matter - wants to be right now is in power. No doubt Mr Minns would be petrified to take the reins right now or in the near future I would expect. Avoiding it like the plague, one might say.
James Wilson, Wangi Wangi
Don't marry us to ring of steel
GAIL Hennessy, (Short Takes, 23/8) and Adz Carter, (Letters, 23/8), praised the Andrews government's lockdown strategy with their ring of steel and hard, fast, and early policy. But was it that successful?
Victoria had 820 deaths, from the less infectious Alpha variant, which is 83 per cent of all COVID deaths in Australia. The ring of steel around Melbourne didn't stop Mr Andrews from locking down the whole state, was difficult to enforce and unpopular with police and it still leaked cases into regional Victoria. How was that good?
The disaster Mr Carter complains of, that a large percentage of NSW is dealing with is the lockdown itself not deaths. 80 per cent of the NSW cases are in LGAs in southwestern Sydney. The rest of the state has very few cases per LGA but still must endure a severe lockdown. There is no scientific evidence that I have seen that shows that lockdowns work. Lockdowns are a political stunt by state premiers using the politics of fear to improve their personal electoral popularity.
Peter Devey, Merewether
COVID climate warms us to action
NOT wishing to belittle the COVID crisis, but I can't help but see parallels between COVID and climate change.
Both are global issues but they need to be attacked both at the global and local level to return to or maintain our usual activities and comforts. Delaying action has detrimental consequences. With the sudden appearance of COVID in 2019, delayed action to immunise a majority of the Australian population has allowed a new and more virulent strain to take hold.
Climate change by contrast is a slowly unfolding impact over decades so the threat has been disguised, but the threats to water and food security, human health and infrastructure are ever escalating as was witnessed with unprecedented heat waves, floods and fires throughout the world.
Have we forgotten the fires of 2019 and 2020 that ravaged so much of eastern Australia? The evidence is here and the solutions are here, as they were for COVID and as they are for climate change.
COVID will not go away and adjustments to activities will continue beyond its containment. Adjustments for climate change are long lasting and it is not just about reducing our carbon footprint but also preparing for adjustments to farming systems, national, community and personal infrastructure to accommodate the changing climate.
Let's not continue to kick the can down the road; a 2050 target doesn't mean we start acting in 2049 but adjustments need to begin now.
Patricia Murray, Wagga Wagga
SHORT TAKES
I AM yet to read anywhere how much Costco was fined for activities at Boolaroo last week, which likely will help extend lockdown for Greater Newcastle if we go by Mr Barilaro's stance of 14 days without an infection. To quote Dr Durrheim, 'This was clearly a high-transmission setting, a cool indoor environment that was crowded, and unfortunately with multiple people up from Greater Sydney'. Is it an essential service? Were people buying food or essential items? Why was it crowded? How did folks from locked-down Sydney manage to get approval to travel to Newcastle? Lots of questions yet to be answered.
Kate Rabbitt, Newcastle
RICHARD Ryan, (Short Takes, 21/8), writes "the shame of it all" about Australia following the USA. How good is your memory Richard? May 1942, the Battle of the Coral Sea; without the USA Navy we would have been invaded by Japan. Read our history. USA lost many men and ships protecting Australia. We owe them plenty.
Don Fraser, Belmont North
AS I watched the Taliban roll into Kabul in Humvees, it brought back memories of the Viet Cong crashing through the gates of the US compound in Saigon in American tanks. Did they learn nothing from Vietnam and Iraq? They have just armed another gang of bullies. Well done!
Mick Miller, Salamander Bay
I AM deeply saddened by the story written by Josh Leeson ("Sweating it Out", Weekender 21/8) stating that if he was to go for his exercise walk around Windale he might get bashed. As a former and proud resident of Windale, how dare he single out an already-criticised community? A few bad apples do not spoil an orchard. Stick to Lambton Park and tighten your mask.
Julie Lorimer, Gloucester
I FIND it so wrong that Newcastle is having fire-fighters from Sydney hotspots working here in local fire stations ('Hunter shifts covered by Sydney firefighters', Newcastle Herald 19/8). What is wrong with the powers to be in NSW Fire Rescue? Why didn't the Minister for Emergency Services answer the questions asked by journalist Nick Bielby? Too much tap dancing by these people. End this madness now. The capability is in the Hunter to have local firies do it but no, let's bring in someone external that could potentially have COVID! Not happy Minister Elliott, not happy.
Dan Connors, Newcastle West
TODAY we read in the Newcastle Herald that nothing can be done to stop Sydney workers from travelling from the hot spots in the Sydney regions up to the Lake Macquarie and Newcastle areas, if that is the case then why, oh why are our shops all shut and why are we in a lockdown mode. Seems we are being given the rough end of the pineapple once again.
