Its responsibility is to residents and ratepayers and to the protection of the heritage significance of the site.

There has been intense community outcry against the Big Box proposal.

If a Big Box goes ahead, Bega will loose the wetland environmental amenity and the rich historic significance of the Spenco site.

Given current economic conditions the Big Box proposal is likely to result in the site being speculatively flattened and then left for several years before being sold on.

A clever council leads development based on best practise planning.

Council, in seeking the immediate rezoning of the site to residential, would receive Department of Planning support.

At a major public meeting held in the Town Hall to discuss reshaping the town centre, senior representatives of that Department guaranteed that the Bega community and good planning would not be sold short to commercial interests.

A way will exist for council to politely decline the Big Box DA and suggest to the developer that a residential DA that protects heritage values will receive favourable attention.

Colin Sagar

Bega

The Environment Network

Grateful thanks

On June 15 this year I suffered a heart attack.

I would sincerely like to thank the girls at the Swift Health and

Fitness Gym for their help.

Also a huge thank you to the Merimbula Ambu-lance Crew who were in Bega at the time (lucky for me) for literally saving my life.

And to the staff on the night and morning shift at Bega Hospital for the

great care that was provided to me.

Lastly to the Southcoast Air Service for getting me to Canberra without

any problems.

To all concerned a very big thank you from myself and my husband David.

Heather Haskett

Merimbula

Letter to

Mike Kelly

Dear Mr Kelly

I urge you to vote against the ETS bill in parliament.

For many of your constituents, the passage of this bill could spell financial ruin which would flow on to the entire district.

I am aware that you will be under pressure to vote with the party line, but your first obligation is to your constituents.

For them, as for most people in rural districts, this bill spells disaster.

Elements of the bill relating to farmers are entirely unjust anyway.

All agricultural pursuits are carbon neutral except for the use of previously sequestered carbon - that is, oils and other forms of non-renewable energy.

Apart from that, farm practices such as grazing cattle are a simple cycle of harvesting carbon from the atmosphere (by growing crops/grasses) and then re-releasing it to the atmosphere (methane from cows etc) forming a closed cycle.

No new carbon is produced, it is entirely recycled.

I urge you to check this assertion with a non-politically motivated scientist.

Twenty years ago no one would have believed that we would ever have to pay to use water that landed on our properties.

That is now the case - it is no longer legal to capture rain in a dam and use it for irrigation.

This was supposed to alleviate Australia’s chronic water shortage.

Have you noticed an improvement in water availability since the introduction of that measure?

Now the Rudd government plans to do the same with pollution.

Taxing pollution won’t make it go away, any more than taxing water made it rain any harder.

Please advise us how you plan to vote on the ETS bill.

Paul Scherek

Tantawangalo

Ro ad problems

The recent upgrade and re-alignment of a small section of Towamba Road left the roadway in the creek.

They thought we would not notice.

The second re-alignment also ended up in the creek; it fell in, well done.

Meanwhile at the other end of the same job, we drive into a bog hole (single lane) which is going to cost $70,000 to repair or more.

It’s only one week into the new budget and (we’re) behind already.

Please when you are writing to council please refrain from using words like f*** wit, f***wits, moron or morons and use only “you’re not really up to the job are you”.

Jeff Knight

Towamba

Email

comments

Well, Mr Kelty has finally come out and admitted the reason the AFP didn’t wait for their investigation to be completed prior to releasing premature findings to the alleged “fake” email, was to protect the Rudd government.

Mr Kelty said the decision to reveal that the email was a fake was made in the public interest to prevent undue speculation about the Federal Government.

Of course this admission of blatant bias toward the Rudd government raises more questions than answers.

Why wasn’t Mr Kelty so forthcoming regarding the blowing up of the refugee boat?

Why did he wait until parliament rose for the winter break to issue this statement?

Why hasn’t he issued a statement clearing the PM of any wrongdoing as he clearly has regarding Mr Turnbull?

One has to wonder whether or not the email was in fact genuine, and was part of an elaborate plan to entrap a mole within the office of Treasury.

Tom Griffin

Pambula