Please explain
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I'm appalled!
Despite clear evidence of a majority public opinion against the Bermagui Woolworths project, five Bega Valley Shire councillors have apparently chosen to ignore the basic tenets of democracy by voting for its approval.
They owe their electorate an immediate explanation.
Ian McFarlane
Wallaga Lake
Fortitude test failed
Last Wednesday the Woolworths Bermagui development application was a test of fortitude for the Bega Valley Shire Council.
With five strong reasons to reject the DA, hope for a show of strength against big corporate muscle was high not only in Bermagui, but across the shire.
Sadly that hope was dashed in one of the council’s first big tests of commitment to preserving small town values.
The council choked, 5-4, and approved this potentially devastating predatory development.
At least one of the newly elected councillors giving a big tick to Woolworths is on record campaigning in last year’s election against big business riding over community wishes.
However, flying in the face of what we now assume was mere campaign rhetoric, the councillor approved a development that will permanently scar Bermagui, its small businesses and the wilderness coast.
Most damning of all, should the Bermagui community appeal the approval in the Land and Environment Court – and it has strong grounds – the approving councillors, Fitzpatrick, Britten, Tapscott and Mayor Taylor, will be judged as having preferred the prospect of a fist fight with their own community rather than standing up to a profit-driven schoolyard bully.
In my books that’s a pretty weak act.
However, congratulations must go to Kristy McBain, Liz Seckold, Ann Mawhinney and the Greens’ Keith Hughes for having the courage and ethical fortitude to place real community values before single-minded corporate greed and for attempting to preserve a human-scale for the Far South Coast.
Jamie Shaw
Tathra
Outstanding care
To the CEO of the Bega District Hospital,
I have just had to stay in your hospital for a week.
When (if) you move to your new hospital I propose making an offer to buy the old one and run it as a theme park – “Florence Nightingale World”.
How you and your troops managed to provide such high professional and humane care in such a distressed building is a mystery to me.
Many thanks.
Yours healthily,
Graham Greenwood
Kalaru
Notice apology
Two weeks ago we placed a funeral notice in your paper as an invitation for people to join us during our Easter program.
Our program included a Good Friday reflection, a time on Easter Saturday night where we tried to recreate and understand the despair of the disciples after Jesus died, and we followed this with a great celebration of His resurrection on Sunday morning.
With great regret, we understand that we have offended some by placing the notice for our Saturday night activity in your funeral section.
It wasn’t our intent to offend, but, having read Mr Dalwood’s letter (BDN, 9/4), we realise our error and sincerely apologise.
Pastor Pete Kidby
Pambula Baptist Church
Ill-informed
I am writing on behalf of all the ignorant "bogans" who actually care very much about our native forests to comment on the letter from Diana Gillies (BDN, 9/4).
Ms Gillies continues her annual rant against the evils of fuel reduction burning (FRB).
Her views on this practice are still ill-informed and this time she appears to dismiss 10,000 to 40,000-plus years of fire management by "our first inhabitants".
A read of Professor Bill Gammage's book The Biggest Estate on Earth might help broaden her view on this topic.
In pre-European times when the fire fighting resources of today did not exist, lightning strikes started fires that burnt in any season, when there was sufficient fuel and when the fuel was dry enough to burn.
So even without the use of fire by Aboriginal land managers, fire would have had a significant influence on the evolution of the native vegetation and associated fauna and their adaptation to regular fires.
Ms Gillies is determined to turn the volunteer and professional fire fighters, who protect those forests and fauna every summer, into lab rats in her green fire policy experiment.
This shows a lack of care for the humans, birds, animals and reptiles that must face the ravages of wildfires, while Ms Gillies pontificates from her armchair.
Her ongoing denial of the benefits of fuel reduction burning show an ignorance of what it can do for the protection of human life and property and more importantly, the lives of birds, animals and reptiles that can't "live in cities or miles away from the bush".
Anyone who flew over the devastated forests near Melbourne after the 2009 fires would have observed some areas of forest that had trees with green, rather than scorched or blackened crowns.
The areas of forest had burned, but at a much lower intensity than the surrounding forest, due to the low litter levels left after FRBs.
These lower intensity fires gave wildlife in these areas a chance to survive, while millions of birds, animals and reptiles in the forests with high fuel loads were incinerated or left to die agonising deaths.
Ms Gillies’ plea to "give thought also to the thousands of living organisms, deliberately, unnecessarily killed, and all creature affected by that loss" would be laughable, if the consequences of her advice were not so potentially devastating for the very ecosystems she claims to want to protect.
Whenever I see a fuel reduction burn, I think of the millions of organisms that will be given a much better chance of survival, as responsible land managers continue to respect the way that Australia's aboriginal communities managed fire in the Australian bush before the armchair experts began to preach a European approach to fire management in Australian forests.
Peter Rutherford
Merimbula
Other priorities
Sorry Bill, I got caught up absorbing the recent data coming out of the Climate Commission that indicates, among other things, "climate change is already increasing the intensity and frequency of many extreme weather events, adversely affecting Australians".
And "climate change is making many extreme events worse in terms of their impacts on people, property, communities and the environment".
And even "the climate system has shifted, and is continuing to shift, changing the conditions for all weather, including extreme weather events".
So, I haven't got around to addressing your request that I apologise for suggesting you'd mislead me.
Sorry.
Now, I understand that you have a significant academic qualification and I'm going to presume (let me know if I'm wrong) that you understand the concepts of peer-reviewed science, empirical facts and “straw man” arguments (misrepresenting someone's argument to make it easier to attack).
Paul Collins, the author of the book you suggested I read, presumably (again, let me know if I'm wrong here) because you were suggesting it supported your claims against climate change and increased bushfire risks, wrote to this paper absolutely contradicting your reading of his work.
Which gets us back to - you guessed it - you were misleading me!
And before you get all huffy again, you did call me a knee-jerking climate change fantasist not that long ago.
And I took that on the chin.
If you want to read the full report from the Australian Government's Climate Commission, it's available here: climatecommission.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/Extreme-Report-Key-Facts.pdf.
Jo Dodds
Bega