Stark comparison
I am a 45-year-old mother of four and I have had to spend a great deal of time in Bega Hospital over the last four years.
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Most recently I arrived by ambulance in Emergency in a critical condition. The way the staff flew into action to diagnose and treat could not have been faster if it were a city hospital. Within hours they had me on a ventilator, in an induced coma and on the helicopter to Canberra. I spent two weeks on life support in Canberra, then another week on the wards before returning to Bega.
Sadly the comparison of the workload of Canberra nurses to Bega nurses was stark. Bega is so under-staffed. The nurses are being burnt out. They are not able to give the care they want to give.
I witnessed one nurse on night shift in tears because she had so many needy patients that she could not satisfy.
Where is the funding for this new hospital? Do we have to lose all our wonderful nurses before the government intervenes?
Cindy Peterson, Bega
Imaginative solutions
Elvie Preo (Letters, 10/2) is spot on. We should – indeed must – be examining imaginative solutions to provide affordable housing to those living in or wishing to move to the local area.
Council should be leading the way by organising a forum at which a whole range of new solutions to providing this most-basic living need can at the very least be discussed. And council should come to this forum with a willingness to itself be more imaginative, more flexible, more realistic than it currently seems to be!
The Bega Shire could (and I suggest should) show the rest of Australia how our community has effectively tackled the problem of affordable housing and, in so doing, significantly benefitting from the actions it will have implemented.
Unlike Sydney or some other capital cities, we have no shortage of suitable and quite affordable land for housing. We can therefore dare to be a little forward-thinking, a little imaginative, a little creative, a little bold about tackling the existing housing challenges. I wonder how many Bega Shire councillors will support this suggestion to at least seriously discuss the possibilities.
Peter Lacey, Quaama
Abalone anger
We regularly see stories that get people’s hackles up, but not since the charcoal plant have I heard the public so infuriated about an issue – the story on the major abalone bust in Sydney.
Do John Brierley and Andrew Nye really expect the general public to buy that rubbish? This bloke has more than 3000 abalone, some undersized, with apparently no legal right to be trading in them and, now he’s been caught, supporters are playing the race card.
Most people these days recognise cultural heritage and accept the past and it’s only the system that holds up further progress, but this stuff just widens the gap again. I dive and there are regulations we all abide by simply to protect the environment itself.
If traditional owners say they have the right because their forefathers were here first and yet we can’t, then is that not racism in itself? To call this bloke a martyr is an insult, as he is just another environmental vandal.
To say they should be able to take whatever they like is another insult to the environment. Mr Brierley states that his people are living in poverty and have bills to pay – so have all the broader community who get up every day and work their butts off, while others reap the benefits.
He states it’s ecologically sustainable to continue these practices. Where does that information come from? He also states that they will take this to the High Court. Who will pay for that? The wider community is sick to death of cultures hiding behind the race card every time it suits them.
You can’t go forward if you keep looking back.