A small group of individuals, grandly calling themselves Sport Aviation Australia, will seek to make a small fortune at the expense of thousands of Bega Valley residents whose lives will be devastated.  

Mental health issues and severe depression will be a direct result of this activity, with take-off and landing occurring every 2-3 minutes and the constant whining noise overhead  driving people to despair.

Night shift workers who make a significant contribution to the economy and wellbeing of the region, such as hospital staff and Bega Cheese employees, will struggle to sleep during the daylight hours as the proposed training school will run between 7am to 6pm, seven days a week.

Residents will see their property values diminish drastically due to this development, perhaps to a point of owing more to the bank than the property could be sold for, and that assumes someone would be willing to even buy it.

Imagine the young families, it is hard enough to be a mother with a small child let alone with that racket going on all day and trying to form some sort of routine. Behavioural issues would also escalate.

To add insult to injury every time you walk outside and see a training aircraft residents would be reminded of the reason they are in such dire straits.

I seriously fear for the lives of people living specifically within the Frogs Hollow area as they will feel they have been pushed in to a corner with nowhere to go.

If Sports Aviation Australia thinks the residents are going to sit back and quietly allow this development to ruin the lives of thousands of people it had better think again.  

The battle to stop this abominable development has only just begun.

The tortured image of Jacqui Lambie announcing her departure from the Senate seemed to me to dangle somewhere between Joan of Arc and  Mother Theresa.

For my own part, I couldn’t possibly judge Lambie, simply because I don’t know her and haven’t walked a mile in her shoes.

Having said that, it was apparent from the outset that, like most of her political colleagues, she was only too ready to embrace the self-serving theatre that is the sum of our federal parliament and it was that behaviour alone that gave rise to my doubts about her authenticity.

When I reflect on earlier generations, including the generation of Australians who experienced real and genuine hardship through the great depression, they did not try to use that experience to somehow make something of themselves in the eyes of others: no, they just accepted the reality and got on with doing something to try to change it.

I mean no disrespect to Lambie, but I am uneasy about those who these days too readily paint themselves as victim and I wonder about their motives – be it the pretty young thing pretending to be a cancer victim, a petty criminal attempting to justify their behaviour because of their upbringing, the university student attempting to justify their plagiarism on the basis that everyone does it, the sports cheat caught doing “whatever it takes”, the child abuser whose excuse is their own alleged abuse or members of the privileged elite, including too many politicians, who routinely attempt to justify their great crimes by claiming they “can’t recall”, they’re just ”misunderstood” or “someone is out to get them” … everyone, from the lowest sewer rat to the grandest of kings seems to have an excuse; someone to blame and it’s never themselves.