Moving them to fill resource shortages and staffing gaps at the South East Regional Hospital Emergency department Bega is shameful and disrespectful to our local communities. To perform this act of centralisation and at the oncoming holiday times with a massive surge of visitors seems to be totally illogical.

By not replacing medical doctors and nursing staff at South East Regional Hospital, Pambula District Hospital will have to carry the burden. Also, the overloading and pressure at the emergency department of South East Regional Hospital may cause unfortunately the loss of lives.

Let's hope that an urgent sense of reality prevails by keeping the nurse practitioners at Pambula District Hospital where they are badly needed.

I heard of the closure of Stitches and Prints as I was selling merchandise and raffle tickets for the Old Bega Hospital Regional Community Cultural Centre. OBH merchandise, mainly T-Shirts, for the last 25 years, has been logo printed by the wonderful team from Stitches and Prints. Never a worry with orders, always a perfect print job and handed over with smiles and waves. Community helping community!

I didn't believe what I was told. Stitches and Prints has been going for 35 years. Why would such a successful social enterprise be closing? And by Christmas? Of course business would have been a bit quiet over the last three years - like all businesses in our region, and elsewhere.

But Stitches and Prints is no ordinary business - it is no ordinary workplace. It is an inspiration because it provides paid employment of a meaningful kind to people whose abilities need extra guidance to be engaged, honed and developed. It provides a safe, inclusive workplace where workers are supported to "live, work, play, grow." (Tulgeen's mission statement)

The Stitches and Prints enterprise has expanded, adapted and trained many people over its 35 years. Surely we have the expertise and commitment among the new CEO, board and community, to allow this enterprise to continue. Or is it just another example of market economy principles dictating a management system which is alien to the concept of a social enterprise? All of us deserve a workplace where we feel safe, not a workplace where someone else determines we will be safe.

An international Indigenous NRL star said that changing one word in the National Anthem won't change anything. What will changing the name of Ben Boyd National Park achieve? Seems like double standards to me.

It seems multi-million dollar gifts from taxpayers to the logging industry are so common these days they barely rate as news. Earlier this week the federal government announced Eden will "benefit" from a $9million program to establish a "regional forestry hub." This is just the latest in an avalanche of grants to the logging industry in the past few years. Your guess is as good as mine about what exactly a "forestry hub" is.

But since the Pentarch group has a monopoly on all logs taken from state forests in the Eden region, the grant is, effectively, yet another grant to the chipmill owners.

With 80 per cent of the South Coast State Forest available for logging burnt in the Black Summer bushfires and logging yields down to 30 per cent of volumes specified in Wood Supply Agreements, this is no time to be throwing more taxpayer money at this pariah industry.

While the Australian Government has made it very clear that the recent COP26 Declaration on Deforestation will not affect native forest logging here, the declaration surely sends a clear message about what the international community expects from a responsible government.

Governments and the industry should be using this time to allow the forests to recover. They should develop a plan to transition out of native forests to 100 per cent plantation sourced wood as two states have already done. Our forests are worth vastly more as carbon stores and habitat for struggling wildlife.

I am writing to express my grave concerns of the amount of adverse effects from the vaccine happening in our region. The other day I read about a local having experienced recovering after COVID. Well, we have had far more serious adverse effects from the vaccine that no-one seems to acknowledge, even the hospital staff.

My friend is in hospital with a life threatening adverse effect from her second jab. She had a bad reaction after the first but this one is far more serious and no-one is admitting that four hours after the jab she is in hospital suffering an adverse reaction.

I'm also sick of this community dobbing in our local businesses. The fully vaxxed are spreaders and can still contract the virus. We know these vaccines are in trial. And they are not effective.

Our region at the moment is COVID-free. So when all the visitors go home and we have COVID (hopefully not) who will be blamed? Please start reporting some facts and real stories from both sides. Thank you for the opportunity to voice my concerns.