Guile should avoid bile
Councillor Guile is big on bile but short on facts. Again.
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For 21 years I did run a sall business in Mosman. It provided a modest income and enabled my husband and I to purchase our first home in the Shoalhaven 17 years ago. Like many families in our area, we then commuted, in order to pay the mortgage.
Worse, Cr Guile completely misses the point about housing ownership in the Shoalhaven. The 2011 Census shows that 13,634 houses in the Shoalhaven are unoccupied. That’s about one in four Shoalhaven houses not rented but empty.
Another fact for Cr Guile to think about – council property data shows almost 93 per cent of these empty houses are owned by people who do not live in the Shoalhaven. These are the holiday rentals and holiday homes.
I invite all your readers to think about our community. Can we allow our roads and road safety to get worse? Who loses when the library, community centre or swimming pool disappears for lack of money? Why not have cycleways that keeps safe and healthy?
More importantly, some communities do not even have sewerage as Cr Guile is well aware. The loan fund is used up for the next three years. Should they just wait?
Mayor Findley is running a transparent debate, allowing residents and ratepayers to voice their concerns and to ask questions. Yes, Cr Cheyne and I are thinking deeply about this decision. Cr Guile hasn’t really helped.
K. Gartner, Ward 3 councillor
No excuses whatsoever
National Emergency? Or National Disgrace?
On average, at least one woman a week is killed by a partner or former partner in Australia. One in three Australian women has experienced physical violence, since the age of 15.
One in five Australian women has experienced sexual violence.
These rates are rising every year.
This is totally unacceptable.
Isn't it about time we started to get angry about this issue? Are you happy with your daughters, your mothers and your sisters facing this horrifying statistic in their future? No?
R. Cameron, Milton
Cuts hurt frail elderly
At a time of increasing demand for residential aged care services, the Turnbull government is stripping $1.8 billion from the aged care budget.
These budget cuts unfairly target services to the frailest older Australians, suffering from chronic pain, degenerative disease, severe arthritis and complex wounds.
Across Australia, providers who employ health professionals under current funding arrangements are now finding it difficult to maintain their staffing levels into the future given the impending cuts to funding. As such, these unacceptable funding cuts are jeopardising the delivery of high quality aged care.
The planned cuts come at a time when the government is reviewing both the impact of aged care sector reforms, and the tool that is currently used in residential aged care facilities to allocate funding aligned to the specific care needs of each resident. These reviews will no doubt herald significant changes for aged care funding. So it does not make sense to start making ad hoc changes to aged care funding mechanisms now while these reviews are underway.
Leading Age Services Australia (LASA), the voice of aged care, actively opposes the implementation of these recent funding cuts and the justifications to cut more than $3 billion from age care funding over the last three years.
The industry is crying out for policy and funding stability. LASA urges the government to put a stop to aged care cuts and work with the sector to develop a sustainable funding strategy.