Climate change risk
I bring readers attention to the interactive map published by the climatecouncil.org.au which shows estimated risks to different towns in the Shoalhaven in 2030 2050 and 2100 from climate change.It is a very sobering read.
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Regards
Bil Woinarski
Damning health reports
Tabled 05/05/2022. The Portfolio Committee No. 2 - Health outcomes and access to health and hospital services in rural, regional and remote New South Wales..
The Regional Health Minister is proceeding without developing the rural health plan. He's not undertaken and published an informed and comprehensive evaluation of NSW Rural Health Plan: Towards 2021.
There is a culture of fear in relation to employees speaking out and raising concerns..
Develop and fund a plan to eliminate bullying and harassment.
Compared to their metropolitan counterparts, rural, regional and remote residents have poorer health outcomes, inferior access to health and hospital services. And they face significant financial challenges in accessing services that do not always accord with community need.
That is not acceptable.
The NSW Government reimburse public servants at a rate of 72 cents per kilometre for travel, while Isolated Patients Travel and Accommodation Assistance Scheme pay 22 cents per kilometre.
The reimbursement rates for accommodation are also inadequate and need to be revised.In 2008, Peter Garling SC found.
Demographic changes mean they built the hospitals where the population no longer live.
Resolve each hospital, having regard to its location within an appropriate distance measured by time or distance, and, on a long-term basis, the size of the population it services.
A new culture needs to take root, where patient's needs are the paramount central concern of the system, and not the convenience of the clinicians and administrators.
Bill Hancock
Litter on our roads
Back in early 2020, just before COVID-19 reached our shores, I met a surfer from Peru. He said he owned a surf shop there.
He spoke repeatedly about the cleanliness of our sand and our water, our unspoiled coastal environment.
I thought that, as a visiting tourist-surfer, he was trying to be over-polite.
I replied that he must enjoy just as beautiful conditions along the mountainous coast-line of South America. He then explained that we had public garbage bins that were emptied weekly and public toilets that were cleaned daily.
In Peru there were no such facilities. In Peru litter lay wherever it was dropped. Plastic was everywhere. Litter was never cleaned up, it simply accumulated. People defecated wherever they thought they'd found a private spot.
He went on to say that paying taxes in Peru was despised as the revenues seemed to go astray. Public money was steered into pork-barreling schemes purely for the promotion of those in power. Bribes and graft further eroded the pool of public funds. There was insufficient left over for basic services. The result was that his coastline resembled a smelly garbage-tip.
As I drove home I pondered at length on the troubled words he'd shared with me. I then began to notice the litter that adorned our own roads. The more I drove this route, the more I noticed it. I finally decided to do something about it.
David Hopkins
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