Edition 86 • 10-04-2025
STICK WITH LABOR ‘WE BUILD’!
With an election coming up, and despite our minor problems & squabbles, Iam so lucky & proud to be an Aussie and live in this wonderful country. Watching our Prime Minister driving in a 2 car white sedan motorcade to government house, in comparison to the American President Felon 47, driving in 10 black bullet proof SUV’s resplendid with CIA and FBI , & hovering helicopters, simply to take him from New York or Washington DC, to his favourite golf course! Please remember when you vote, support this government that has given us Medicare, higher wages, lower taxes, cheaper childcare, etc, in comparison to the economic mess they inherited including ‘Robodebt’! Peter Dutton wants to follow Trump’s playbook, sack workers, increase taxes, meddle with our healthcare, lumber us with dangerous, expensive nuclear power stations, roll back environmental restrictions, just to mention a few, all supported by his billionaire sponsors! Please be careful what you vote for, don’t destroy our democracy!
Z.KOENIGSEDER
Bellingen Swimming Pool
The problems at Bellingen pool have been serious in 2024/2025.
They have acute staff shortages due to paying only $25 an hour and also staff have to pay $500 for their specialist training. The result has been that the pool is only open limited hours which vary without notice.
Many people have given up. Bellingen Pool was built with money raised by the community. It is a lovely 25m pool which caters for everyone. Swimming is the perfect delicious exercise for every age – not just the young, but it is very important that all children learn to swim.
Ideally the pool should be solar heated in the winter so that the season can be extended.
It is to be hoped that Bellingen Council can take over the management of the pool and run it properly – and not leave it to private enterprise to try to make money out of it.
Jann Simmonds
Bellingen
The Election – a slow start
The election campaign so far has done little to encourage our attention. Mr Albanese more or less offered a direct bribe to vote Labor via the budget’s tax cut offer, then adopted the policy of not doing or saying anything which might frighten the horses. Meanwhile the opposition leader has been reminding people that he is Peter Dutton. In quick succession he made contributions which unkind observers could interpret as homophobic (calling the PM “limp wristed”), dishonest (alleged insider trading), unethical (numerous times in the train wreck interview with Kyle & Jackie O) and deluded (doubling down on fossil fuels).
Meanwhile at a local level, our member for Cowper Mr Conahan has broken cover via an email on the government’s budget which could be described as quite negative. In short order he was against the ALP in general, public servants, potholes, tax cuts and more. Emotive terms such as “slashes”, “burden”, “struggling” and “frustration” abounded. The only positive he could find was for the coalition’s energy policy, promising “clean and efficient” nuclear energy (provided of course they can find somewhere to store the resulting waste for the next 20 or 30 thousand years).
His opponent Caz Heise doesn’t have this problem. Her campaign is relentlessly upbeat, with earnest locals promoting the message that Caz “listens, cares and knows how to get things done.” The only thing I could identify that she was against was cancer – perhaps this was a dig at the coalition’s energy policy.
The upshot of all this is that the unthinkable could happen – latest polling shows Cowper may ditch the Nationals. Stay tuned readers, something interesting might happen and you’d hate to miss it.
Michael Trist