CONGRATULATIONS to Danny Buderus for his new role in coaching. He did well in his fill-in coaching role in past times. I would also like to see Kurt Gidley in some coaching role. He also has a lot to offer. Well done Knights. Finally a good coaching move.
THERE’S something profoundly unsettling about watching the world applaud a firefighter who spent months pouring petrol on the flames. Donald Trump’s so-called peace settlement in Gaza arrives wrapped in the language of humanitarian triumph, yet the script feels uncomfortably familiar; a bully finally calling off his attack, not from conscience, but because the cameras have turned his way.
For two years, American-made munitions fell like rain over Gaza. Precision-guided weapons, artillery shells, fighter jets all stamped with the seal of approval from the very administration now accepting praise for brokering peace. It’s a peculiar kind of courage that stops supplying weapons only after the devastation has been wrought, after the world has grown tired of counting the dead.
Real leadership would have cut the supply lines months ago. Real courage doesn’t wait for political theatre.
Trump has already sketched his vision for Gaza’s future, a glittering “Riviera of the Middle East”. When someone tells you their plans, believe them. This isn’t about Palestinian children sleeping safely in their beds. This is about beachfront development opportunities and strategic positioning, about transforming tragedy into profit margin.
We’re conditioned not to question when powerful figures perform acts of apparent kindness. But some deeds demand scrutiny. Some rescues are staged by the very person who tied the victim to the tracks. History will remember not just who brokered the peace, but who profited from war.
IN response to Graham Baker, life member of Newcastle Basketball (“Basketball plan evolved in face of cheap shots”, Letters, 11/10): did Mr Baker read the amended submission for the proposed Hunter Indoor Sports Centre carefully?
There is no practical road access to the proposed site on Turton Road. In my submission, I identified five serious accidents in the past decade involving long trucks and buses turning at intersections, all resulting in fatalities. Similar risks exist for vehicles entering and exiting this site. Sadly, further tragedies seem inevitable.
Turton Road will be choked with traffic, surrounding council roads will deteriorate, and residents’ lives will be severely disrupted. Moving the building back 20 metres won’t fix the flooding, and the ongoing parking shortage, along with the lack of funds for construction, remains conveniently overlooked in Mr Baker’s letter.
The existing courts have been neglected for years, and the site selections have been, frankly, a complete debacle. So, Mr Baker, stop blaming the lord mayor or council – it’s not their role to identify alternative sites or provide planning fixes. The basketball hierarchy needs to take a long, hard look at its own management failures.
NEWCASTLE ratepayers deserve far better than silence over a $130,000 “study leave” granted to the city’s highest-paid official (“Ministers questioned over council chief’s extended study leave”, Herald 8/10). Thirteen weeks of paid absence to complete short overseas courses – approved without a council resolution – shows a disturbing failure of oversight. That neither the council nor the responsible ministers will provide straight answers only deepens public mistrust.
This isn’t a complex issue: either the leave was correctly approved or it wasn’t. Hiding behind process and “potential investigations” insults the community that funds these salaries. Accountability in local government must be more than a slogan. Newcastle residents have every right to demand a full explanation – and consequences if the proper process was ignored.
IT is rather myopic of Graeme Kime (“PM isn’t the only one with passport”, Letters, 3/10), and Ian King (“We are headed down wrong path”, Letters, 9/10), and boomer bashers generally, to blame the current government for the situation in which our country finds itself. You are living in John Howard’s Australia.
Howard government policies have been grinding away for 30 years. How long has the wealth gap been ever widening? How long has affordability been decreasing? How long has homelessness and poverty been increasing? How long have many corporations paid little to zero tax while wage and salary earners pay more than their fair share of tax in many forms? Do some comparative dating and the answer to those questions can be found. Successive governments, whether Labor or Liberal, have lacked the courage, or possibly intelligence, to take real remedial action. I wonder whether those people complaining voted for Howard?
Spring has sprung, the birds have sung, and love is in the air. Isn’t this a wonderful time of the year? Brightly-coloured flowers, clear blue skies, nice sunny days, people out and about enjoying themselves walking and riding, that lovely smell of freshly-mown grass and of course, what can beat the traditional Aussie BBQ? How lucky we are to live where we do.
WELL, Julie Robinson (“Hope for peace can’t outweigh track records”, Letters, 14/10), you say Trump and Netanyahu are two bad men who have only ever done what’s good for them. On this occasion, they have done what’s good for many other people, not least of all the hostages. And on a sliding scale of “bad men” in world affairs, they don’t even come close to rock bottom.
ABSOLUTELY brilliant piece by Cian Hussey (“Hunter shaping as a bleak test case for net-zero future”, Opinion, 9/10), exposing all the ‘smoke and mirrors’ of net-zero targets and their current and future accomplishments stated by Labor and its cronies. Just as Chris Uhlmann did on his TV doco. At some stage, people have to see it for what it is, and slow the process so Australia doesn’t economically implode.
I WAS actually shocked to see blatant IPA propaganda in the Herald (“Hunter shaping as a bleak test case for net-zero future”, Opinion 9/10). The opinion piece implied the government’s net-zero plans were destroying jobs in the Hunter. Yet the major renewables projects have not yet really begun, and Cian Hussey stated the new jobs are in “the healthcare and social services, education and training, and public services industries”, not the renewables sector. While we know the IPA hates any public sector employment, these dodgy statistics do not justify Hussey’s theme. The fossil-funded IPA is not a reliable source of information.
Read more on Gloucester Advocate
