DEAR News Of The Area, FOR the past several years, Port Macquarie-Hastings Council (PMHC) has been investigating the possibility of updating the Hastings-Camden Haven water production system to guarantee security of supply for the foreseeable future. The work under consideration included the installation on an upgraded Filtration Plant at Cowarra Dam to process a larger […]
DEAR News Of The Area, WOMEN’S rights are being attacked by One Nation. The official policy platform explicitly states that the party will “seek every opportunity to roll back brutal and extreme abortion law”. The hard-fought battleground of the Women’s Electoral Lobby ahead of the 1972 election was fertility control and access to legal abortion. […]
DEAR News Of The Area, A CONVERSATION with an Uber driver on my way to Brisbane Airport got me thinking about where Australia is heading. We talked about youth crime, housing, cost-of-living pressures and immigration. I came away wondering whether our political debate focuses too much on who to blame and not enough on what […]
DEAR News Of The Area, IN mid-September, I had the opportunity to attend the Local Community Services Association (LCSA) NSW Conference in Wollongong. The LCSA represents 175 Neighbourhood and Community Centres in NSW. All these centres are locally owned and managed and represent the largest network of local, place-based community development organisations in NSW. One […]
DEAR News Of The Area, MOST parents have, and probably still do, wish that their children would enter university to become a doctor, nurse, lawyer or financial genius. I have been a doctor for 50 years and witnessed the paradigm shifts with dismay, and sadly conclude I would not advise General Medical Practice in the […]
DEAR News Of The Area, I WRITE in response to your article, “Hanson loses appeal over ‘seriously offensive’ tweet”, (NOTA, 29/7/26, Page 2). Senator Pauline Hanson’s so-called “seriously offensive and racist comment” was made in reply to Senator Merheen Faruqi’s extraordinary and disgraceful statement on the day our late Queen died. Ms Faruqi had described […]
DEAR News Of The Area, IN May this year, the Port Macquarie Hastings Council repealed its Climate Change Response Policy. The timing could hardly have been worse: it was followed, almost immediately, by an exceptionally warm winter here, and at the same time as an extraordinary summer in the northern hemisphere. France, England, other parts […]
DEAR News Of The Area, OUT of the halls of power, a familiar madness rose in a creature who mistook his reflection for revelation. He treated the spark of consciousness as a crown, the flicker of wit as wisdom, the noise of his ego as the voice of truth. And in that confusion, many followed […]
DEAR News of the Area, THE Coffs Coast is home to people from many ethnic backgrounds. This cultural diversity was celebrated at the inaugural Coffs Coast International Food and Dance Festival in November 2023. Festivals, stories, food, music and dancing are wonderful ways of bringing people from different cultural, linguistic, religious, social and philosophical backgrounds […]
DEAR News Of The Area, ANDREW Vivian’s article, “Improved Native Forest Management method divides conservationists”, (Page 9, Coffs Coast NOTA, 18/9/26) accurately reports the political split over the INFM method, but the debate should not be reduced to whether conservationists are comfortable with carbon offsets. The more fundamental question is whether the carbon credits themselves […]
