LETTERS: Cashless card, high-rise, schoolkids

WE MUST all be considered to be fools by the Federal Government especially so by Social Services Minister Dan Tehan and Hinkler MP Keith Pitt...

Cashless card protesters in the CBD. Picture: File

Claims come undone

WE MUST all be considered to be fools by the Federal Government especially so by Social Services Minister Dan Tehan and Hinkler MP Keith Pitt regarding the Cashless Debit Card and its trials in South Australia and Western Australia.

This pair have relentlessly and repeatedly told us the $18m trials have proved to be an outstanding success in every way and that is why we should have it adopted in Bundaberg.

On Wednesday they were brought undone by findings that they were using bogus statistics to support their case for its merits.

This was brought to light by an audit carried out by the government's own specialist agency, the Australian National Audit Office. This agency reports to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate and is under the auspices of the Auditor-General, so that is about as official as it gets. It disclosed that there was inadequate evidence to prove that it reduced social harm or whether it was value for money to us taxpayers.

In other words, its benefits are a product of the imagination of its supporters.

With this official disclosure it surely raises doubts over the so-called benefits regarding a trial here in Bundaberg where apparently our children are being starved and the recipients of social security benefits are drug and alcohol dependant.

C BROWN

Burnett Downs

Akin to rumours

RE: THE news that data regarding the Cashless Debit Card is flawed, who's surprised?

This means that the people who have backed this move are acting on false information put out by those people who want to make a name for themselves, namely the federal member right here in Bundaberg.

I liken this misinterpretation to listening to someone spreading rumours, a gross exaggeration just to satisfy their egos.

Our federal member wasted too much time spruiking about the non-existent benefits surrounding this card.

All the wasted time should have been used by him to bring more employment and industries to this town.

JIM CARTER

Elliott Heads

Contact minister

I APPLAUD the Bargara contingent for their opposition to a nine-storey high-rise on the waterfront even before the new height standards ink has dried in the Bundaberg Regional Council's legislated terms of reference for developers to abide by. Even six storeys violates the building code.

If this tower is approved I would suggest the residents and their fellow opponents move to contact the relevant Queensland Government minister.

STEPHEN BEIGER

Burnett Heads

Stuck in the middle

I AM not at all surprised at the exclusion of pupils in Bundaberg schools for intolerable behaviour in the classrooms on premises or on buses.

Teachers are expected to put up with considerable bad behaviour that is an extension from the home.

Teachers are hard-working, altruistic professionals dedicated to the betterment of their charges and should never have to put up with some of the abuse heaped upon them by parents and their children.

Satirical, snide and deprecatory remarks and comments at home are carried over into classrooms by pupils.

An assessment by Dr Corsini, developer of Individual Education, estimated that 40 to 60 percent of class time is spent in disciplinary control of unruly students.

Were I to have any say I would change the disciplinary system in school education as follows:

Reintroduction and rigid enforcement of truancy laws;

All pupils to be required to attend a school unless lawfully absent;

Pupils suspended or otherwise excluded from a school to be immediately enrolled in an alternative institution. Parents not complying with alternatives, of a school or transport with 24 hours to be charged and fined under truancy laws;

Schools to have a right to exclude, not as a punishment but as an assurance that pupils affected by bad behaviour have a right to uninterrupted learning.

Education is not a right, it is a privilege. Reasonable behaviour is the norm not an aberration.

Far too often are the pupils with behaviour problems, most stemming from the home, rewarded with special programs and projects, while well-behaved pupils receive merely a modicum of reward for excellent behaviour.

I have long bemoaned the fact that the so-called gifted pupils are rewarded with special programs, and the problem pupils are likewise rewarded by special attention while the majority of average diligent well-behaved pupils are left with the scraps of funding left over, mostly bugger all.

DIETER MOECKEL

Wonbah