LETTERS: Rates, pollies and the cashless card

GREAT to hear that rates will only rise by 1.9 per cent this year (NM, 26/06).

EMPTY POCKETS: A letter writer questions why pension money doesn't increase as rapidly as the cost of bills and rates. Picture: Warwick Daily News

Will it ever stop?

GREAT to hear that rates will only rise by 1.9 per cent this year (NM, 26/06).

Being a pensioner and receiving about a 1.7 per cent rise for the year this means there are only two weeks to go without food this year.

Why is it the pensions only rise about 1.7 per cent when rates, house insurance, health insurance, car rego and insurance and any other costs with living rise at whatever rate they choose?

Will we ever get a strong government that will put a stop to this?

Foreign aid and other countries get more of our money than we do.

E MOLLENHAGEN

Bundaberg North

Like a business

MAX Tanzer's letter (NM, 26/06) starts with even discussion but the final message is the outcome from previous Robin Hood governments throwing free cash and practising poor business management.

Yes, running the country is like a business and in every good business there are good and bad times.

Bad businesses eventually fail and the market (the voters) change shopping habits and move to reliable and proven businesses.

The bad businesses do though at times reopen under a different name but still the same management strategies remain.

For true believers you can now attack Turnbull for having good business sense before he became a politician or Pitt with your rent-a-crowd, forgetting that mechanisms like the cashless card ensure food in bellies for certain kids.

This is the clear difference and the real difference.

LEX ROBERTS

Avoca

Thanks, Mal

MALCOLM Turnbull is donating all his annual salary as Prime Minister to charity. This is a very thoughtful thing to do.

No one has stated whether or not he claims this as a deduction for tax purposes lowering the amount of tax his company's pay, thereby still giving him extra earnings over and above his company usual profits, or is this also donated to charity?

JEREMY FOSSEY

Elliott Heads

Cashless card

WHEN Hinkler MP Keith Pitt claims (NM, 26/6) the "QTU has been ramping up its political activism in recent months, outside its usual parameters” he demonstrates an abject ignorance of the union's objectives.

The Queensland Teachers' Union is not affiliated with any political party, but it is a proudly socially progressive union and so engages in a broad range of political campaigns to achieve its aims.

The fact that Mr Pitt questions "why the QTU was getting involved in the political debate”, implies he believes we should restrict our campaigning to specific school issues, but which is in reality, a completely artificial distinction with no merit, as most social issues ultimately have impact in the classroom.

The QTU has long championed initially "unfashionable” issues that ultimately are accepted and then drive the community forward.

Promoting equal pay for men and women is one example that was initially rejected by the conservative establishment, but with the union movement at the forefront of campaigning, was supported and now widely accepted.

More recently, the QTU also proudly supported the yes campaign in the recent same-sex marriage plebiscite.

The reasons for the QTU's opposition to the cashless welfare card were documented in my earlier letter to the editor (NM, 16/5) including its punitive and disempowering approach, a lack of widespread and representative community consultation, discredited research supporting the existing trials in communities different to Hinkler and historical links to former conservative politicians in the private business managing the card.

Finally, Mr Pitt's apparent justification of the cashless welfare card by claiming school breakfast clubs support a "1000 children a day turning up to school unfed”, on the basis of some conversations with school principals, is disingenuous at best, and at worst, a complete distortion of the truth.

I have had direct involvement in breakfast clubs and know it offers a positive and inclusive experience to start the day to children from a broad range of backgrounds.

Mr Pitt's question "where's the union's concerns for the children?” is a totally repugnant and nasty inference on the many hard-working teacher union members in the Hinkler electorate.

ALLAN COOK

President

Bundaberg North QTU