LETTERS: Town plan is just a guide

Readers have their say on Jewel, abortion, independent public schools and children's hospital name change

BAD MOVE: A reader says the name of the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital should not be changed.

RE: J. FITZGERALD (NM, 24/09), firstly the town plan is only a guide put into practice to control development in different regions around Queensland.

Secondly the council has no real say in the Town Planning that is approved at State Government level.

What has to be considered is the issues effecting the local region, unemployment and progress in economical value being the two that come to mind straight away.

Turtles come for about three months of the year and I don't think they consider what is happening to their environment whatsoever.

Rugby union

VIEW GALLERY

They have come I'm guessing before man arrived here and development has gone on for many years and yet they still come.

So more lights in the area won't stop them from coming ... it's like the whales they have come here regardless how many die on the way to the bay area.

The Town Plan already allows for a nine-storey area to happen at Burnett Heads and you think that a local council is going to be able to stop it happening outside of the disintegrated area once developers start taking councils to court?

- Don Sinclair,Bundaberg

MORE QUESTIONS

MY THANKS to David Batt for responding (NM, 21/09) swiftly to my letter (NM, 20/09) regarding Independent Public Schools and to the News-Mail for finding space so quickly for publishing, the next day after my letter.

However, like many instances when one attempts to defend the indefensible, Mr Batt's response raises more questions than it answers.

Mr Batt claims the government initiated a "secret review" of the IPS program, however The Courier-Mail reported on Education Minister Grace Grace announcing the IPS Review on 24 April, so it would seem anything but secret.

Mr Batt indicates he has talked to the principals of the three IPS schools in Bundaberg, but quickly moves on to another topic.

What advantages were claimed by these IPS principals that principals of the many other state schools doing a fantastic job in the Bundaberg district don't have access to?

The experience of schools in countries with a long history of the "school autonomy experience" (the US and UK) suggest it to be a very poor mechanism for improving student outcomes and, at worst, results in a deterioration of the public education system.

Attempts to link NAPLAN results directly with IPS show, with respect, a poor understanding of educational research and causality, as student and parental background generally show to be far more significant factors.

I accept Mr Batt's apparent intention to represent his constituency, however maybe more families in his electorate with children in state schools would benefit by bringing to an end this divisive program and ensuring all Bundaberg government schools had access to any possible benefit the IPS review finds have occurred.

- Allan Cook,president, Bundaberg North QTU

WHERE WILL IT END?

I AM old enough to remember the days of Hitler and his attempt to develop the super race.

He wanted to kill off all the "subnormal" and physically deformed people.

He wasn't just against the Jews, but all who in his estimation were inferior and didn't fit into his economic framework.

The world was horrified at what Hitler was doing.

Are we heading down the same road?

It started years ago when our governments legalised the killing of unborn babies if the child's or the mother's life was in danger.

Then women campaigned for abortion on demand, with the slogan "my body, my choice".

Now Queensland's Labor government is considering increasing the age at which a baby can be aborted.

At that stage the baby is almost fully formed and even the sec can be determined.

The next campaign is "dying with dignity" for the terminally ill.

If it is assisted it is murder. If it's not assisted, it's suicide.

How long before our governments will decide it's too expensive to keep the elderly in nursing homes particular if they have dementia?

Where will this all end?

- K.J. Vincent, Bundaberg West

CHANGE DISTURBS

I FIND it highly disturbing the State Government rolled over on a male doctor's campaign for a name change to the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital wasting $50,000 in the process of taxpayers' money simply because it sounded private

Good grief - isn't it the job of the marketing department and hospital foundation to inform people of this difference?

Doctors need to treat the sick not do marketing and should be very proud to work at Lady Cilento Children's Hospital considering she was the leading clinician in the past century in Queensland and a woman. How sexist.

Queensland under Labor is in massive debt, and is approaching the highest unemployment in the nation, we have farmers in drought and now the poor devils have to deal with food sabotage, roads not being built and unreliable rail services, just to name a few "minor" issues.

You'd think the Premier would use her good judgement with using our money to tell these doctors "no".

This is all taxpayers' money in the end, no matter what department it comes out off and we, the people, deserve leadership for once instead of government pandering to one male doctor's viewpoint.

- E.B. Goode, Burrum Heads