CRIME REPORTING
Dear editor,
It is not surprising that all the experts disagree with the misrepresentations and dubious claims made by the government and published as the lead story in this newspaper, (Coolum Advertiser 4/12/24).
In the absence of evidence to support its crime policy, the LNP has had to admit that its ‘Adult Time’ legislation discriminates against children and Indigenous families and breaches the human rights of both. It is policy based not on data, science or experience but on political expediency and the dishonest politics of division and fear.
Premier Crisafulli once told the parliament that he believed in truth-telling. He said, “We cannot shy away from the real experiences of Indigenous Australians throughout history. We must tell the truth about the real challenges they are facing today.”
Yet, as soon as he saw political advantage in closing down the truth-telling commission he flip-flopped and declared the truth would “lead to greater division, not reconciliation, and I cannot support that.”
The process Crisafulli once embraced to bring about truth and reconciliation has been cynically replaced with a dark, hard line that divides, Queensland’s Indigenous peoples from all other Queenslanders. His blindness or indifference to that divide is frightening.
Of course, violent crime is a problem. All violence is and the victims of violent crime deserve justice. However, based on the hard data, we know that 96% of incarcerated children will reoffend. If the experts are right and the LNP wrong, the LNP will not be finding justice for victims, they will be creating a tsunami of crime for the future.
The LNP’s “Gold Standard Intervention” is complete nonsense. Any genuine attempt at a successful intervention would have to begin with building good relationships between the people and parties involved. Instead, the government have told our Indigenous peoples that their history, their hurt, their healing, their future and the truth have been cancelled. Classic bridge burning.
And when truth and integrity have lost their meaning it is easy to convince people that Coolum is so rife with crime that people are “too scared to leave their homes to go to the shop or sit in a park”. (Coolum Advertiser, 4/12/24 p. 6).
Police and ABS data show that Coolum is a safe suburb as are all suburbs in Ninderry. We have half the crime of the wider Sunshine Coast and are well below the Qld average. Read more here: https://redsuburbs.com.au/suburbs/coolum-beach/#overview
I will be doing everything I can over the holidays to spread cheer and kindness to our visitors and let them know they are SAFE and welcome here. I hope others will do the same.
It really is time to disrupt the fearmongers.
Ken Fisher,
Yaroomba.
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NUCLEAR?
Dear editor,
How will going ‘nucula’ make Australians feel better off according to the atomized thinking of the fossilized fools? Just asking how long it will take to feel better off?
Margaret Wilkie,
Peregian Beach.
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CHRISTMAS SONGS
Dear editor,
In ‘A Christmas Carol’, Charles Dickens writes, “For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.”
As adults, can we rediscover our inner child at Christmas through the joys and truths of life in the words of carols and that child from Bethlehem?
Inspiring insights abound in carols ranging from traditional hymns to jaunty jingles and parched outback variations to snow for Santa and the reindeer to cross. Our homegrown versions include cheeky sunburnt ditties and instructions on how to make gravy.
An unfamiliar carol about Bethlehem includes the lyric “There’s a new kid in town and he’s lying in a manger down the road.”
Sadly, the location of the manger is beset by devastating wars in the Middle East.
In our lucky country, the verbal civil war that erupts leading up to Christmas is about Australia Day. Amid the national navel gazing we can be distracted from fellow Australians struggling through Christmas to reach Australia Day.
Their plight is captured in an unfamiliar Christmas carol about a man facing the loneliness of the end of his marriage and placing just one gift beneath his tree with a card saying, “Merry Christmas to Me.”
Can we rediscover our inner Christmas child to reach out with kindness and help those bereft from losses and homelessness find their joyful inner child filled with hope in 2025?
As Charles Dickens says in ‘A Christmas Carol, “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”
Garry Reynolds,
Peregian Springs
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PAYING MORE
Dear editor,
“Shrinkflation” is a coined word to describe the global tactics by big business, especially in the food industry, to counter the economic crisis of the high and rising cost of living impacting all consumers. We understand fully how consumers bear the brunt of the higher cost to producers at each level of production, from the farmgate to the manufacturers, passed on down the line to shoppers.
“Shrinkage” involves reducing the size of the product within packages and bottles, while maintaining the previous price, or even lifting the price. It is cheating, while the packaging, as for a packet of chips, a block of chocolate or biscuits, or individual cardboard toilet rolls, have not changed in size, giving the illusion of the same weight, with no obvious reduction inside. It becomes and “optical illusion” to the unwary. Everyone is caught.
This manoeuvre is a sign of things to come. The world of today is an expensive place to live. Developing countries are suffering conflict and drought, hunger and lack of health care, without stable governments. They have no problem with shrinkflation, as they have no access to shopping, but are reliant on international aide, if it is available. Even aide, dependent upon western generosity, is shrinking.
Australia is now not the “lucky country” for millions of have-nots, caught in the great divide between the haves and have-nots. Homelessness and violence, crime and substance abuse are an escape for the realities of life. The powerful and rich survive, regardless. Those without a buffer, sink or swim. Most are treading water.
E. Rowe,
Marcoola.
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