YOUR VIEWS

WE all have been traumatised enough with droughts, bushfires, coronavirus and flooding rains.

The latest “man made” issue now is targeting our hard-working GPs with a compliance push by Department of Health (DOH) to crack down on all medicos who coclaim Medicare benefits for a patient who presents with both a physical complaint and a mental health problem at the same appointment time. (GPs were able to previously claim two separate moneys classed as item numbers, for the one appointment). Great timing ... not!

This has injected unnecessary fear and intimidation towards these most-needed professionals who have demonstrated best practice in treating their patients holistically. We all know that physical ailments and mental issues are entwined and vice versa.

These doctors spend many years at university and clinical hospital placements to study and put into practice exactly what they are trained to do and deliver prophylactic care/education to treat patients as a “whole”.

GPs in our rural areas have to wear several hats, especially in recent times because we have stressed farmers, high unemployment rates and limited counsellors/ mental health services (if any)!

Even the RACGP President (Dr Harry Nespolon) commented that is seems entirely counterproductive.

I feel that these non-medical pen pushers in the government arena are just trying to save money (no surprise to us).

We are so short of GPs already (especially in remote Australia)

and I feel this fear factor will cause a lot of the existing GPs to consider other options. We would be in a right mess then but who can blame them after being subjected to regular Medicare audits for doing the right thing.

Sure, we will always have a bad apple falling off the tree, but this is not the issue here.

One solution would be to bring your body in one day for an appointment and your head in the next day for a consult. That is exactly what the government is virtually saying in plain speech!

This certainly does not make any sense and we cross our fingers and toes that the government will eventually rectify this act of stupidity or else the general public will lose out again both in health care and hip pocket.

PAM DELAHUNTY-HUNTER, BIGGERA WATERS

AS a Southport resident I must call out Division 6 candidate Jo Sherline.

Jo made a claim in Saturday’s

Bulletin that she is the only candidate talking about the issue – sorry Jo, but candidate Brooke Patterson beat you to the punch by a couple of months. Brooke has been talking about this issue and has gone out of her way to speak to people and educate herself on this issue.

The claim you make about all levels of government putting it into the too-hard basket is correct.

As a resident I have spoken to local police, local councillor and local member with little success.

What you need to understand is the group of people causing the most issues are simply drunks with social issues who don’t abide by the

rules and will not live in community housing. In fact most leave or are evicted due to their behaviour.

You can’t force people into rehab or into housing, you can only offer help and when refused control their behaviour with proper law enforcement for the wellbeing and safety of the other 99.9 per cent of Southport residents.

We cannot confuse those genuine people who have mental health issues and/or have fallen on hard times with the riff raff that are currently hanging around the Southport CBD openly drinking, stealing, fighting and intimidating young women and the elderly.

Being on the streets and spending a few hundred dollars a week on booze is not an excuse for urinating in doorways, spreading garbage everywhere and trying to gain sympathy from naive people with good intentions to supply them with more money and food.

DAVE GILMOUR, SOUTHPORT

I NOTE the Mayor Tom Tate has sold his Sorrento waterfront home to a Chinese industrialist. He also sold the vacant land next door.

It is my understanding, foreign investors cannot buy existing property in Australia unless it is new property. This law was introduced during the Keating era because international buyers and international money was distorting the local market.

In this case the buyer comes from Sichuan province in China. According to the Bulletin report, the real estate agent said “the deal could signal a new wave of Chinese buying on the Gold Coast”. That is great but we don’t want them buying existing property, that is for locals

and naturalised ex-Chinese citizens living in Australia. They are welcome however to buy vacant land and build something or buy a unit in a newly constructed building.

If this occurs, Australia benefits. Australian interests should take precedence over everything else.

TERRY STEPHENSON, ASHMORE

THERE is a constant argument over the politics of sport.

We argue that politics should be kept out of sport and we should just enjoy the game. Or we argue that sports are, and always have been, political. And in just having that argument , sports become inherently political, whether we like it or not.

Sports are political because we have never experienced this ideal that so many cling to when challenged about the political nature of sports. That some utopian ideal of sports exists.

Sports have excluded and exploited, and been unfair to people based on their gender, sexual orientation, race, religion or ability since they were first played.

TONY CAVUOTO, PALM BEACH

I REFER to the front page of the

GCB 22/02. It’s obvious Mr Rix must have significant land holdings in his preferred area because in my experience, as a retired architect, sugar cane farms make the worst building areas, with years of using herbacide, usually acid sulfate soils, all of which could explain the “red” tape in getting approvals, so the poor punter, who buys a block in good faith, isn’t left with an expensive lemon.

JEFF DAVIDSON, SOUTHPORT