YOUR VIEWS

WE ALL share councillor Brooke Patterson’s frustration regarding the ever-increasing problem with street people around Southport.

Take the advocates and charity workers out of the equation and look at the facts, simply referring to these people as the poor and homeless is naive, inaccurate and offensive to the true homeless.

Many of the true homeless are being helped and housed, but we will always have drunks, druggies and social misfits that can’t be housed because of their anti-social behaviour and failure to pay rent. Housing authorities simply can’t and won’t house them.

These people are the main issue and responsible for dragging the whole Southport area down.

They are responsible for most of the petty crime around the CBD and they have been supported by charity workers who appear to have no interest in the wellbeing of local residents and businesses whilst on their mission to do good!

Southport has suffered badly due to this relatively small group and the lack of policing.

Whilst the Vagrancy Act was deemed harsh by many, the fact is it was saving lives in many areas with the drunks taken off the street, cleaned up, medicated, medical attention provided, etc.

The Vagrancy Act will never be reintroduced but there are other ways to deal with these people. We need legislation like that in the NT where drunks can be taken off the streets and to sobering up shelters or the watch-house and held without charge for a specified time.

This is for their safety and for the safety of the community.

Whilst it doesn’t solve the problems it controls it for the benefit of the community.

After a while the drunks and druggies get sick of having their supplies tipped out and being locked up, so they will move away from public areas.

The welfare/charity workers will still know where they are, but the rest of us can move on and function without this endless issue. DAVE GILMOUR, SOUTHPORT

HOORAY! Councillor Patterson has solved the Homelessness problem, in Southport, as per the Gold Coast Bulletin (30/07); just make it illegal and fine destitute people $100, with the threat of jail.

Perhaps a better way could be to work with the government to solve the problem, rather than going back to the Victorian Era! JEFF DAVIDSON, SOUTHPORT

WE ALL have our trusted dentists, optometrists, dermatologists, not to mention electricity and gas suppliers whom we allow to automatically debit our bank accounts, and so on.

But when you don’t need, or have even given the slightest thought of the need to make an appointment with any of these people, and have probably forgotten all about them, they send us a “courtesy reminder”.

So, me, l may have built up quite a store of these “reminders”, or even left the country, but no, these people are basically implying that l am succumbing to senility.

Might go and get a replacement liver next week. If l remember. DAVID HALL, COOMBABAH