Labor has wide array of sneaky ways to drain North
THE Townsville Bulletin is well recognised as being a forum for the thoughts and opinions of its great many readers.
On Wednesday I read the thoughts and opinions of Michael Lunn in his letter “Heatwaves and fossil fuels just don’t mix” ( TB, 7/ 11).
Michael is obviously well versed in the melodies from the Greens songbook. Nothing wrong with that.
However, it is his mistakes and exaggerations that I would like to comment on, from my own experiences. I was born in Townsville in 1942, and lived in this city all of my life.
I would like to assure Michael and many others that the climate in tropical Townsville has not changed in any way shape or form. In our summer from October to April, the maximum temperature ranges from 30- 34C, unless it is overcast or raining. It has always been that way.
The big difference is that no one complained when I was younger because we just accepted things the way they were.
We did not have a continual bombardment from the media sensationalising everything to improve their ratings. That is what the modern world has become. In 1959, as a second year electrical apprentice, I installed a ceiling fan over the dining table in my parents home in Gulliver.
When I had finished and turned it on, my mother said: “Oh, that’s nice”, and went back to the kitchen without a fan, to continue getting dinner.
All that I can say to people now, who can’t live without airconditioning, is to find a cooler climate somewhere that has fierce hailstorms or snow, or a large city where car pollution is a problem. We live in a tropical paradise, be thankful for that. KEL ACKLAND, Bushland Beach. THE recent letter to the editor by Federal Labor MP Cathy O’Toole “Do not drain our funding” is a joke.
The Labor Government has been draining North Queensland for years the latest being a $ 70 per tonne waste levy to subsidise the inability of the Labor Government to control NSW dumping their waste in Ipswich tips.
Maybe people have to produce their rate notice or rent receipts to dump at the Ipswich dump and if not produced then they pay the $ 70 per tonne, not us.
Our council weighs and charges our commercial dumpers for dumping at our dumps and we, the ratepayers, are already paying $ 16 per trailer load at our local dump. Rate notice 2018 we are already charged $ 199 for wheelie bins and a waste management levy of $ 30.
The Labor State Government drains the North by stealth with their charging of stamp duties ( after the GST was introduced these state taxes were supposed to cease).
North Queenslanders pay more stamp duties on our insurance policies, because we are charged more for our house insurance than the southeast, the insurers go by postcode and we live in a cyclone- prone area. Brisbane has floods and storms with mega millions of damage yet our insurance goes up.
On an insurance policy of $ 2318.59 we pay federal GST $ 231.86 and state stamp duty $ 229.54. The more we pay for our insurance, the more we pay the government’s 20 per cent more.
No wonder the state government inquiry into the insurance industry goes nowhere when governments are profiting from the high price we pay.
As stated by MP Scott Stewart on the waste levy “the government had to make a decision for the whole state and could not place the burden on just the southeast”. Shame!
Where is the decision to share the burden we face for living in North Queensland with the southeast?
We pay higher rates, higher petrol prices, airfares, electricity, insurance, stamp duties, food, appliances, and any goods that are transported North. SANDRA CHESNEY,
Jensen.