LetteroftheWeek

Have strong opinions, write in an engaging way? You could win our Letter of the Week, and with it a book from our friends and sponsors, the publishers HarperCollins. This month’s book prize is The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley. In a remote hunting lodge, deep in the Scottish wilderness, old friends gather to celebrate New Year’s Eve. One of them is killed. Not an accident – a murder among friends.

Rules: Entries close each Thursday at 5pm AEST. The winner is selected by 2pm AEST each Friday. Book of the month valued up to $49 (incl. of GST). Entrants agree to the Competition Terms and Conditions located at www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/entertainment/competitions, and our privacy policy. Entrants consent to their information being shared with HarperCollins for the express purpose of delivering prizes. Best letter competition runs until January 23 next year.

I HAD been a patrolling member of a surf club for decades and both my children went through Nippers to full bronze members … but all of us left the club system.

We left because SLS had turned from a fun community-minded organisation to one centred organisationally and financially around the star competitors and competitions!

But that’s not what this letter is about.

Last weekend we were at Mooloolaba Beach … there was a large number of clubbies on the beach and small surf … but in front of a huge number of surf life savers including right under the nose of two boat crews, I rescued a drowning Russian women caught in a rip.

She was literally seconds from drowning and not a single clubbie saw her.

And that’s the point of this letter: in my humble opinion the SLS movement has lost sight of its primary aim. It’s not to get big money sponsors or advertisers, it’s not to hold big competitions, it’s not to get media attention for its star performers, it’s not to waste thousands on fancy carbon fibre surfboats or to build bigger and better clubhouses … but it is simply to support a community organisation to save lives in the surf!

WILL SMITHSON, ELANORA

ENDEAVOUR Foundation strongly supports a Royal Commission to investigate violence, abuse and neglect of people with disability in institutional settings.

Born of a desire to meet the needs and advance the human rights of people with a disability, we believe that all support organisations

must welcome the spotlight a Royal Commission would shine into the disability sector.

It is only by exposing experiences of abuse, neglect and exploitation to the light of day, that we can identify and root out the causes, ensuring people with a disability can live free of mistreatment and harm.

A Royal Commission must also provide access for all people with disability, including people with intellectual disability.

For too long the people most at risk of abuse have been denied a voice in the justice system. Special witness provisions must be adopted to assist people with intellectual disability to speak out.

I also urge the Government to ensure thorough public consultation on the terms of reference, so that people with a disability can guide the Royal Commission to investigate

the areas of greatest concern to them.

I welcome every effort to ensure people living with disability can live free of abuse.

Endeavour Foundation calls on all Australians to do the same.

ANDREW DONNE,

CEO, ENDEAVOUR FOUNDATION

IF it wasn’t so serious, the farcical performances now under way from our so-called democratically elected representatives to that Xanadulike edifice on the Molonglo River in Canberra, will send us all scurrying to our graves.

We really have been screwed by the baby boomer (and later progeny) politicians; most of whom have never really worked for a living and have been cleverly seduced by lazy academics, ambulance-chasing lawyers, socialising unionists and drip down mythology economists.

In the last 20 years, seeds for the destruction of our Commonwealth have been sown by these so-called representatives, that we really ignorant peasants have sent to Canberra.

Now those seeds have taken sprout. Representative democracy in this federation is dead.

Our federal politicians have no pride, no imagination and no dream for a greater and freer Australia.

They only have two aims: to slurp at the taxpayer-funded trough of entitlement and to ensure they retain their seat in that nirvana called Canberra.

Canberra has already shown that this place we call our home is readily for sale to any carpetbagger who comes knocking.

Unless we the people awake and be prepared to remove that pussfilled poultice on the backside of the Australian politic by rejecting all sitting members, and those unelected wannabes from either side; and unless we are able to find our best and brightest to design us a new form of democracy that really governs for the people, then our federation will soon decay away.

Most of the states already provide more stable leadership to their citizens than the feds are capable of, and there is a whole wide world of hungry sharks cruising in our now undefended seas just waiting to pick up the pieces when the current edifice crumbles and falls.

JJ GOOLD, MUDGEERABA

CONGRATULATIONS again to cartoonist Craig Mann (GCB, 15/2). He regularly “lights” my day.

REG DAVID, MUDGEERABA