FAILING OUR MOST AT RISK

A GIRL was in Gold Coast University Hospital this week while government authorities scratched their heads over how to help her. She is 12.

Two years ago she was ripped from a loving family who took her in when she was just two months old. She wrote desperate messages to the family and even walked 40km in an effort to return home.

She has been sexaully assaulted, bashed and suicidal as she drifted between a residential care facility and homeless street gang. Council officers moved her on from a beach where she was sleeping in a tent.

Previous Bulletin investigations revealed taxpayers are coughing up on average about $500,000 a year for every child in resi-care. One was costing $1.4 million.

In some cases, food cupboards were bare and Child Safety workers were accompanying youths from Brisbane to the Gold Coast so they could score drugs off their biological parents.

At some point authorities need to admit the system is tragically broken. Girls as young as 12 should not stripped from loving homes and end up homeless and in hospital. A vulnerable girl’s life has been turned upside down. People who are paying decent money to provide proper care for the girl know her plight and whereabouts. Like the State Government, they are well aware of what her life has become.

Meanwhile those who raised her for 10 years are forced to sit back and watch the horror unravel before them.

Taxpayers are being ripped off by an inept system and, most importantly, lives are being ruined. Leaders are failing the community on both fronts by continuing to allow it to happen. The plug needs to be pulled on the Child Safety cesspit and a long overdue review conducted into a dark stain on society.

ONE of the visual gags in the old John Cleese comedy series Fawlty Towers involved a youth moving letters around on the hotel sign to read something different as the show began each week.

Maybe, when and if the city decides to replace blown light bulbs on that awful artistic entry statement on the M1 at Yatala, the council could play anagrams and change the letters around occasionally.

As it stands, the structure remains a bland confusion of lights whizzing by as drivers roar along at 110km/h. The sign, which is supposed to read “Gold Coast” but at the moment the C is missing, is almost impossible to read, making it pointless and a waste of the $2.1 million-plus it has cost us – unless the city finds another lazy million or two to shift it so it can be read.

When voters raised the cost at a poll forum in March, Cr Cameron Caldwell tried to explain most of the money came from the State as part of Commonwealth Games funding. That argument falters on a few counts, one being that state funding is sourced from taxes Gold Coasters pay.

Former councillor Kristyn Boulton admitted at the meeting: “It’s not one of my finest decisions.” It does not look good to have a questionable decision made by a majority of councillors up in lights in the middle of the M1. Anagrams for “Gold Coast” include the apt Costa Gold. Sure did!

WHY not have seperate lanes for Qld plates, NSW plates and Victoria plates?

That would speed up the local traffic.

RICHARD FAURE-FIELD, ASHMORE

I’M tired of all the whinging Tweed residents in the media complaining about delays, as they try to cross back and forth the common border.

They don’t seem to get we’re in the middle of a global pandemic – one that kills people – and not just a common cold and through the great work of our Premier we are COVID free, and should stay that way, unlike New South Wales.

So the Tweed folk should, should start working from home again. If their kids are being educated in Queensland (why?) maybe they need to start riding their bike, or walking home like we used to, but stay out of the traffic! Easy!

JEFF DAVIDSON, SOUTHPORT

I HAVE two sons who have been surfing for nearly 30 years. They especially like surfing the huge waves on the Gold Coast.

I have always worried about them, knowing there was a chance they could be involved in a shark attack, especially when they used to paddle across the Seaway. They surf at least once a week. However, when they were teenagers and even now, I worry more about them being involved in a fatal car accident.

Car accidents occur every day of the week and still there are dangerous drivers who don’t seem to care. Just saying, there is more of chance of my sons being killed in a car accident than as a reult of a shark attack.

Killing off sharks, who are swimming in their own environment is just not right. They are beautiful creatures who are just doing what is natural to them.

I am very saddened when I hear of people losing their lives to shark

attacks and feel for their families, however they are all aware of the risks involved when doing what they enjoy so much, as do my sons.

ROBERT CASSAR, PARKWOOD

LET’S be frank and open about the NSW-Queensland border. It was set many years ago, but in such a way that streets have one side in NSW and the other side in Qld.

Surely to shift the border south to a much better defined line as the Tweed River makes sense.

Currently the border is a crazy line that ducks and weaves its way to the coast, and then even turns north when reaching the waterline. A serious mistake, that must be fixed.

Sure a few will complain as always. But the change would be much better for the majority.

Shift the border to the river and make it much easier to manage

DAVID HOBBS

IT is not enough to care about racism. Society is coming under intense pressure to side with the Black Lives Matter protests or be considered intolerant for any other viewpoints of diversity.

The Western Sydney University has online a BLM pledge asking for signatures by those seeking to remedy “social injustices”.

Debate rages within Sydney City Council between those calling for indigenous statues to be erected near the Opera House and the Mayor saying they could be considered “colonialist and inappropriate”.

In the dark of night a statue has been erected of the activist responsible for tearing down the statue of slave merchant and philanthropist Edward Colston. The plinth on which he stood has been empty since June when his statue was dumped into Bristol Harbour, but in his place now stands Jen Reid.

Last Sunday, the British Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton,

wore a BLM shirt and took a knee before the widely televised race.

Children are complaining of being rejected by peers and called a white racist if they do not attend BLM protests, while there is a crusade to cleanse media outlets of heretics or those considered complicit in problematic editorial or social media decisions such as the forced resignation of The Philadelphia Enquirer, executive editor for approving the headline “Buildings matter too”.

Then we hear the words of Alice Springs Councillor Jacinta Price who says she is against “victimised culture” and that Indigenous people are being taken advantage of by others own agenda.

She asks, if all black lives matter what about black women who are 30 times more likely to suffer domestic violence than mainstream society where perpetrators are made out to be victims, while she states calls to defund police only hurt the most vulnerable who depend on the safety police provide.

Since the shocking death of George Floyd, there is a need, whether we agree or disagree to become better informed about the narrative playing out before us, particularly the aspect that we must pay obseisance to this movement and actively express respect for it.

CHRIS MAGILL, SURFERS PARADISE

I REFER to the GC Bulletin (15/7), regarding Coomera’s $2.4 billion link being revealed. Despite strong community support for this project pockets of Gold Coast residents continue to have significant concerns.

Successive State Governments have acted slowly with moving forward a second M1 since 2010.

In the meantime, massive residential development has occurred, particularly throughout the northern region.

Slow Government actions now necessitates that the route for Connector