Seven Days

LESSONS NOT LEARNT

I THINK all school buildings should be built from fire-resistant materials.

If all our classrooms and other structures were built using car tyres rammed full of dirt, they not only couldn’t burn, the schools would have no heating or cooling expenses because these Earthships are cool in the hottest summer and warm in the coldest winter.

Make sense? Maybe the highly paid people designing our schools and the ones who set those criteria should actually go back to school in the real world and see what amazing outcomes they could deliver by getting away from the corporate building codes which are all about creating industry supply chains enabling them to maximize centralised profits every step of the way.

This is so true in Dubbo this week, with yet another entire classroom block going up in flames after being torched.

Adding to the misery are many other factors.

This was not just the school canteen, but the series of classrooms devoted to special education.

They’re now as gone as Gonski.

A similar classroom block went up a few years ago next door to this one, that time the blaze was started by a couple of criminal grubs who torched the classroom to hide the fact they’d broken in and stole some gear.

Then, as now, the building design seems to have gone against the forces of good, with the block having a single roof void above the lower walls, meaning that once the fire gets into the ceiling it’s lights out for the whole job lot.

If we built schools from tyres of hempcrete or from many other environmentally friendly and sustainable products, we wouldn’t see entire blocks being destroyed literally overnight.

I know the bureaucracy doesn’t like this sort of talk, but the rules they operate under were made by narrow-minded people such as themselves, they’re only upholding the flawed status quo developed by their predecessors, so why can’t we just say enough is enough and change our ways.

Building from much better products would also constitute practical and positive life lessons for the students – how empowering to be warm in winter and cool in summer without having to flick a switch.

During the week I had a yarn to chief superintendent Neil Harris whose Fire and Rescue NSW’S area commander for Region West.

“It’s heartbreaking, particularly as it’s the special education classrooms,” chief supt Harris said.

“Because it’s a primary school it’s more connected to the community and the students will really be impacted by it, school is a large part of their world.

“Being special needs it’s also taken a lot of work to get the environment just right for the students, their classroom teachers and support staff, so it will be a major dislocation,” he said.

At the end of the day, we’re all worse off because people are so disenfranchised, or so unaware, that they would destroy such vital public property.

DISHLICKER FURY

READ the report – I know people say don’t destroy an industry because of a few bad eggs but while many greyhound owners may have been doing the right thing, the industry as a whole has ignored this impending tsunami which smashed it last week.

I’ve spoken to a fair few in the industry over the years and I’d be very surprised if there was anyone who didn’t really know there were so many cheats out there, as well as those who continued with practices such as live-baiting – so the fault lies squarely with the industry itself for a) refusing to accept there’s a systemic and cultural problem and b) not bothering enough to clean it up.

Looking at the report, I’d hate to be given the task of trying to clean the industry up, especially after all the warning signs over the years didn’t seem to bother those doing the wrong thing.

I’d suggest that anyone criticizing the move to shut the industry down reads right through the report and then makes an informed comment.

For those who were doing the right thing, and who will suffer socially and financially from this, it’s a pretty tough thing to swallow, there’s no doubt about that.

Calls for Dubbo MP and NSW Nat’s leader Troy Grant to step aside are pretty crazy given the very limited appeal of the sport in a statewide and national sense, if you’re not involved directly in the dogs it’s really a peripheral issue at best, and the ALP’S pledge to reinstate it is political opportunism at its best.

I’ve talked to him on this subject and he was becoming concerned the report kept getting delayed at the request of the former High Court Judge Michael Mchugh but after reading it he understood the huge flow of evidence coming in which painted an increasingly bleak picture.

The thing that concerns me is how any regulator could possibly clean up races where generations of the same family have been engaging in practices which are illegal, breaking that culture would be enormously difficult.

I’m no fan of over-regulation or of banning something because of a few bad eggs, but I don’t think that is the case in this instance.

LEADER’S LEGACY

ONE leader who should be put in his place is former PM John Howard.

This week saw the release of the much-anticipated Chilcot Report which found that the Iraq war which toppled Saddam Hussein was based on a lie that he possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction.

It didn’t paint former British PM Tony Blair in a terribly favorable light, it looks like he signed up to whatever war the US wanted to have, no questions asked.

Where’s the national debate and accountability for this mess, which John Howard jumped into with great glee and abandon to help out his mate George Bush.

No doubt he was flattered at the attention he was being paid, publicly lauded as the US’S best friend and George W’s “Man of Steel.”

Howard should at least lose all his pension and entitlements because his role in gung-ho-ing us into a seemingly endless war on terror has cost the nation, and the world, dearly – it would be a great incentive for all current and future politicians to think very carefully before doing something so stupid next time around, it’s the ultimate form of political accountability.

At the moment, however inept they are, just by serving time at a highly paid public funded job they get huge benefits until they die.

A far better deal than all the hundreds of thousands who have needlessly died since this conflict began.

BUILDING IT RIGHT, FROM THE START

IT was a close shave when it comes to the future of Dubbo’s proposed integrated cancer centre but with the Turnbull coalition returned by a very slim majority, this important facility should be on track to happen.

Where do you start when it comes to how this election played out, what a disaster for the PM (If he’s still PM by the time this newspaper goes to print).

This has to be committed to so the state planners sorting out the next stages of the hospital redevelopment can arrange for it to all be drawn up at the same time – that’ll save a lot of angst and cash down the track compared to if we’d had to retrofit the thing.

DONATE FOR LIFE WHY can’t our federal politicians bite the bullet and just make everyone an organ donor unless they make the decision to “opt out” of that.

July 31 marks the start of Donate life Week and Australia has just 32 percent of people on the national donation register despite surveys showing 69 percent are willing to donate their organs – this doesn’t make sense.

If we’re going to spend $150 million plus on a same-sex marriage plebiscite, let’s include issues klike this as well if our pollies are too hopeless to get their acts together. LOTS OF BRIEFS

DUBBO Square’s Rhino is getting a makeover courtesy of Dubbo Public School and local artist Fishdog.

It will be interesting to see what the students’ imaginations come up with for “Bruno”.

Great to see a telemonitoring service being piloted by Western NSW Primary Health Network (love how government department names grow far more quickly than regional communities they serve) as an afterhours program for people suffering from chronic conditions.