Letter of the Week
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 Harper-Collins. This month’s book prize is Cross her Heart by Sarah Pinborough. Some secrets are worth d
IT’S not just the financial sector that lies to investigators. Government bodies do it also. The current Royal Commission’s exposure of ASIC’s failure to investigate complaints against financial institutions is another example of the uselessness of most such investigative bodies, including the Ombudsmen and Inspector General of Taxation. They have absolutely no powers, and are often more like apologists for the government agency.
The Queensland Ombudsman took four-and-a-half years to investigate a complaint I made about the Health Rights Commission which had taken 18 months to “investigate” a complaint about a nursing home. The Ombudsman never spoke with me, blocked every attempt to obtain information under FOI laws, and accepted everything the HRC stated as fact.
HRC dismissed my claims despite hospital records and other documentation supporting my claims, then manipulated details they provided for a medical opinion, later retracting their claims when I produced evidence exposing them. The Ombudsman just made excuses for the HRC. The responses from the HRC were never questioned.
I did their job for them, with all government bodies involved making it as hard as possible for me, even to trying to discredit me. Finally, after four-and-a-half years the Ombudsman concluded that all my complaints were sustained. However after such a long time, absolutely no action was taken against the HRC or anyone involved in the investigation, and the nursing home was forgotten. What use was the Ombudsman?
In the recent Gold Coast Airport ILS public submission process, Airservices was asked for the exact address of the starting point for the ILS flight path. Weeks later they provided a compass bearing, the only reference to it being embedded in a diagram in the airport’s Major Development Plan, a document which few even knew existed. An Ombudsman ruled that this was satisfactory as it was publicly available and “.. would be published in pilot documents.” How many of us know compass bearings? The answer is Monte Vista Crt, Broadbeach Waters, by the way.
Many other instances exist of the ombudsmen’s reluctance to even investigate. These bodies are essentially useless and have no powers. They can only make recommendations, which agencies can and do ignore.
When can citizens expect justice and see their problems resolved so that government agencies are held responsible when they mess up? IAN TIMMINS, MERMAID BEACH LETTERS to the Bulletin and thousands of emails have been sent to the federal politicians and Senators to stop the live export of our sheep and cattle to the Middle East. Yet our government is still approving this inhumane export of our gentle sheep on the death row ships to islamic countries to be slaughtered in a hideous and barbaric way.
These animals experience stress and rough conditions in their pens, a heart-wrenching sight which has had little effect on our politicians, some farmers and the shipping line owners. Then after docking in the ports, these sheep with no respite, physically weak, are beaten with sticks on their way to the waiting trucks, then driven to the abattoirs. Their legs are tied together, they are literally thrown on to wheel-barrows and wheeled inside for Halal killing, a slow bleeding til death. (I have seen this!)
It is also a fact, to which we have no control, some sheep are isolated and trucked to other parts of their country and kept for later sacrificial rituals, all in the name of their islamic creed.
From the time our gentle sheep are boarded onto the ships to their final breath they are suffering on the death row ships “.
Only recently, to replace live exports, expensive modern abattoirs were built in the Northern Territory which also catered for islamic requirements, but strictly regulated to our standards. The meat is frozen, packaged and exported to the Middle East. So what are these abattoirs doing now? Most importantly, who is pulling the strings? Labor say they want to stop, unconditionally, live exports.
That statement alone will win many votes.
With all the above facts live exports should cease completely. L. VASTCHENKO, PALM BEACH LORD Sebastain Newbold Coe, CH KBE, for his services to Sport and Humanity – well deserved.
How does “Sir” Kurt Fearnley sound for his similar services to Sport and Humanity? GREG DARLINGTON, SOUTHPORT GREAT to see the greens and other climate change experts embracing French President Emanuel Macron, whose country’s main power supply is nuclear. Now that’s the way to go. ROD WATSON, SURFERS PARADISE