DEAR News Of The Area, THE local branch of the Lyne Together community movement recently held a very well-attended screening of the film Floodland at Laurieton United Services Club. The film documents the human cost, trauma and community resilience associated with the catastrophic 2022 floods in northern NSW. It won the Sustainable Future Award at […]
DEAR News Of The Area, FOR the past several years, Port Macquarie-Hastings Council (PMHC) has been investigating the possibility of updating the Hastings-Camden Haven water production system to guarantee security of supply for the foreseeable future. The work under consideration included the installation on an upgraded Filtration Plant at Cowarra Dam to process a larger […]
DEAR News Of The Area, THE growing instances of inhumane violence and mass killings represented by that most sickening of all nouns, war, have led me to write. Most recently, the ongoing bombings in Kiev, Gaza, the Middle East, and the more recent brutal attack on the Washington Post journalist in the West Bank by […]
DEAR News Of The Area, I REFER to the letter, ‘Women do not want their rights reversed’, (NOTA, 9/10/2026, page 14) regarding women’s rights being attacked by One Nation. It is universally known that when a child, on being born, does not take breath, it is declared dead. I see all the activities in the […]
DEAR News Of The Area, WOMEN’S rights are being attacked by One Nation. The official policy platform explicitly states that the party will “seek every opportunity to roll back brutal and extreme abortion law”. The hard-fought battleground of the Women’s Electoral Lobby ahead of the 1972 election was fertility control and access to legal abortion. […]
DEAR News Of The Area, I WRITE in response to your article, “Hanson loses appeal over ‘seriously offensive’ tweet”, (NOTA, 29/7/26, Page 2). Senator Pauline Hanson’s so-called “seriously offensive and racist comment” was made in reply to Senator Merheen Faruqi’s extraordinary and disgraceful statement on the day our late Queen died. Ms Faruqi had described […]
DEAR News Of The Area, IN mid-September, I had the opportunity to attend the Local Community Services Association (LCSA) NSW Conference in Wollongong. The LCSA represents 175 Neighbourhood and Community Centres in NSW. All these centres are locally owned and managed and represent the largest network of local, place-based community development organisations in NSW. One […]
DEAR News Of The Area, MOST parents have, and probably still do, wish that their children would enter university to become a doctor, nurse, lawyer or financial genius. I have been a doctor for 50 years and witnessed the paradigm shifts with dismay, and sadly conclude I would not advise General Medical Practice in the […]
DEAR News Of The Area, A CONVERSATION with an Uber driver on my way to Brisbane Airport got me thinking about where Australia is heading. We talked about youth crime, housing, cost-of-living pressures and immigration. I came away wondering whether our political debate focuses too much on who to blame and not enough on what […]
DEAR News Of The Area, IN May this year, the Port Macquarie Hastings Council repealed its Climate Change Response Policy. The timing could hardly have been worse: it was followed, almost immediately, by an exceptionally warm winter here, and at the same time as an extraordinary summer in the northern hemisphere. France, England, other parts […]
