Newcastle Herald letters to the editor: Thursday, February 10, 2022

NHPPD varies depending on the level of service provided; for example our Maitland Hospital is a six NHPPD. This means for six hours out of the 24 hours a patient is admitted to hospital the government pays for a nurse to deliver face-to-face care.

In reality this pans out to two hours per shift (because there are three shifts per 24 hours). You may not even get this much because we have about five to six patients per day shift and seven to nine at night; so do that math.

No matter how many patients we have to look after, we don't leave our shift, we don't stop, we don't walk out. But we are getting ready to and we want our community with us. Stand beside us and fight for your rights. We don't want to do this alone and it's a big decision, but we are tired and becoming more angry. People don't seem to understand the dirty little secrets we hide in our hospitals. The cascading effect of this poor funding infects our work culture like a cancer, transferring blame within it but which should be at the Ministry of Health and NSW government. We fight for mandated patient and nurse ratios.

OH how I miss the old days and did not know how lucky we were to have had them. I can recall the chores I did today compared to years ago. I would have gone down the road to the doctors and then the chemist, plus a bit of shopping and been home within an hour. Today it took most of four hours to do the same chores.

Seems that no matter when you try to go anywhere there always seems to be a queue formed at every place you go. The worst part is waiting to get served at the shopping centre. I wait patiently in line for a couple of people to get served in front of me only to watch a stream of smokers getting served instead. I have said this before, but no one listens. Why can they not queue up at the fast serve line and wait their turn like the rest of us.

Same with the chemist; it seems that they and the doctors have the attitude that us old buggers have nothing else to do but to polish their chairs for hours, and I do mean hours even with an appointment. I understand that the main cause for this is the red tape that the government has put in place. Yes, I do regret seeing the old days go when we were treated as people and not just someone on an assembly line. Do they not realise that this time in life we do not have time to sit around or stand around waiting for service, but unfortunately those days have long gone.

HAS anyone in authority ever visited the 83 units already being built near the corner of Date and Victoria streets? They would see constant traffic congestion, as those units have Date Street as the only entry point for all building work. On-street parking is already difficult. When all 83 units are occupied, Date Street remains the only access, with more parking and traffic problems to follow. Traffic also uses Date Street to escape Brunker and Glebe Road holdups from the lights, with Adamstown railway gates often down.

Sue Morris (Letters, 2/2) is correct when she points out the looming problem of another large building proposed for this already stretched suburban street corner.

I FIND Adz Carter's interpretation of Superintendent Humphrey's change of heart (Letters, 2/2) on the trial to relax the lockout laws interesting.

If I recall, the NSW government had already decided to proceed with the trial before Superintendent Humphrey made his comments. He seems to have chosen his words very carefully in supporting the trial, given he had no choice in the matter. As the government had already made the decision, the police chief is bound to publicly support this decision, otherwise he would have clearly put himself at odds with his employer's position, making his own position and that of his officers potentially very uncomfortable.

I fear Mr Carter draws a long bow in seeking to use Superintendent Humphrey's public position. It would be interesting to know what Superintendent Humphrey's comments were if he was consulted before the government decided to proceed with the trial.

HERE we go again; the media is pushing for everyone to be water wise, and producers of dish washing products are promising 40 litres of water for each item sold. Fire season is upon us again yet what have our state and federal governments done to harvest water and store it for the dry season ahead? All that water went to the sea instead of storage basins, reservoirs and pipelines to the interior. How green would our country be and our crops would be plentiful; the population could move inland and we could refocus our younger generations to manage their home farms once again. People would probably consider these directions about being water wise, firefighters would have water to fight fires, our fauna and flora would flourish once again, so why is it that hard? The writing is on the burnt-out walls and dead herd of cattle and sheep. Build it and they will come and be saved, our governments are the misers not the average Aussie scratching to make a living. We should be starting our own ads, getting our councils to pressure their political parties to turn the taps on and allow the flow of funds to revitalise our interior, then manufacturing industries and population will follow. So turn it on, not turn it off, don't let storm run-off go to waste.

I AGREE with Peter Sansom ('Light rail planning fail', Letters, 31/1). The Berejiklian government, with the help of the Fishers and Shooters Party, was only interested in selling off the heavy rail line land. We were promised extension to our beaches and to the west. The line falls short of Newcastle beach and the ocean baths. If it had used the heavy rail line land to the side of Newcastle Station, up the side of Wharf Road to Nobbys beach, up Nobbys Road to Fort Scratchley, then to Scott Street, down Scott Street to Pacific Park, down Hunter Street to join the main line around Perkins or Brown street, a single line loop would serve two beaches, Fort Scratchley and the ocean baths. We had a similar loop serving the baths and Newcastle beach with our old trams until June 10, 1950. Similar to this could be done. What we have at the moment is a tin shed Newcastle Interchange and an ad hoc nowhere to go westward government suggestion for years into the never never.

GLAD to hear that our beleaguered ABC will not have to face ongoing funding cuts for the next three years. Seems that the government is really on the road to Damascus, where it has had an important moment of insight leading to a dramatic transformation of attitude - or on the road to an election.

IN correctly pointing out the disparity between the manufacturing cost of RATs in China with the inflated price here, Richard Ryan (Short Takes, 4/2) has highlighted the Australian business mantra of 'import cheap and sell dear'. It was this business greed which saw the demise of manufacturing in Australia, not unions or wages.

FEDERAL minister Susan Ley insists the present federal government cabinet is the most united she has sat in. Readers, please beware of low-flying pigs.

I'M still wondering why the Libs' slogan for the federal election (Band-Aids and backflips) hasn't really caught on yet.

IT'S reassuring to read that I'm not the only dolt to be caught by the Trono mobile speed camera ('Mobile speed cameras rake in eye watering revenue in Hunter', Newcastle Herald, 5/2). I briefly considered appealing the infringement on the basis that had ScoMo and Gladys done a better job of controlling COVID we would not have been in lockdown, there would have been more traffic on the road and I wouldn't have been able to drive as quickly as I was. Even I can see how silly that claim would have been, on a par, I reckon, with those claiming a Shorten-led Labor would have got all the calls on the pandemic right.

"EVERYDAY right wing voters die and left wing voters are born", a colleague observed in a conversation regarding a troll. Trolls can be useful. So feed your trolls, but not too much.

IT was nice to read that some local Liberal candidates have finally bothered to pick up a pen and ask their own government for funding for the GP Access After Hours service, following Labor's commitment to restore the needed funds. The hours of this service were cut back on Christmas Eve, over six weeks ago; where exactly have they been since then?

GREGORY Grey, I'm chuffed that you must keep a dossier of my insane rantings. If Steve Smith was named captain for the series I would have stuck to my word like lolly-infused saliva to a cricket ball. I have a habit of saying I'm never watching again every time my toothless Tigers play, only a few more weeks and the hypocrisy monster in my head will start to roar "I'm not watching them ever again!" Ach quatsch my better half says (German for bullshit).