PETER Hayes' experience in Maitland Hospital shines a light on a problem all too familiar with anyone using the current health system ("'Go to private sector': delayed surgery adds to Peter's pain", Newcastle Herald, 27/7). It is overloaded and under-resourced with total inefficiency.
Unless you have cancer, good luck trying to get a diagnosis. Instead, you will be treated for the symptoms at huge cost to the system without anyone knowing what is wrong with you. Waiting lists to see a specialist are six months or more. Try writing to the Health Minister and you'll receive a list of all the treatments you've had, so be grateful.
I cannot fault the staff who manage to keep working in such a system. They remain kind, caring and professional against all the frustrations. However, the reason we have poor public services is our obsession with not paying tax and all the tax rorts, such as negative gearing, franking credits and capital gains tax, to highlight just a few. We must support politicians when they try to collect more tax, especially from those who can afford it. Baby Boomers enjoying their retirements and paying no tax on superannuation, while being the main users of the public health system, is not sustainable.
Real tax reform is way overdue, with both sides of politics wedded to only cutting tax while public hospitals, schools and welfare programs become more inefficient and overwhelmed.
Sarah Taylor, Merewether
Aged care food costs don't add up
SIX dollars per day ("Residents fed on $6 per day", Newcastle Herald 27/7)? What are they running, a chook farm? Surely not a nursing home. If some nursing homes' average food bill per inmate really is $6 a day, nursing homes have just lost another potential customer. I would rather die at home thank you, than be starved to death in a diseased-riddled nursing home prison.
My sons worked in a local battery hen egg farm in which the hens were two or three to a cage. The first job in their morning shifts was to clear out all the dead and rotting hens from their cages. One of my sons still can't eat eggs or chicken to this day.
Most of the poorer residents of nursing homes share rooms. I wager that the first job of morning shift nurses may be to check all the rooms for dead clients.
Geoff Black, Frankston
No demolition at Annesley House
REGARDING the recent story ('"Council's heritage intervention to save third Mayfield house", Newcastle Herald 25/7) Uniting NSW/ACT has no plans to demolish' Annesley House to make way for a new car park. Uniting is in the process of preparing a new scope of works to remediate the building after engaging a third-party party heritage architect for advice.
The driver for the original development application to consider demolishing the building was due to the state of disrepair of the site making it uninhabitable, as well as health and safety concerns pertaining to the presence of large amounts of asbestos.
As part of the DA process, Uniting became aware of the cultural and historical significance attached to the site and was aware that council intended to put a Heritage Order on the subject location.
Uniting decided not to proceed with the original proposed works, instead opting to remediate and restore Annesley House. A town planner has also been engaged to explore options for future use of the building. It is also worth noting that the intent was never to make way for a car park, but rather to landscape the redundant land to provide Irwin Hall residents with more open green space.
Chona Navarro, Uniting Head of Capital Works, Finance, IT and Property
Coal power is long in the tooth
STEVE Barnett ("Mixed message from Bowen", Letters, 27/7), you allege Chris Bowen thinks we are silly when he alleges electricity prices went up in winter due to the increased need for coal-generated electricity. But it is you who are treating the public like fools.
The energy regulator said the reason why the coal-generated electricity prices were higher than ever was because, as the coal-fired plants get older, they fail. This did not happen in previous years because these old plants were not as unreliable.
AEMO, who manages energy markets across Australia said: "Unscheduled outages at the Eraring coal-fired power station, combined with transmission outages due to maintenance, saw emergency measures put in place to contain prices for only the second time ever in the national electricity market".
AEMO calculates that those days of price volatility added $45 per megawatt-hour (MWh) to the NSW wholesale price over the quarter, which was $173 per MWh
Glen Wilson, Cardiff
Changing the game looks like great fun
I JUST finished reading Simon McCarthy's story regarding the Elliott's Game Changer program ("Stars align to help kick goals off field", Newcastle Herald 27/7). Thanks Millie and Adam Elliott for bringing your skills to the community members who deserve it. It must bring absolute joy to the participants.
Wal Remington, Mount Hutton
Hospital needs more than facelift
IT'S now 4.30am on Friday, and 10 hours since I arrived at the emergency ward. I sit near a father who arrived with his daughter nursing a broken collarbone. They arrived 9.5 hours ago. Has the public health system finally broken? As the region's suburbs sprawl and population grows, does the John Hunter need more than a new access road to improve things?
Andrew O'Hearn, Kotara
Education may not be the answer
IF free education was granted from womb to tomb, would free welfare also be expected? If so, would more people seek it than stay working to pay for it? If the student demonstrations are what to expect, then maybe education is not the answer; not when it can't help them analyse the cause of a serious situation.
Carl Stevenson, Dora Creek
Glimpse into a polarised US vote
There was a unique snapshot into the American psyche following the wounding of Donald Trump and death of Corey Comperatore. Three days after the event, Comperatore's wife said that Trump had still not contacted her about her husband's death, though Joe Biden had made a phone call. She refused to talk to Biden because her husband was a devout Republican and "I support Trump, that's who I'm voting for".
John Arnold, Anna Bay
Salary cap can't be a shambles
BARRY Toohey wrote that Jackson Hastings was earning close to $800,000 a season. No wonder all the talk about Newcastle having salary cap issues. Whoever signed Hastings for that amount should be sacked.
