Do you have an opinion to share? Submit a Letter to the Editor at Sunshine Coast News via news@sunshinecoastnews.com.au. You must include your name and suburb for accountability, credibility and transparency. Preference will be give to letters of 100 words or less.
- Read the story: ‘Game changer’: 11km of upgraded highway officially opens
This has been a very welcome improvement for travelling from the Sunshine Coast to Brisbane or vice versa. I commute regularly between Buderim and inner-city Brisbane.
I do question, however, why the 110kmh speed limit reduces to 100kmh while continuing on the three-lane highway from the Caboolture Airport vicinity. Why couldn’t the 110kmh speed limit continue through the three lanes ?
Another welcome addition would be more signs asking motorists to keep left unless overtaking. I often observe motorists travelling in the right hand lane with absolutely no vehicles on their left.
Sandie Oxley, Buderim and Red Hill
- Read the story: Major bank to relocate town’s only branch
The Commonwealth bank are doing the same around Coolangatta/Tweed Heads.
They closed the Tweed Heads branch with no warning and left no ATM, not even a sign on the window.
Now Coolangatta has closed. Both were busy branches. Everyone has to travel up to 10km to get any cash from South Tweed.
They were kind enough, after about 18 months, to put an ATM in the Tweed Heads centre but it is not working more often than working.21
It is a disgrace and our government lets them get away with treating people like that.
The agenda seems to be to force people not to use cash.
Kent L, Tweed Heads
Ten minutes from the current location to the new location. That isn’t too bad.
Eden, Palmerston, ACT
- Read the story: Roadside cafe closes its doors after council battle
Yet another example of beauracratic isolation from the simple needs of community. Local government seems to forget they work for us.
Peter Lane, Cooroy
The Cooroy rural community has lost a great opportunity for people to meet and gather under the trees in the country.
I for one, will not be coming to Cooroy for a coffee during the working week and trying to find parking and having a pavement coffee on the main street. Your loss to my dollar, taxes and employment opportunities for Cooroy locals. Your rules but my rights to decide where to spend my dollars.
Nigel Sutherland
I do not understand councils that ban these businesses. Do they think they are God?
Shirley Lang, Bribie Island
Council doesn’t state the details. What laws, policies and plan.
It’s unique, professional – it’s a good thing. Keep it: there are always out-of-guidelines decisions and extenuating circumstances.
There needs to be an independent, non-religious, no agenda or self-interest body, state or federal, that can overrule these non-sensical decisions. It’s obvious the whole point of the cafe is in its location, and how healthy and beneficial that is.
Appalling decision by council, with no explanation. It would have been good if the publisher had detailed the paragraphs of council’s planning that actually states why it is breaking their rules.
Adrian McLean, Wollongong, NSW
Who would have thought the council would take such a stand? I did.
Who among us would think this was unjust? I do.
It was expected. Most of us know that “one” complaint against many of support told the council they had to take this stance and begs the question, who complained?
Was it a councillor? Was it another business that has a gripe? Does one have to wait many years for “freedom of information” to find out who and what for, way after the business has gone kaput?
So this is where all this rubbish is going hey. Support for a minority of the ill-informed. Does your council work for ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability) or the people? Obviously, for the former. I know the area, used to live down that way. Sure as sure can be, Busstop Espresso would have been a welcome stop among the madness.
Evelyn, Far North Queensland
We have a society built on free enterprise and competition, designed to give individuals a fair go and help keep prices down. But when the going gets tough, the tough complain to the council, using a petty rule.
Shame on the council officials for not seeing through this anti-competitive move and acting more like they were in China than Noosa.
Tom Swann, Currimundi
This is typical case of entitled elites, lording it over the hard-working people who provide a much-needed service to the community. Typical snobbish Noosa. I’m glad I don’t live in that overcrowded high-class slum.
Richard Court
Council rules, by-laws and more combine to a ‘one rule fits all’, which obviously fails in this instance.
Anne and Peter Hardwood, Edenhope, Victoria
I’m so sick and tired of the nanny state mentality. What happened to freedom? To do what you want on your own property?
They are meeting a need and are loved by the community. What happened to the old Australian way of giving everyone a fair go?
We are not a communist state. It is about time politicians stopped dictating and did what they are paid to do: serve the people who elected them.
Make a plan and give them a fair go.
Derek Venske, Esk
- Read the story: New-look Sunshine Coast and Noosa councils get to work
I was impressed by the candidates elected as mayor of Noosa Council, Frank Wilkie, and Sunshine Coast Council, Rosanna Natoli, in the calm positive manner they conducted their campaigns.
It was an eye-opener for me having moved from Canberra and observed the brutal dog-eat-dog approach to campaigning based on hyper-negativity and fear.
Initially, our new mayors have shown the qualities of being genuinely strong leaders.
How do we know that someone is strong? The German poet, Goethe, wrote perceptively: “There is nothing as strong as gentleness and nothing as gentle as true strength.”
The strongest people are not those boasting about their strength. This hairy-chested approach occurs with unnerving regularity on the national and state political stages. It is fed by a media looking for gotcha headlines and glib clickbait online assertions masquerading as facts. As community members, we need to determine what is news and fake news or camouflaged opinion.
Amid this media morass, the authentic strong leaders are the gentle ones. They are the leaders who exude authority, strength and confidence. They do not have to boast about how strong they are. There is an old maxim that a weak person feels that they need to demean and conquer others to appear strong. A strong person knows that they must conquer themself. We know that someone is innately strong if they are composed, gentle and compassionate.
Well, Frank and Rosanna, you are off to a good start. Let’s see if you can retain that gentle strength in the face of those who will try to entice you into the discredited toe-to-toe mud-slinging that turns so many people off politics and distracts some representatives from serving the community’s real needs rather than political philosophies and egos.
Garry Reynolds, Peregian Springs
- Read the story: ‘Daily nightmare’: petition for action on busy road
Few days pass without unmet local community needs being highlighted as important requirements. And many are.
While we live in one of the world’s richest countries, we can’t afford to do everything. We need to decide priorities and make choices.
Some things, such as Caloundra Road development, haven’t been started. Others, such direct rail, only gets the job half done because that’s all the money affords. And ever afforded.
We now have MPs running around finger pointing and blame shifting. Nothing to do with me. We need them to be more honest with voters. Committing to deliver their promises. And represent the people not their political party.
Andrew Moran, Battery Hill
- Read the story: Renewed plea to use council building as shelter for homeless
As a ratepayer, I totally object to ratepayers’ money being used for this building to become a home for the homeless.
Homeless issues are a state government concern, not council. And if mothers with children are housed together with drug takers and alcoholics, that is a recipe for disaster.
June Nielsen, Cooloolabin
- Planning for Palmview
It would be so good to have the following: a roads network which could connect Palmview to Kawana/Birtinya. Access to these areas vis new roads would reduce traffic/congestion on highway and the number of accidents happening due to heavy traffic; supermarkets like Coles, Woolworths and a shopping mall with all basic needs; a public library; and a public swimming pool.
Basreen Faiz, Palmview
Do you have an opinion to share? Submit a Letter to the Editor at Sunshine Coast News via news@sunshinecoastnews.com.au. You must include your name and suburb for accountability, credibility and transparency. Preference will be give to letters of 100 words or less.
