From the Editor’s desk

On Wednesday, the Bay Post/Moruya Examiner was pleased to report $90,000 had been allocated from NSW Government funds to Batemans Bay charity Community Life.

The funds will allow the charity to keep its family and single men’s refuges open for at least 12 months.

Reading that story must have been a bitter experience for another Batemans Bay charity which has just lost exactly the same amount in Federal Government funding.

The two cases are unrelated - they involve different tiers of government.

However, Pivot Point, the emergency service which just lost its $90,000 in annual funding, is now going through exactly what Community Life was for months - upheaval, uncertainty and stress for clients and workers alike.

Uniting Care has distributed emergency relief from its Hanging Rock premises for 25 years.

It has stepped in for families when the weight of bills has become too much.

Mary Brierley openly told the Bay Post/Moruya Examiner yesterday of the occasions when - without Pivot Point - she would have gone hungry.

No charity in the Eurobodalla will deny that people are doing it tough - not just those on welfare benefits, but the working poor trying to survive on the minimum wage.

Unless there was compelling evidence that services such as Pivot Point were no longer required there could be no justification for cutting their funding.

One alternative service has already expressed its concern that Pivot Point’s funding cut will put more pressure on others.

Hurting society’s most vulnerable, by stripping funds from volunteer-run charities who have stepped in to fill a void, is exactly the kind of step that earned the Federal Government such ire after Treasurer Joe Hockey’s first Budget in May last year.

Then, the Coalition was criticised, even within its own ranks, for unfairness.

The same charge can be made today in the Eurobodalla.