Deserving of penalty
The Tuross Head Progress Association is hosting a Meet the Candidates forum at Kyla Hall on Wednesday, March 6 at 7pm prior to the NSW election.
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The public is invited for the Q&A.
Here is a novel suggestion for all elections: let’s adopt a new regulation requiring politicians to resign if any pre-election promises they made are not introduced within a year of election.
To save a costly by-election in that seat, the candidate who received the second highest primary vote (should) be offered that position. I believe a pre-election promise is a contract between a candidate and the voters. Failure to comply with an election promise may be the result of deceptive marketing spin or fraud or dishonesty and deserves a penalty.
Gary Smith
Tuross Head
Mackay Park project
On Friday, February 15, the Bay Post/Moruya Examiner online published a story about the announcement by Fiona Phillips, the Labor Candidate for Gilmore, of $25 million for the Mackay Park Regional Aquatic Arts and Leisure Centre.
There is a statement in the story that Batemans Bay Labor Party members have been campaigning for Mackay Park.
I have been advocating as a private citizen against Eurobodalla Shire Council’s removal and non inclusion of a 50m pool in the centre, not as a member of the Labor Party.
Maureen Searson
Catalina
We vote too
As the major parties try to point score off each other, neither is concerned about the long-serving ex-servicemen/women who have had their superannuation entitlements “ripped off.”
Both major parties have waxed lyrical about the “unique nature of military service” and the “debt owed to these men and women” but this is just lip service.
Superannuation in the services has been compulsory since 1948 and the first two schemes, DFRB and DFRDB, under which some 55,000 defence force retirees still receive benefits, would not stand the pub test. The government did not invest members’ contributions to these schemes, but rather, transferred them into Consolidated Revenue where they have always been used to help balance the budget.
Under these schemes, retiring members could, after 20 years or more of service, take an advance lump sum payment of future entitlements to help them resettle into civilian life. If they opted to take the lump sum, their ongoing superannuation payments were reduced based on what their life expectancy was in 1962 which, on average, these men and women are living beyond, by more than 14 years. But the government continues to pay them at the reduced rate.
The government also fiddled with the indexation of their benefits, using an inappropriate index, which does not keep pace with the cost of living.
Minister Chester regularly states that the whole issue is a misunderstanding, but in the military misunderstanding are invariably caused by miscommunication.
In 1991, the Government introduced a third scheme, known as MSBS, and it has just as many problems. Then in 2016, it introduced yet another scheme.
Is there a federal politician in the country who would accept the conditions they force on those who served their country in peace and war?