Coraki still without a local doctor

According to Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016 Census data Coraki and neighbouring Woodburn have a combined population of over 2,000 residents and 499 families.

Half of those residents living in Coraki are over 45 years of age and half of those living in Woodburn are over 42 years of age. While children make up almost 19 per cent of the population of both villages.

Yet the Northern NSW Local Health District cannot even supply a sessional doctor for the health centre at Coraki.

The Northern Star, 20 July 2019, p.7:

Ray Hunt is more frustrated than most about living in a town where the hospital has no doctor.

“If you cut your toe, you can’t go there,” Mr Hunt said.

His late wife Anne used to be the “boss” of the original Coraki Campbell Hospital, before it was closed.

The two-year-old, $4 million Coraki Campbell HealthOne facility looks modern and slick and offers dentistry and dietary appointments but services are limited without a doctor.

Down the road on Thursday, about 10 people gathered to voice their frustration about no sign of a doctor for Coraki.

Eighty-five-year-old Tubby Daley was there. He was born in Coraki. He doesn’t drive so when he needs to see the doctor he has to use limited public transport to get to Casino or Lismore.

Peggy Gooley takes her sick husband regularly to Casino and District Memorial Hospital.

Mrs Gooley failed to understand why they couldn’t have a doctor on rotation, even if the doctor was only in Coraki for two days a week.

A list of 241 names of residents who would use a GP shows the solid customer base in Coraki.

Jennifer Sherwin wore a grim reaper outfit to emphasise how Coraki residents felt about the absence of a doctor.

Ms Sherwin believes the contracts the Northern NSW Local Health District is offering are too restrictive.

Northern NSW Local Health District chief executive Wayne Jones said efforts had been made to recruit a GP for Coraki Campbell HealthOne, however there had been no successful applicants....

SNAPSHOT: Employment, underemployment & unemployment in NSW & Northern Rivers Region - April & May 2019

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Labour Force, Australia, May 2019:

·         Australia's trend estimate of employment increased by 28,400 persons in May 2019, with:

·         the number of unemployed persons increasing by 5,800 persons;

·         the unemployment rate remaining steady at 5.1%;

·         the underemployment rate increasing to 8.5%;

·         the underutilisation rate increasing to 13.6%;

·         the participation rate increasing to 65.9%; and

·         the employment to population ratio remaining steady at 62.5%. 

In New South Wales, May 2019

Total employed person – 4,167,000 persons of which est. 31% are employed part-time

Total underemployment rate – 12.2%

Total unemployed person – 197,500 persons of which est. 68% were looking for full-time work

Total unemployment rate – 4.5%.

State Electorates in Northern Rivers, April 2019

Clarence Electorate – 58,169 employed persons, unemployment rate 8.2% and youth unemployment rate 20.5%, with negative annual employment growth of -2.7%

Lismore Electorate – 83,833 employed persons, unemployment rate 6.1% and youth unemployment rate 10.2%

Richmond-Tweed Electorate – 115,668 employed persons, unemployment rate 4.5% and youth unemployment rate 8.9%.

Northern NSW residents are still over-represented when it comes to smoking cigarettes

The Daily Examiner, 4 June 2019, p.7:

Northern NSW residents are still over-represented when it comes to smoking cigarettes.

Despite years of warnings and anti-smoking campaigns, statistics taken in 2016 reveal 20.3 per cent of population in the North Coast Local Health District is smoking.

The rate has remained largely unchanged for years as a report released by the Cancer Institute showed the number of smokers in 2011 stood at 20.4 per cent

This contrasted with statewide smoking trends which showed the number of smokers had dropped considerably over the past decade, down from almost 20 percent to just 15.2 per cent in 2017.

There was a clear difference between metropolitan and regional areas, with city health districts recording bigger falls and one regional health district, Western NSW, recording an increase of four per cent since 2012.

Males aged 25-34 were the most likely to be lighting up as 25.9 per cent of the group were smokers compared to 11.8 per cent of women the same age.

In fact, the only age group in which women out-smoked men was in the 55-64 and 65-74 categories and in both cases it was only a one per cent difference.

A higher proportion of women reported smoking while pregnant, with Northern NSW recording a rate five per cent above the state average of 8.3 per cent......

Is NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian intending "to make it a priority to finish off effective protection of the natural environment – something started years ago under the Coalition State Government"?

On Thursday 4 April 2019 the local Knitting Nannas held a protest knit-in outside the electoral office of NSW Nationals MP for Clarence, Chris Gulaptis.

Below is the text of their letter to Mr. Gulaptis dated the same day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Knitting Nannas Against Gas

Grafton Loop

c/- PO Box 763

Grafton 2460

knaggrafton@gmail.com

4th April 2019

                                                                        C O P Y

Mr C Gulaptis MP

Member for Clarence

11 Prince Street

GRAFTON  NSW 2460

Dear Mr Gulaptis

Dissolving of Office of Environment and Heritage

The Grafton Nannas are very concerned about your Government’s recently announced intention of doing away with the Office of Environment and Heritage as an independent entity.

We have long been worried about the Government’s lack of concern about protecting the natural environment for current and future generations of humans as well as for other life forms.

Government policies over recent years have been seen by many in our community and elsewhere as being a de facto war on the natural environment.

For example:

• Changes to vegetation laws which have led to a large increase in clearing of habitat which is important to the survival of native flora and fauna.  This weakening of the former laws is also likely to lead to increased topsoil loss and general land degradation.

• Changes to logging regulations which threaten the sustainability of native forests which belong to the people of NSW – and not to logging interests. These changes include limiting pre-logging fauna surveys, an inevitable increase in clear-felling, and reduction in the width of buffer zones along streams.  

• Failure to protect the health of rivers, particularly those in the Murray-Darling Basin.  For years the NSW Government, as well as the Federal Government, has been pandering to the irrigation industry while ignoring the need to protect river health by ensuring that flows are adequate for river health.  The drought is not an excuse for this folly.

• Other examples include the cutting of funding to the National Parks & Wildlife Service and penny-pinching changes to its structure as well as the failure to ensure that the existing weak environment laws are enforced and appropriate penalties imposed on those who breach them.

We are aware that the Premier recently stated that her Government would make the environment a priority. 

Since hearing that OEH was to lose any of the limited independence it currently has and is to be pushed into a mega-Planning Department, we are left wondering about what the premier actually meant about “priority”.  Did she mean that she intended to make it a priority to finish off effective protection of the natural environment – something started years ago under the Coalition State Government?  It looks very much like that to the Nannas.

Yours sincerely

Leonie Blain

On behalf of the Grafton Nannas

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

More evidence of Australia’s national extinction crisis

Twenty years ago my garden and the street in which I live rang with the sound of frogs calling after dark - at times it was deafening and drowned out the sound of the television news presenter.

Frogs of different species were in my letterbox, in the garden trees, catching moths on the window sills, hopping about on my patio and frequently in the house.

No more.

Anyone living in urban areas of the NSW Northern Rivers region would be aware that fewer frog species and fewer numbers within those frog species have been part of garden, park and nature reserve landscapes over the last twenty years.

Loss of habitat due to land clearing, drainage or development, depredation by introduced species, over use of herbicides/pesticides by councils and homeowners, decease in available food sources and disease are taking their toll on local frog populations.

When one sees the scale writ large it is terrible to behold.......

The Guardian, 29 March 2019:

A deadly disease that wiped out global populations of amphibians led to the decline of 500 species in the past 50 years, including 90 extinctions, scientists say.

A global research effort, led by the Australian National University, has for the first time quantified the worldwide impact of chytridiomycosis, or chytrid fungus, a fungal disease that eats away at the skin of amphibians.

The disease was first discovered in 1998 by researchers at James Cook University in Queensland investigating the cause of mysterious, mass amphibian deaths.

Chytridiomycosis is caused by two fungal species, both of which are likely to have originated in Asia, and their spread has been facilitated by humans through activities such as the legal and illegal pet trade.

Forty-two researchers worked on the new study, published in Science on Friday, which pinpoints the extent of the disease and how devastating it has been for frog, toad and salamander species.

They found evidence that at least 501 species had declined as a result of chytrid fungus and 90 of those were presumed or confirmed extinct.

“The results are pretty astounding” Benjamin Scheele, a research fellow at the ANU and the project’s lead researcher, said.

“We’ve known that chytrid is really bad for the better part of two decades but actually researching and quantifying those declines, that’s what this study does.”

The scientists identified declines in amphibian species in Europe, Africa, Central and South America and Australia because of the disease.

Scheele said there were no declines in Asia because species had evolved to be naturally resistant.

The impact of the disease has been hardest in Central and South America and in eastern Australia, where it flourishes in cool and moist conditions. It does not survive at temperatures above 28C.

In Australia, chytrid fungus is present in upland areas along the Great Dividing Range, down to the Otways in Victoria, and the edges of South Australia and Tasmania.

It is also found in some of the cooler mountain areas of Queensland.

Scheele said in Australia alone, there were 240 species of amphibian, 40 of which the researchers believed had suffered population declines as a result of chytrid fungus.

Seven of those 40 are believed to be extinct. One of those is the mountain mistfrog, which was last year added to a group of species the Australian government has been assessing to determine whether it should be moved to the national list of extinct wildlife.

Other species, including both the southern and northern corroboree frog, have suffered because of chytrid fungus, but large-scale captive breeding programs have worked to prevent their extinction..... [my yellow highlighting]

Cometh the rain, cometh the cane toads

Cane Toad eggs & tadpoles
Image: The Conversation, 31 August 2011

The Daily Examiner, 25 March 2019, p.13:

With a solid drop of rain falling in the coastal area of the Clarence Valley last Friday night, cane toads will be taking up this much overdue opportunity to reproduce their kind, much to the disappointment of those who are working hard to control this pest.

Landowners can help by simply inspecting their dams, ponds and any temporarily flooded areas for toad spawn (long strings of eggs that do not float and resemble jelly shoes laces) or toad tadpoles (typically jet black in colour and seen ‘grazing’ in shallow, warm water schooling in tight schools or clusters).

The consistent effort of CVCIA volunteers and increasing effort by landowners at Micalo Island has seen numbers of toads plummet over the last three seasons and this season to date round-ups have collected an average of 328 toads compared to 397 and 764 in the 2017/18 and 2016/17 seasons, respectively.

The best time to inspect such water bodies is during daylight hours when the sun is high and visibility into the water is at optimum levels and anyone who believes they have found toad spawn is encouraged to remove it immediately while other signs of toad breeding should be reported to either Clarence Landcare on 66435009 or CVCIA Landcare on 0477616210 or email scott@cvcia.org.au.

This Friday night CVCIA Landcare’s effort will return to Yamba Golf Course where volunteers will meet in the southern car park at 7.30pm and any interested persons are most welcome to come along.

Adult Cane Toad
Rhinella marina
Image: Australian Museum

Knitting Nannas from across NSW took their protest to Sydney on International Women's Day

United to Protect Our Water

101 Knitting Nannas from around NSW converged on Parliament House in Sydney on International Women’s Day (March 8) to protest about water mismanagement and the lack of effective government action to protect river and groundwater health. The theme of the protest was “No Water no Life”.

The Nannas came from Loops (local Nanna groups) in the Northern Rivers, Grafton, Coonabarabran, Dubbo, Midcoast, New England-North West, Central Coast, Gloucester, Hunter Valley, Illawarra, and Sydney.

The Nannas have long been very concerned about unwanted water impacts around NSW – issues which have been raised with elected representatives over a number of years.

· These include impacts on urban water catchments from coal mines - the Wallarah 2 mine on the Central Coast and the Hume mine in the Southern Highlands as well as the long-wall mining in the Illawarra which leads to massive water loss into mines.

· The North West of the state is also impacted by coal mines which use vast amounts of water – Whitehaven’s Maules Creek mine and the proposed Vickery mine.

· Then there’s the threat to groundwater from Santos’ gasfield in the Pilliga State Forest. This project is slated to extract 35 billion litres of groundwater – most of it in the first five years.

· But the most dramatic impact is the most recent – the Darling fish kills - the result of years of mismanagement and favouring of irrigators over the health of the river system.

The Nannas assembled in Martin Place where they donned their specially made t-shirts bearing a picture of a Nanna declaring “The Water Needs You” (in the spirit of the Lord Kitchener First World War recruiting poster) and their yellow, red and black suffragette-style sashes emblazoned with “No Water No Life”. 

After a group photo under the big banner (“United to Protect Our Water”), the Nannas walked to Parliament House and ranged themselves along the fenceline.  There they used their sashes to tie on to the iron railing of the fence in the manner of the suffragettes.

The brightly-dressed Nannas with their banners and their singing and chanting attracted a great deal of attention from pedestrians and those driving along busy Macquarie Street. A highlight of the street performance was the powerful rendition by Nanna Purl Stockinstitch of her poem about the death of farmer George Bender who was hounded by a CSG company in Queensland.  The Nannas hoped that the pollies in our parliament heard and took note of the effect the unconventional gas industry has had - and continues to have - on the lives of communities in gasfields.

Various politicians met with the Nannas on the footpath and were presented with their “knagging list” - the Nannas’ demands for action.

While the theme of the protest focused on the major problems with rivers and water, the Nannas demands were much broader. They included a call for immediate climate action, transition to 100% renewables, a state-wide ban on gas extraction (including in the Pilliga), proper protection of Aboriginal sacred sites and revocation of the draconian anti-protest laws brought in by the current NSW Government. 

The Knitting Nannas Against Gas and Greed are hopeful that all of the state political parties will accept their calls for effective action on these important matters. It should be noted that the Nannas, who are very concerned about the protection of the land and water for future generations, are non-party political and have a policy of annoying all politicians equally – something we aim to continue doing!

            - Leonie Blain

               Grafton Loop of the Knitting Nannas Against Gas & Greed

Tweed, Ballina, Lismore & Clarence candidates standing in the NSW State Election on Saturday, 23 March 2019

These are the Far North Coast sitting members in the NSW Legislative Assembly (Lower House):

Geoffrey Keith PROVEST, NSW Nationals MP for Tweed 

Tamara Francine SMITH, NSW Greens MP for Ballina

Thomas GEORGE, NSW Nationals for Lismore - not standing for re-election 

Christopher GULAPTIS, NSW Nationals MP for Clarence

These are all the candidates standing in the four state electorates and the positions they drew on ballot papers for the 23 March 2019 NSW State Election:

TWEED 

BALLINA 

LISMORE

CLARENCE

See: https://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/Ballot-paper-templates-for-2019-NSW-State-election

Be A Voice For The Koalas Of The NSW Northern Rivers

In the beautiful Northern Rivers of NSW there is a dark secret.

We can turn this story around for koalas if we act now. Sign the petition and be a voice for koalas 👉 https://t.co/vBHkdxIKD7 pic.twitter.com/Yq8Xbj072P

— Nature NSW (@naturensw) February 27, 2019

New South Wales State of Play February 2019: widespread drought

The bad news just never ends.

All of New South Wales is drought affected to varying degrees in February 2019, incliuding the Northern Rivers region.

https://edis.dpi.nsw.gov.au/

Loggers still breaching their environmental obligations in Northern NSW state forests

North East Forest Alliance, media release, 1 February 2019:

EPA ENCOURAGES ILLEGAL LOGGING BY REPEATEDLY LETTING FORESTRY OFF

The North East Forest Alliance is claiming there is no justice for forests after the EPA on Wednesday confirmed numerous breaches of the Forestry Corporation's Threatened Species Licence in Gibberagee State Forest (east of Whiporie) but yet again issued useless cautions and warnings rather than fines and prosecutions for these serial offenders.

"Over the past decade NEFA have exposed the Forestry Corporation committing thousands of legal breaches of their environmental obligations, with the EPA confirming hundreds more breaches in the last few months from NEFA's audits of Gibberagee and Sugarloaf State Forest", said NEFA Spokesperson Dailan Pugh.

"Yet the EPA have never taken the Forest Corporation to court, despite commitments to do so, and in January 2016 they made the political decision not to issue fines.

"With no consequences for their blatant breaches of environmental laws, is it surprising that the Forestry Corporation repeat them time and time again?

"If you or I went around illegally cutting down oldgrowth trees (hundreds of year old), clearing rainforest, and bulldozing roads through exclusions around threatened plants time and time again we would be put in jail, but the Forestry Corporation don't even get a fine.

"The EPA's regulation of the Forestry Corporation is farcical, though the biggest problem is that by their refusal to take meaningful regulatory action the EPA are fostering what Justice Pepper described in 2011 as "a reckless attitude towards compliance with its environmental obligations" Mr. Pugh said.

"On Wednesday, in response to a NEFA complaint made 2 years ago the EPA confirmed that the Forestry Corporation failed to adequately mark the boundaries of 50m logging exclusion zones around numerous individuals of Endangered heath Narrow-leaved Melichrus, and undertook logging operations and roading within their exclusion zones.

"The EPA also confirmed NEFA's complaints of reckless damage to hollow-bearing trees and recruitment trees, while also confirming that the Forestry Corporation was not following the requirements for selection of appropriate recruitment trees.

"Though we can't be sure the EPA found all the breaches we identified because the EPA won't tell us how many they found, and when the EPA invited us into Gibberagee to be show them in March 2017, the Forestry Corporation wouldn't let us show the EPA and ordered us out of the forest.

"When NEFA made its first complaint over Gibberagee in March 2017 we hoped the EPA would take action to stop the breaches, yet when NEFA did another assessment 7 months later we found the same sort of breaches were continuing unabated. We are still waiting for the EPA to respond to the last complaints.

"In October last year the EPA confirmed over 86 breaches of the logging rules identified by the North East Forest Alliance in Sugarloaf State Forest, south of Tabulam, at that time the EPA issued the Forestry Corporation with a Warning Letter for 72 and an Official Caution for 1 offence.

"The confirmed breaches included roading through a wildlife corridor, nine cases of roading in exclusion areas along streams, failure to retain the required numbers of habitat trees, and over 70 cases of serious damage to, and inappropriate selection of, marked habitat trees.

"While failure to retain the required number of habitat trees is called one offence, in practice the EPA found that they had retained 200 less hollow-bearing trees than were legally required.

"There were numerous other breaches that the Forestry got off scot free for, for example the EPA confirmed clearing within the marked boundary of the Endangered Ecological Community Lowland Rainforest but refused to take action on the grounds that because the "forest structure and species present at this location have either been totally removed or severely altered/damaged" it precluded identifying what it had been like before logging.

"The EPA chose to ignore that they and the Forestry Corporation had jointly mapped it as Lowland Rainforest some 6 months before it had been logged and cleared.

"These offences are a repeat of similar offences we reported a year earlier in the nearby Cherry Tree State Forest. Despite the EPA's assurances they were going to take legal action there for logging and roading 4.5ha of mapped Lowland Rainforest and recklessly damaging hundreds of habitat trees, they let the Forestry Corporation off scot-free.

"NEFA estimated in that operation around 1,000 habitat trees were likely to have been damaged or had excessive debris left around their bases, though the EPA justified their refusal to take any regulatory action on the grounds that while it was "likely" the damages "were as a result of harvesting operations", they were not able to prove "beyond reasonable doubt ... that the damage was [not] caused by some other means".

"There is no justice. The EPA's sham regulation is encouraging the Forestry Corporation to repeatedly break logging laws with impunity" Mr. Pugh said.

NSW Chief Scientist's interim report re Independent Review of the Impact of the Bottled Water Industry on Groundwater Resources in the Northern Rivers region was due on 1 February 2019

The NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte is currently conducting an Independent Review of the Impactof the Bottled Water Industry on Groundwater Resources in the Northern Riversregion of NSW.

As part of the review members of the Office of the NSW Chief Scientist & Engineer conducted consultation sessions in the area with stakeholders on Sunday 20 and Monday 21 January 2019.

The NSW Coalition Berejiklian Government was scheduled to receive an initial report from the Chief Scientist and Engineer on 1 February 2019.

This date, coming as it did during the period when there is a growing awareness of the ongoing ecological crisis cause by mismanagement of the Murray-Darling Basin water resources by federal and states governments, may explain why there has been no mention made by the NSW Government of this interim report in the media.

However, concerned communities and residents in the Northern Rivers region deserve to have this report made publicly available as soon as possible. Not conveniently hidden away until after the 23 March state election.

BACKGROUND

Environmental Defenders Office NSW, November 2018:

The NSW Chief Scientist & Engineer will provide advice on sustainable groundwater extraction limits in the region, as well as advice on whether the current or proposed groundwater monitoring bores are sufficient.

Local councils have been advised to suspend approving any new applications for water mining until the report is complete in mid-2019.

Since 2017, EDO NSW has been providing advice to clients in the Tweed valley who have concerns about the way in which water bottling developments are assessed, approved and enforced.

Water bottling – the extraction, processing and bottling of groundwater for sale - is controversial, as it can compete with other water users and have adverse impacts on groundwater-dependent ecosystems. These operations also generate considerable plastic waste and the water transport tankers can impact the amenity and safety of people living in rural areas.

With bottling looking set to expand in the Tweed valley, our Legal Outreach team conducted a workshop on water regulation and enforcement in the Tweed Valley to help the community understand and participate in the regulation of water bottling operations. We also drafted several letters to the local council on the approval process for bottling facilities in order to clarify the legal standards in the local environmental plan and the scientific studies needed to support a development application for a facility.  

With our assistance, our client produced a detailed report alleging ongoing and systemic breaches of development consent conditions for four local water bottling facilities and setting out the range of enforcement options available to Council. We then met with Council and briefed Councillors on their powers and responsibilities as the regulator under law. We were able to work constructively with Council to ensure the full range of investigation and enforcement options were understood and since then Council has taken decisive steps to ensure water bottling operations in the Tweed are complying with the law.

The Chief Scientist & Engineer is expected to provide his initial report by early February 2019, with a final report to be published in mid-2019.

Tourism numbers in 2017 and 2018 on the NSW North Coast according to Tourism Research Australia

Pippi Beach, Yamba, australiaswims.com.au

According to Tourism Research Australia in 2017 a total of 263,000 international tourists visited six of the seven local government areas in NSW Northern Rivers region, along with 6,145,000 visitors (including day trippers) from elsewhere in New South Wales and interstate.

Northern Rivers Local Government Tourism Profiles 2017:

Ballina (A)

Byron (A)

Clarence Valley (A)

Lismore (C)

Richmond Valley (A)

Tweed (A)

Kyogle – no data
Note: Data is based on a four year average from 2014 to 2017.

The total tourism spend in the Northern Rivers region in 2014 to 2017 was est. $1.7 billion.

In the year ending September 2018 there was a total of 354,000 international tourists visiting the entire NSW North Coast - from just above Newcastle to the NSW-Qld border and taking in Hamilton Island.

These international tourists spent a total of $246 million with an average spend per person of $696.

According to media reports there were also 5,569,000 domestic visitors to the entire North Coast region in the same period.

An est 145,000 of all tourists were backpackers, who stayed a combined total of 1.48 million nights across the entire NSW North Coast in 2018.