DEAR News Of The Area, IT’S worth noting that the US/Israel war on Iran is going to affect people differently. Setting aside the effects on the Iranian people, the main effect here in Australia is that the costs of energy and food are going to go up. For working and middle-class people this is going […]

DEAR News Of The Area, AS ANZAC Day approaches, and as wars rage unabated in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, it is important to contemplate the sacrifices made by previous generations and what legacies we have inherited. Almost everyone who participated in WWII is now dead, weakening the direct link to that dark […]

DEAR News Of The Area, AUSTRALIA until recently had 10 oil refineries, but now has only two. Therefore we rely almost entirely on imports of finished products, of which we have only a few weeks of supply stored on Australian soil. The late Senator Major General Jim Molan pointed out the severe consequences of our […]

DEAR News Of The Area, Thank you Mike Hely for your article on the issues with the XPT service (NOTA 3 April Edition). I wrote in a few times complaining about this ‘non’ service and that their explanations were unacceptable. As I said neighbours actually went into the office at the Coffs station and were […]

DEAR News Of The Area, WHO didn’t appreciate the address to the nation by our esteemed leader? However, he omitted to utilise time honoured props: say Harris Tweed jacket complete with leather elbow patches, Toto in the background lazing in front of an open (electric fire), carbon free of course. No fossil fuel for Toto, […]

DEAR News Of The Area, THE proposed gifting of Lot 1 Ferry Street, Urunga to the Waterfall Way Community Land Trust, (“Community invited to have a say on Urunga’s affordable housing proposal,” 27/3), if approved, would enable one of the most ill-conceived and destructive housing developments ever undertaken in Bellingen Shire. No mention was made […]

DEAR News Of The Area, THEIR mothers were young and naive when they left Australia to marry ISIS fighters. They were barely children themselves. Allowing them to live in filth and squalor is a breeding ground for radicalisation, let alone shortening their lives due to malnourishment and disease. They are Australian citizens and above all […]

DEAR News Of The Area, AGAIN, in response to Ashley Love’s Letter of 11 March 2026, I feel it is necessary to highlight his hypocrisy regarding plantations within the proposed Great Koala National Park footprint. His last two paragraphs say it all. Koalas trump taxpayer investment in plantations, no matter what. The plantations within the […]

DEAR News of the Area, All wars are tragic, inevitably causing unnecessary death, destruction, chaos and misery, at great financial and social cost. Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter prohibits war, calling for member states to: “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political […]

DEAR News Of The Area, SINCE my teens, following the 1973 Arab oil embargo, we have been acutely aware of the finite nature of fossil fuels. And although scientists have warned that burning fossil fuels contributes to climate change for over a century, these concerns have become urgent since the 1980s. So, in Australia we […]