DEAR News Of The Area, YOUR regular correspondent, John Blackbourn, wrote at length (The Write Direction, ‘Dreadful decisions’, Page 12, 22/10/2026) about his abhorrence of recent judicial executions in the USA. My only information about these comes from the usual news reports, highlighting the prolonged suffering of the condemned through technical problems and, in one […]
DEAR News Of The Area, FROM October 1, businesses across Australia can no longer add a surcharge when customers pay by Visa, Mastercard, eftpos or American Express. The Reserve Bank says the change is designed to make pricing simpler and more transparent for consumers. But there is a very obvious question that needs to be […]
DEAR News Of The Area, I WRITE in response to your article, “Hanson loses appeal over ‘seriously offensive’ tweet”, (NOTA, 29/7/26, Page 2). Senator Pauline Hanson’s so-called “seriously offensive and racist comment” was made in reply to Senator Merheen Faruqi’s extraordinary and disgraceful statement on the day our late Queen died. Ms Faruqi had described […]
DEAR News Of The Area, A CONVERSATION with an Uber driver on my way to Brisbane Airport got me thinking about where Australia is heading. We talked about youth crime, housing, cost-of-living pressures and immigration. I came away wondering whether our political debate focuses too much on who to blame and not enough on what […]
DEAR News Of The Area, THE NSW Government’s proposed changes to bag limits for snapper and yellowtail kingfish should concern every recreational fisher in this state. Once again, recreational fishers appear to be the easiest target when the Government wants to be seen to be doing something about fish stocks. But where is the evidence […]
DEAR News Of The Area, THE perceptive among your many readers must have noticed my letter regarding the fire risk posed to Dungog township by the Dungog Common. I have since had local folks saying, “Yes, that needs to be attended to”. However, I have had an e-mail from the Office of the Assistant Deputy […]
DEAR News Of The Area, A SIMPLE Google search for correlation between increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature shows that Wayne Dunesbury’s contrary assertions (“At least we agree on something’, NOTA 21/8/26) are nonsense, unless tens of thousands of scientists worldwide over the past 50 years have been wrong. Given that we have passed peak […]
DEAR News Of The Area, AS someone born in Burma (now Myanmar) I understand the value of democracy in a way that many people fortunate enough to grow up in a democratic country may never experience. I spent 15 years of my life involved in the struggle for democracy and basic human rights under a […]
I COULD be wrong but, in my humble opinion, it would appear that Labor, Liberals, Greens and Teals seem to be behind woke communism, using schoolkids to march against Australian democracy. This may send Western society broke and cause civil war. Regards, Mick Edgar, Nelson Bay.
DEAR News Of The Area, IT puzzles me that no-one seems to be alert to a really obvious (to me at least) risk that is staring all of us, who live in and near Dungog, in the face. That risk is the possibility of a bushfire coming out of the Dungog Common. I am not […]
