LETTERS: Pitt should offer jobs with cashless card

SO KEITH Pitt and his government want to force the Cashless Debit Card on the Bundaberg unemployed.

If he thinks this will make him look good in the eyes of all Australians, then he is mistaken.

It will be telling the rest of Australia that jolly old Bundaberg is one of the few places that has such a bad drug and gambling problem that it has the need for the cashless card.

He says most of Bundaberg residents want the card.

Bundaberg, from what I hear, is no worse than any other Australian city where drugs and gambling abound.

Not all children who beg for food come from such families.

I have heard of children from families of working parents who are so far extended financially that their children ask for food.

The cashless card is not going to ensure that these children will be any better off.

In these uncertain times, some of those supporting the cashless card could suddenly find themselves on it if they become unemployed too. I wonder if they would enjoy it.

This card is so unfair to the majority of recipients who are either raising young families alone or can't find employment.

The stigma of being branded a druggie or gambler who doesn't know how to save or look after their children will stick them also.

What about all the young school leavers and uni graduates who have been unable to find work in Bundaberg? Why punish them?

For every person Keith Pitt issues with this card, he should also give them the offer of a job.

Tourism and minor industries by themselves are not enough to have jobs for all our unemployed.

He should be trying to get some factories and a cannery for Bundaberg.

A cannery would take care of all the excess tomatoes.

We have a lot of produce growing here that could support a cannery, creating a lot of jobs.

So, Mr Pitt, a little compassion for those less fortunate than yourself, please.

- Betty Lowis, Bundaberg

EXCESS BAGGAGE

FIRST of all we get rid of Barnaby Joyce, who came with more baggage than Strandbags, as deputy prime minister.

His ego finally collapsed and he resigned, not from parliament mind you, just the front bench position of the second highest office in Australia.

That situation took two weeks of intense publicity and massive opinion polls to eventuate.

The fact that none of the hierarchy of the Nationals pulled the rug out from underneath him shows to me that they did not care about the dignity of the office that he held, they just wanted to show that they weren't going to be pushed around or, to use the current favourite term, bullied, by the majority of the country.

Common sense finally prevailed and Barnaby is gone.

Of course, now that that has happened, we are supposed to forget about the more serious allegations outside of his sex life - they just drift into oblivion.

So the leadership and, I use that term loosely, is vacant.

Time to turn over a new leaf that will bury the past.

So what do we do?

We elect a new leader in Michael McCormack, a dignified looking individual.

All seems rosy in Nationals land until we find out that our new deputy prime minister comes with highly controversial and offensive baggage due to editorials he wrote as editor in Wagga Wagga.

Once again the office is tarnished.

Surely this party can find someone within its clutch that doesn't have baggage.

But it's too late now, we are all supposed to greet the new messiah as our saviour, that is according to the parliamentary members who don't have enough nous to investigate fully the bona fides of a candidate before electing him.

Maybe they all have skeletons hidden in the cupboard, who knows.

- C. Brown, Burnett Downs