Police numbers not keeping pace with Nambour growth

As a retired police officer, I wish to comment on a recent statement in your newspaper from the Member for Nicklin, Mr Rob Skelton, concerning the investment in police front line services.  

I retired from the Queensland Police Service in 2013, after 29 years service.  The last ten years of that service being at Nambour Police Station.  

There is no doubt that the new police station at Nambour is most welcome by the staff and that it was long overdue.  However, that new police station is just a building, it is the people working from that building that provide the front line services.  

As I am retired on the Sunshine Coast, there are occasions when I get to speak with former colleagues.  

When the conversation gets to staffing, they’re telling me that staff levels haven’t improved since I retired.  

That’s nearly ten years ago.  

And staff levels at Nambour certainly didn’t increase in the 10 years that I was there.  

If you take the population increase over the last 20 years and compare it against the current police numbers in Nambour some might even argue that things are going backwards.

Now, senior police managers will argue that the QPS is a mobile service and that police from other divisions can easily respond to “calls for service” in the Nambour Division.  

Very true, but where will those police go when they have finished their “job” in Nambour?  Back to their own division of course.

So that your readers in Nambour can judge for themselves if there has been an adequate investment in front line services, perhaps the Member for Nicklin could advise the following Nambour police staffing numbers through your newspaper:

• Recommended strength and actual strength for Nambour Station when Annastacia Palaszczuk became Premier in 2015.

• Recommended strength and actual strength for Nambour Station today.  

 I am of the view than the government has failed to ensure police numbers have kept in line with population increases in Nambour and the rest of the State.  

This is a criticism of the government and not of the hard-working police who have to provide those front line services.

– Name & address supplied

‘I am the poor people’: Fear, drugs, police raids in the suburbs

I’ve lived in Nambour for over 30 years, and I’m absolutely fed up with feeling wary and nervous of walking through the town, seeing aggressive and confrontational behaviours and feeling unsafe in my own damned street.  

Since druggos moved in to our once-quiet street, it has become a dumping ground for abandoned, stolen cars, daily drug deals outside my home, unsavoury characters loitering around day and night. I’ve never called the police so much as I have in the past 12 months. 

If the crime rates are down, there is a good chance it’s because people have given up reporting incidents. In our street, the neighbours down my end either don’t want to report because they fear reprisals, or aren’t home when a lot of the behaviour is happening. 

Working from my home office, I see illegal activity all day, every day. Recently a special operations taskforce raided the house in the street – scared the heck out of us to see 20-odd police in tactical gear with guns and dogs surrounding the house, loud-hailer blaring etc. 

They all got taken off to the lock-up for the night, but were soon home and back to their old tricks. If I could afford it, I’d get my family the hell out of here.

Many of us who have lived here peacefully for 10-plus years are tearing our hair out, and unfortunately we take our money outside of town in order not to have to deal with the possibility of being intimidated while we’re trying to go about our business in town.

I don’t let my parent go into town alone any more, and definitely don’t let them withdraw cash without me being there to keep watch.

Of course we have homeless people and the community readily and regularly supports those who are genuinely needing assistance. Poorly managed mental health is definitely a problem, but labelling this sort of anti-social behaviour as being a mental health problem is a convenient catch-all and not representative of people who live with mental illness and stay within the law. Neither is the ‘you’re just picking on poor people’ defence – I am the poor people!

The increase in anti-social and aggressive behaviour, in my opinion is driven by drug and alcohol dependence. A walk through town on any given day is revealing. I have wandered the streets of some of the biggest cities in the world, alone, at night, but I would never do that in Nambour. It’s so sad.

I have noticed the increased police presence lately, and welcome it with open arms. 

– Name & Address supplied

Excess mortalities: Surely this is a national tragedy

Does anyone have the sense, like I do, that apparently fit and healthy people (even elite athletes) are dying unexpectedly?  

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) calculated that in 2021, Australia’s excess mortality, that is, the percentage of deaths above the average number of deaths from all causes, was about +10.9 percent.  

Similar rises in excess mortality have been documented in most western nations over the same periods.  The Life Insurance industry, who obviously have a keen interest in the rate at which people die and the age at which they die, claims that the probability of such an event (excluding wartime) is about one year in every thousand – in other words, a rare event.  

Unfortunately, the ABS has also calculated that Australia’s excess mortality for 2022 was about +9.1 percent.  

Those with a basic knowledge of probability will readily calculate that the likelihood of two consecutive years of around 10 percent excess mortality is one in a million years – an extremely rare event indeed.  

Worse still, is that this particular burden of excess mortality appears to be falling on the young and middle aged, rather than the elderly and infirm.  

Surely this is a national tragedy.  One would imagine that deaths of this nature and on such a scale, in a country like Australia, would focus the minds of our politicians and the upper echelons of our health bureaucracies like few other matters could.  

And yet, with literally a handful of exceptions, our elected representatives and their retinue of institutions for which we pay, have studiously ignored what to some of us sounds like an ambulance siren at close quarters. 

– Donald Meyers, Palmwoods

Chemist loss the last straw in a long saga

The loss of our pharmacy in Montville is the last straw in a long saga of disappointments. We appreciate the plans to amalgamate with the Mapleton Pharmacy but …. This is a very predictable demise to what was a great service to residents of Montville and beyond. 

The first disaster was the gradual, but intentional, withdrawal by Ochre Health from servicing Montville. Many doctors who had worked there over many years chose to leave Ochre Health, setting up practise elsewhere.

The ‘Monash Model’, introduced many years ago disadvantaged Mapleton and Montville clinics assessing them the same as our large Regional town, Nambour. And a ruling that makes no sense at all has Maleny, bigger than both of them, as Rural, receiving more Government support for doctors fees. 

Many local doctors, Community organisations and patients had written submissions to Federal Gov. representatives over many years asking for a review. Our representative, Andrew Wallace’s response when his party was in power, was that it was a commercial decision made by Ochre Health … nothing to do with Govt. and nothing he could do.

It is good to see that Andrew Wallace, our LNP member is NOW leading a petition regarding the closure of our Pharmacy to the Federal Govt for review. I am sure that all Hinterland constituents will support that, but to me, this does seem somewhat disingenuous! 

Is this just a political move to curry favour with his constituents demanding a response from the present Govt, that he was not prepared to champion when his party was in power?

I am encouraged that after so many years of ignoring this inequity by the Coalition Govt, the Albanese Govt has announced a review of the Monash Model. Maybe we will be able to restore the excellent medical facilities we were used to, and our Montville Pharmacy can re-open

– Pam Maegdefrau, Montville

I’ve been fighting Montville's health battle all along

I write in response to Pam Maegdefrau’s letter to the editor to assure her and the Montville community that the fight for health and pharmaceutical services for the town has been a long one and that I continue to stand with the Montville community as we call on the Federal Labor Government to improve rural and regional incentives to address GP shortages and pharmacy closures in towns like Montville and fix the complete mess they have created by ill-considered policy.

On top of the Medical Centre in Montville’s closure in January, the viability of the Pharmacy has been put under pressure for several reasons. Cost of running a business including rising energy prices; increased rural incentives which Montville miss out on; and Labor’s controversial 60-day dispensing policy means the business has closed. All under Federal Labor’s watch.

When first approached by the Montville Community in 2019, I advocated for an exception to the Modified Monash Model to then Health Minister Greg Hunt. I have repeated this with the new Health Minister Mark Butler, asking for consideration of Montville’s unique circumstances and topography.

The Government will review the Modified Monash Model as have previous governments to use the latest Census data. Montville has been unfairly disadvantaged by lines on a map.

We have not been successful yet but we must continue to fight for the health services Montville deserves.

I know how much the Montville community means to Natalie Lindner and the passion she has to provide health and pharmaceutical services to the town. So, I understand that she has made a very difficult decision to close the Montville pharmacy. I wish her all the best in continuing to serve the Montville community from the Mapleton Pharmacy.

Unfortunately, the Montville Pharmacy won’t be the last across the nation to close due to increasing pressures in particular Federal Labor’s callous and careless 60-day dispensing policy with no understanding of its vast negative impacts. Community pharmacists warned Federal Labor that their ill-considered 60-day dispensing policy would force the closure of some small pharmacies, particularly in regional areas. But Labor refused to listen. Labor apparently knows best and so introduced their damaging 60-day dispensing policy without proper consultation or economic modelling.

Community pharmacists play an integral role in the provision of primary healthcare in Australia, particularly in rural and regional Australia. They stepped up when the nation needed them most through the Covid pandemic and they deserve so much better.

– Andrew Wallace, Federal Member for Fisher