Tax On Clubs Can Only Make Problems Worse

Illawarra Mercury

Tuesday October 25, 2005

THE Mercury on Friday (October 21) published a special report, "How Fund Cuts Are Hurting Our Needy". The next day a Sydney newspaper carried a front-page report headlined "Nowhere To Play: Hundreds of Kids' Teams Missing Out in Sports Field Crisis".

The Mercury's report centred on shortfalls in State and Federal government department funding, placing under threat the valuable work of a host of local community support organisations. It made the point that these cuts were denying support to a broad spectrum of needy Illawarra people.

The second report revealed that youngsters were being turned away from weekend sport in droves because of a playing fields crisis leaving them nowhere to play.

With the tax crisis facing registered clubs in the Illawarra and across NSW, these two community problems can only be expected to worsen.

Clubs provide cash and in-kind support to countless community organisations who support the needy and less well off. Last year it amounted to more than $100 million.

At the same time, clubs maintain a wide range of community sporting facilities, including 324 sports fields, 654 tennis courts, 338 golf courses, 203 squash courts, 1600 bowling greens, 57 swimming pools, 102 gymnasiums and 21 netball courts.The replacement value of these facilities is more than $2 billion.

These vast community contributions by clubs are under direct threat because of an unfair and unsustainable club tax regime introduced by the Carr-Egan administration and still in place. The tax escalates every September - and so does the damage it has caused and will continue to cause.

The damage list is almost endless - some of the higher profile casualties who have already lost club funding include the NRMA CareFlight Rescue Helicopter, the Starlight Children's Foundation, the Ted Noffs Foundation's school drug and alcohol counselling service, Bear Cottage, and hundreds of junior and senior sporting organisations.

The NSW Coalition under Peter Debnam has pledged to halt the tax at today's rate should it win government in the March 2007 election.

Premier Morris Iemma must sweep aside the arrogance and ignorance of the former Carr-Egan regime and put his own stamp on this community crisis by fixing it without delay.

- PETER NEWELL,

Chairman, ClubsNSW,

Druitt St, Sydney.

Illawarra Wallaby

I REPLY to John Martin (Mercury, October 17) regarding Illawarra's first Wallaby.

Illawarra Rugby's publication "The first Forty Years" records my rugby career. I have never claimed to be Illawarra's first Wallaby, Jim Miller has that accolade. John's recollection can be questioned, "The Emus" is news to me.

I quote The Rugby's News, Vol 32, No 24, August 14, 1954 -"Tonga Tourists selected this week by Mr TP Pauling and JG Blackwood".

- TOM ATHERTON,

Figtree.

Basin and harbour

WHY is it that people, particularly journalists, keep referring to Wollongong Harbour as Belmore Basin?

Belmore Basin was started in 1837, built by convicts who excavated the rock and lined the basin with the cut stone. Work to increase the size of the basin was completed in 1868.

This basin is now home to our fishing fleet, the basin walls are today in need of conservation to protect part of our early history.

One hundred years later - Wollongong Harbour was formed by the northern breakwater built in the late 1960s by Allied Constructions, Fairy Meadow. This enclosed Brighton Beach which formerly was a small cove open to the Tasman Sea.

- J McCARTHY,

West Wollongong.

Americanisation

BRIAN Jones of Shellharbour (Letters, October 20) is correct to warn about the slippery slope toward total Americanisation.

His criticism of the ALP however, is unfounded. It is impossible for the ALP, or any other party, to have people around the clock working on reading between the lines of these laws. Why? Because no-one has seen the legislation, that's why. The economic stability now under threat from Howard's neo-con zealots, can be traced back to the industrial relations accord of the Hawke and Keating years.

- HENRY JOHNSTON,

Cudmirrah.

Junkets are costly

WOLLONGONG city ratepayers should not be fooled by general manager Rod Oxley's puerile attempt to justify the council's latest junket to Macedonia by saying "The host city meets all ground costs".

That is correct but all sister city relationships are reciprocal and when the other mob arrive here we pay all their ground costs. So we are not saving anything, Mr Oxley.

- ALLAN PARRISH,

Figtree.

Terror culprits

BY participating in the invasion of Iraq, John Howard has created the environment for the insurgency to flourish, placed the lives of Australian Defence Forces at risk and provided a major recruitment and training opportunity for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Everyone knows that it has also increased the likelihood of a terrorist act in Australia. Does this mean that John Howard - and Joanna Gash who supports him, are at risk of a seven-year gaol sentence under the proposed "anti-terrorism" laws?

- MEGAN PIKETT,

Berry.

© 2005 Illawarra Mercury

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