DO WE REALLY CARE?

Developments in the past week in two subjects which affect the South Burnett
have hardly caused a ripple of reaction.

Our story last Tuesday, 'Drug needle alarm', outlined Wondai Shire Council
concerns about the Needle Availability Program operated by Queensland Health
under which 1800 kits of five needles are made available a month in the
South Burnett, 20 per cent of them through public hospitals, the balance
through chemists and doctors.

Only three people responded to the South Burnett Times in the past week, two
regular letter writers and the other a parent of primary and high school
children wanting to put on record his experiences with trying to get a drug
situation made public.

Acquaintances of some editorial staff members "tut-tutted" and expressed
verbally their displeasure at the drug story - even the Wondai Council
preference for a needle exchange system over the Needle Availability Program
with no return of used needles.

But, despite the shock and horror expressed in private about nurses, doctors
and chemists being forced to take part in a scheme of supplying the
implements whereby drug users break the law, only three people have had the
courage or the concern to go public.

Do we really care?

Do we care that, according to concerned Wondai Council member Graham Pollock
that the nurses are directed to hand out the needle packs, no questions
asked and "don't look them in the eyes because this is regarded as harassment"?

Do we care that medical services in the once quiet, relatively serious
crime-free and conservative South Burnett are coerced by Queensland Health
into encouraging drug-taking and law-breaking.

Do we care that Queensland Health promotes what to many is a heinous service
when most of us favour helping drug addicts rather than helping them kill
themselves?

Our reports and several editorials in recent months about the threat to our
timber industry from the Regional Forest Agreement process has likewise
drawn little response apart from that of Wondai Council and other civic
leaders of the region.

In all honesty can we say that mills such as that at Wondai becoming
uneconomic and the jobs of timber workers across the region being lost or
severely reduced does not worry us?

Do we want to see the timber industry, which puts so much into our economy
lost, going the same way as others on which the region was founded.

Are we so complacent, happy in our own little world of materialism and
self-comforts, in our "I'm all right, Jack" syndrome that we have lost
interest in the future of the region in which we live and work?

It is to be hoped that this is not the case! Let's see some action. Plague
the politicians with petitions of concern on either or both these subjects.
Plague the newspaper with your written thoughts on both these issues.

But do something. Show we do care!