Your say: week beginning April 27

Every day, we publish a selection of your emails in our newsletter. We’d love to hear from you, you can email us at yoursay@theconversation.edu.au.

Monday April 27

Make better use of rural school buses

“The current national fuel supply challenge is hitting small rural and remote communities very hard. However, it presents a unique opportunity to do something very practical to help by expanding the range of services provided by rural school buses. There are thousands of rural school buses in Australia which almost exclusively now only carry school age children to and from school. When I first started teaching and driving a school bus in rural South Australia in 1967, the bus was also a courier lifeline for many farmers and others. In the morning, bread bags would be dropped at the bakery and mail posted. In the afternoon, the baker delivered orders to the buses, letters and parcels were collected as were any urgent medical supplies. During peak work times such as seeding, shearing and harvest, some groceries were also carried to save long trips into town and interruptions to time critical workflow. The same applied to small replacement parts for machinery. As well, a lift would be given when a vehicle or tractor had broken down. Reinstating very successful and valued past practices as outlined would be inexpensive, make better use of an existing funded resource, and also assist reduce the impact of the current fuel crisis on those often with the fewest options to deal with it.”

Dr John Halsey, Emeritus Professor Society for the Provision of Education in Rural Australia, Flinders University

Tuesday April 28

Do ‘baby boomers’ get too much hate?

“What annoys me is that the general consensus is that all we boomers have had it easy all our lives, that we all own our homes, don’t have a mortgage in retirement, have multiple investment properties and millions in the bank. No doubt there are boomers out there who are in that position however don’t lump us all in the same basket. Many of us are not in that situation at all.”

Elizabeth Harris

NDIS changes

“There is one central issue with reevaluating the functional abilities of any NDIS participant. Current recipients may have been receiving support for many years, and established their current functionality in the context of NDIS programs – after all, that is the aim of the scheme. It is impossible to know what that individual’s functional ability would be if they weren’t receiving NDIS support. Consequently, any decision to remove or reduce NDIS support due to a higher level of functionality is very likely removing precisely the factors which have made that functionality possible in the first place.”

Kim Ter-Horst, Cowan NSW