We are now on the very edge of a council area the size of Tasmania.

What hope have we of getting esential services now?

Our council will simply be eaten buy the much larger city type council we are now a part of.

For the area of our last council we will be lucky to have one councillor.

The fact that a premier can destroy the fabric of regional Queensland against the wishes of the majority of people living there should be enough proof that Queensland is being run by a dictatorship of the 40 odd seats in the Green zone stretching from Noosa to Coolangatta.

Beattie sucks the economic lifeblood out of regional Queensland to be spent on footbridges across the Brisbane river and then he declares the regions unviable.

Beattie has failed as an administrator of local government just as he has failed with every other area of human need, like health and water.

There will be no end to the way regional Queensland will be bled dry into the future by the suburban thugs in the green zone unless state boundaries are redrawn to make the green zone a city state and the rest of Queensland another state.

We are now being persecuted by a dictatorship.

All the so called "advertising" before the amalgamations needs to be seen for what it was - brain washing or, in polite terms, propoganda.

This has been going on for some time and people need to be aware of what is happening.

We have numerous pieces of legislation where we are "consulted" but ignored, have no say, no comeback, and now no referendum.

We have numerous pieces of legislation where we are guilty until proven innocent - going against the main pillar of democracy.

God save Australia if the Labor Party are elected federally this year.

When we had the Pioneer Shire, the country roads were kept in reasonable repair; we now have exceedingly poor roads, in general, both in the city and country. This in spite of a $100 p/a road levy.

The current council, even though we have rural divisions, has become city centric and big look-good, feel-good, arty-farty projects are the ones that get off the ground at the cost of maintaining essential infrastructure.

With the amalgamation of Sarina and Mirani Shires into the Mackay Shire, will we see a further decline in rural services?

After the first three years, will the bean counters centralise the Sarina and Mirani works depots back to Mackay?

Will we see the employees from these depots find it impossible to continue to be able to work for the council because of the distance they have to travel to work?

The bean counters will claim economy of scale, but will this really happen?

Even retaining the rural divisions and reducing the number of councilors will not prevent the likelyhood of producing another city-centric council that will produce show pony projects.

I now understand why city residents buy 4X4s. The suspension of these vehicles survive the suburban and even arterial roads better than sedans. It is nothing to do with posing.

As an example. When the next prolonged wet season comes, and it will some day, due to poor preparation and the poor state of the roads, the amount of damage they sustain and the damage bill will be vastly higher than it should be.

Surely, Peter Beatty has another hidden agenda in enforcing these amalgamations.

I wonder what it is!

As Mr Beattie said, bush people are normally well mannered so this time he has really upset them.

Queensland is suffering a communistic type government, with no say in the large changes that have been imposed on it since this government came to power.

Consultation is a joke; the agenda is preset before the community confronts the departments public service.

This time there was not even pretend consultation and the people will not forgive.

I hope they remember that Rudd is from the same party as Beattie.

The Govt only had the report a few hours and it was in as a whole with no consultation.

The ones who wrote it are all city-ites and have no idea of the pride bushies have in their town and their shire and of course they are fearful that they won't get any service now.

Small towns like Ilfracombe, where the council owns the shop and the PO because they would have closed without that council support, won't have a voice now Longreach is to take over the whole area.

Pity the rural shires whacked into Toowoomba where they will never see their rates spent in their area again.

This is just not democracy and that pathetic little Frazer saying councils will be sacked if they listen to their voters is the last straw.

I almost feel sorry for Rudd as he will wear a lot of this at the election.

The protest is occuring at 10:30 am on Friday 3rd August, at the SouthBank Parklands in Brisbane.

To date, the only website that I have found to mention this news-worthy event is the Noosa Shire Council, which initiated the event.

This media-silence thus leaves the vast majority of Queenslanders unaware of the occurence of this important event, which may well be the last chance for the "little people" to have a say.

Noting that opposition is growing to the government's forced amalgamation of councils; why can't the people of this state have the right to vote Yes or No?

It is up to us all to let our members of parliament - especially government members -know that we're not happy.