Top care, tough workAFTER recently spending several days in the Intensive Care Unit of the Canberra Hospital, I should like to express my admiration for and thanks to the caring teams and individuals who looked after me there. Although struggling with an overload of patients and a shortage of beds they all managed to stay bright and caring and did all they possibly could to help me.
Nancy Anderson, Hughes
Paying a fare price?
I HAVE no difficulty with J.Hibberd (Letters, July 24) ''bringing on the VFT'' provided he does it with his fare money and not my taxes. To put things in context, the London-Paris fare costs $257 for a non-VFT train. The Sydney-Canberra bus, a similar distance, costs $26, work out the maths.
John Coochey, Chisholm
Same, same but different
AS JOHN HOWARD did with real threats of terrorism, Kevin Rudd frightens voters with mystical threats of global warming. Different dog, same fleas?
Howard Hutchins, Wonga Park, Victoria.
True allegiance of APS
THE SECRETARY of PM&C, Terry Moran, has publicly reconfirmed the fact that the legal role of the Australian Public Service is to ''serve the Government of the day'', not the Australian public. For better or for worse, determinations of what is and what will be done in the public's interest is made in our system of Government by elected parliamentarians.
Public servants can go to jail if they fail to understand this legal division of responsibility within our system of government.
As these facts have been known for a long time and are set out clearly in the law, why do we go on confusing the public and play into the hands of many self-serving journalists and politicians by giving the Australian Public Service and its associated Act such grossly misleading titles?
Cut the humbug and confusion and call the APS what it really is, the Australian Government Service so everyone knows to whom it owes its allegiance.
R. Simpson, Garran
Hands off our hospice
THE ACT branch of the Australian Nursing Federation supports the stance taken by the ACT Palliative Care Society (''Society firm on keeping hospice'', July 19, p12).
The branch supports the sale of Calvary Public Hospital to the ACT Government but has expressed concerns to the Health Minister, Katy Gallagher, about the sale of the public hospital being contingent on selling the hospice.
ACT ANF is concerned about the sale of a publicly-funded, purpose-built asset being to a private company.
Given the governance issues highlighted by the ACT Auditor-General, Tu Pham, in her 2008 report on the public/private issues at the Bruce site, the ACT ANF is concerned that such issues may reoccur if a public asset is again placed in private hands.
Of additional concern is a view that only a Catholic health care run facility is able to adequately provide for the health care needs of clients accessing the palliative care services at the hospice and through home based palliative care.
Similar arrogant views have also been expressed in relation to the proposed sale of Calvary Public Hospital by Archbishop Mark Coleridge (Canberra Times, Forum, April 25), when he asserted that somehow there exists a ''mysterious value-added culture'' which only exists within Catholic health care run facilities.
Such a view denies the dedication and professionalism of a great many nurses and midwives. and is questionable within a secular society, in which public health funds are allocated to meet the needs of all.
This is especially so given the cultural and religious diversity of potential clients accessing the hospice and may act as a disincentive for clients to access this valuable service. It would also appear to be contrary to the views expressed by the ACT Palliative Care Society as reported in the July 19 article.
Jenny Miragaya, secretary, Australian Nursing Federation ACT Branch
Read between the lines
VALERIE BAXTER (Letters, July 19) quite rightly queries the rationale of the ACT Government leasing the former Griffith library building to non-library users. What motives might the Stanhope Government have in also repositioning a former library from Griffith to Kingston? The worthy arts people may have been ''encouraged'' to go to Griffith while the ACT Library Service (ACTLIS) might have been ''advised'' to take Kingston as second best. ACTLIS presumably gets a commercial lease in Kingston and to face an unstable market while the arts communities have been given tenure by a cash-strapped and credit-dependent Government. Behind all this is the Library Services Consolidation Project report of September 2006. It found Canberra's land over occupied by ''uneconomic'' libraries made partially redundant by computer technology. Griffith appears to have been such a place. It was thus closed by Stanhope as the first lamb in a sacrifice to the money-making aims implied in the thickets of Dr Lunn's prose. The closure was opposed by groups such as ours and many community-minded citizens sidelined by ACT Government's self-serving consultative procedures. Three years after the Lunn Report, what has been gained? Is the Griffith site still seen as saleable to private enterprise? Are there other sites to be ''foregone'' by libraries, community groups and arts/educational lessees for private enrichment? Will these lessees be palmed off to inferior locations or no locations? I fear for those who inherited Griffith and Kingston. The relocation and diminution process results in unsuitable library buildings, inferior stock, diminished staff and ill-served users. It appears very much on the agenda of the present government.
It will be opposed.
Bill Tully, President, Friends of the ACT Library Service, Red Hill
More to do for mums
ANYONE reading Ary Laufer's heartfelt plea to reduce maternal mortality in our region would be moved (''A plea for women's sake'', Forum, July 11).
It is indeed a damning statistic that a woman dies in childbirth or from a pregnancy complication every minute of every day over half a million women a year.
And despite Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG5) that seeks to reduce maternal mortality by three quarters by 2015, last year maternal mortality doubled in Papua New Guinea. The only way we can achieve this particular MDG is to invest in the health of mothers. A target under MDG 5 is to achieve universal access to reproductive health by 2015.
This means that all women have access to a full range of reproductive services, including pre-, anti- and post-natal care, birthing centres with trained staff, contraceptive services to help women time and space pregnancies as well as treatment of septic or incomplete abortions.
In those countries where the law allows abortion, it should be safe. As Ary Laufer notes, the death of a mother has far wider ramifications than the women herself. It affects children, husbands and the wider community.
It is critical that we treat the continuing loss of half a million women annually as a matter of urgency and direct far greater resources towards dealing with what is largely a preventable problem.
Jane Singleton, Australian Reproductive Health Alliance
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