Bongs, needles and drugs in the new prison (''Needles, bong in new jail already", June 18, p1)? Surely not! I jest, I would be more surprised if there were not these items in prison.
Given most of the population in prison (80 per cent) have had drug use in the previous 12 months before incarceration, that prison brings inmates together who encourage the use of drugs, and the innate failure of prison systems and staff at every prison in the country to stem the flow of contraband, it is really hardly surprising that we have drugs in the Alexander Maconochie Centre.
Security systems, training, support and every process possible may try to stop the culture of drug use in prison, but unfortunately the human condition will usually find a way to make infallible systems fallible.
The prison culture will exist and prosper, despite the efforts of Corrections Services to stop it.
There are indeed no easy answers, but a needle and syringe program, which is accessible to all inmates in the prison, will go a long way to limit drug-related harm for the future. Hepatitis C is spread through sharing injecting equipment, through infected blood. The effects of hepatitis C can be lifelong and wide-ranging.
Needle and syringe programs are widely available to all the Canberra community. They provide access to free or low-cost, sterile injecting equipment.
This service should be available to everyone, especially those who need it the most, those in our new prison.
We can't, obviously, stop the flow of drugs into our prison, but we have the resources to make it safer.
This is what human rights is about.
Carol Mead,
executive director, Directions ACT
To the surprise of no one, the Stanhope-Hargreaves team's Labor formula for a drug-free prison has skidded.
The Opposition Liberal team driver, Jeremy Hanson, who can't wait to get behind the wheel, is all for slamming his foot harder on the brakes (''you've got to eliminate'' drugs).
He even makes the call in the name of rehabilitation.
This sounds like good politics because it's sure not based on good evidence. If reduction in crime and rehabilitation are made hostage to overcoming addiction we are bound to crash. The games that politicians play with people's lives.
Bill Bush,
Turner
A PAPER TIGER?
The National Capital Authority is powerless to stop construction of Canberra's second largest building (''NCA unable to halt new ASIO building'', June 18, p7), although we had all assumed that planning the Parliamentary Triangle was its raison d'etre.
Now that the NCA has stopped aggravating the ACT Government over where Floriade is located, how many people can live in Pierce's Creek and whether the SIEV X memorial to 353 deaths should exist, we must all ask what the NCA actually does.
It surely cannot be just about the NCA's unique interpretation of the risk to rowers of blue green algae on Lake Burley Griffin?
David Bagnall,
O'Connor
A GREMLIN IN THE WORKS
Will the prominent central siting of ASIO's headquarters in Anzac Park East ensure that it will forever be known as Australia's ''Gremlin''?
After all, there are many who feel it will represent a ''bug'' in Griffin's works and grand boulevard plan!
P.M. Button,
Cook
FIGHTING TERRORISM
Joseph Wakim (''Dangers of G'day visit to Israel'', June 17, p11) makes some very good points about Julia Gillard's forthcoming trip to Israel.
But I fear he has misunderstood what the trip is really all about. Gillard is the Deputy Prime Minister of a country which is prominent in the struggle against all terrorism.
She is going to lead a government delegation to the Australia-Israel Leadership Forum, and attend a gala dinner in Jerusalem's King David Hotel. There is no better building in which Gillard could flatly restate Australia's commitment to fighting terrorism. It was in this hotel that modern terrorism began on July 22, 1946, when Jewish terrorists blew the place up and killed 91 people. That is, they killed more than Australia's 88 dead in Bali, and about four times Australia's dead from the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001.
Gillard could not possibly miss the contrast between Australia's glittering celebration of itself in the King David Hotel now and the long-ago cascade of bloody rubble on the same site, which began many processes not yet ended and not limited enough to leave Australia unscathed. No doubt Malcolm Turnbull, on behalf of all anti-terrorist Australians, will point out that a Deputy Prime Minister's every speech on such an official visit could not fail to mention this.
G.T.W. Agnew,
Page
FREEDOM IN ISRAEL
To read Joseph Wakim's rant ''Dangers of G'day visit to Israel'' (June 17, p19), you'd never know that Israel is the only full democracy in the Middle East, or that all of its citizens, Jewish or otherwise, have full and equal rights.
Wakim claims Israel's Knesset approved a bill outlawing the Palestinian commemoration of their ''Nakba'' on Israel's independence. In fact, the bill was defeated at committee level and never even made it to the Knesset.
Wakim condemns Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and Benjamin Netanyahu's parameters for a peace deal, but would obviously prefer to ignore that every Israeli effort at making peace, be it a withdrawal or a negotiation, has been met with Palestinian terrorism.
Instead, he prefers to make offensive analogies between Israelis and Nazis. To his similar discredit, he also refuses to accept that Jews, as well as Arabs, are indigenous to Israel.
Israel is the Middle East country with which Australia has the most in common, and the one from which Australia can learn the most in important areas such as hi-tech and water preservation.
In contrast, most of its neighbours are repressive dictatorships with appalling human rights records. Yet Israel is the only one Wakim objects to our politicians visiting.
Jamie Hyams,
Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council South Melbourne, Vic
LEGAL CENTRE FUNDS
The article ''Cuts forced on legal centre staff'' ( June 18, p8) reports that ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell said the centre's real complaint should be with the Commonwealth, which ''slashed'' its funding to the centre from $200,00 to $70,000.
This claim is incorrect. To correct the record, the Commonwealth has maintained its funding to the centre, providing $190,000 with indexation in 2009-10. The Commonwealth has also provided it with additional one-off funding of $202,000 in 2008-09 and $70,000 in 2009-10 to assist it in providing these important services to the ACT community.
These funds are part of a $48 million package of additional Commonwealth funding for legal assistance programs across Australia to address immediate pressures on the legal assistance system.
Robert McClelland,
Federal Attorney-General
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
The ANU study quoted in ''Sorry Hassan, the job goes to Andrew'' (June 18, p1) reports significant differences in job interviews offered to applicants with different ethnic minority names.
The question this raises for me is: Who is doing the discriminating and on what basis?
The study reports a discrimination in favour of Anglo-Saxon names, and presumably this implies those involved in the recruitment process are biased towards recruiting people with those names. This would make sense to me if all those involved in the processing of applications were of Anglo-Saxon background. But given the diversity of the labour market, and the variety of the industry groups sampled, I think this is unlikely. That there is a significant difference in recruitment responses to ethnic minority group names and Anglo-Saxon names seems clear. What is not clear to me is, given an assumed ethnic diversity within the broad recruitment population, why this is so?
Iain Carruthers,
Campbell
CAUTION IN TEHRAN
It is gratifying that while many in the West would like to see the protests in the streets of Tehran turn into a serious challenge to the conservative regime's authority, your editorial adopts a more measured approach to the events (''Tough decisions for Iran's rulers'', June 17, p10).
The defeat of the presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi may have been the catalyst for the unrest, but the root cause of the protesters' frustration is the failure of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to deliver economic prosperity to the people.
It should come as no surprise that whatever decision the Iranian Guardian Council arrives at to pacify the demonstrators, one may be assured that the regime's survival will be its top priority. It would be a grave mistake if there was outside interference in Iran's internal affairs. The authorities would stop at nothing to protect the Islamic republic's founding principles; and nothing would be gained if the streets of Tehran were stained with the blood of innocent people. Remember Tianamen Square.
Sam Nona,
Burradoo, NSW
WORKERS OF IRAN UNITE!
A workers' revolution in 1978-79 in Iran overthrew the Shah. Workers set up shoras, or democratic workers' councils, which vied for power.
The Islamist forces then defeated this revolution because the left wing rejected the idea of socialism for Iran and aligned themselves with their class enemy, the ''progressive'' bourgeoisie.
Today the way forward for the revolution in Iran is for the working class to rise again and make its own demands for democracy and freedom. These can only be won through industrial action. Only strikes today, especially among oil workers, can destroy the present dictatorship. In doing that the working class must learn the lessons of the last revolution and not hand power to their enemies but push on to establish their own democratic organs of rule and take power.
John Passant,
Kambah
GIVE POWER BACK
To an outsider visiting Canberra it is bemusing to see people in the ACT Assembly wanting to take the law into their own hands on such things as same-sex ''marriage''. Reducing the voting age is apparently another revolution waiting to happen.
In relation to marriage in particular, the sovereign states, with about 95per cent of the nation's population, are quite happy to leave such things to the Federal Government.
Perhaps it would be better for the ACT in particular and Australia in general if self-government was taken away from Canberra and control of the federal capital given back to the Federal Government.
David Morrison,
Springwood, NSW
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