Wake-up call not heard
DANIELLE CRONIN suggests that the community has received a massive wake-up call about the epidemic of Type 2 diabetes (''No remedy from the Coalition'', October 30, p23).
About 1.6 million Australians will be living with Type 2 diabetes by 2050, almost double the current number.
This statistic will cost the Australian community $14billion annually in direct health costs.
There is no doubt that these sobering statistics are true but I question if the ''wake-up call'' has really been heard.
When we see the consumption of liquor and junk food and cigarettes declining and the streets and parks crowded with people walking to work or for leisure, or playing sport rather than watching others play sport on TV, I will begin to believe it.
Robert Willson, Deakin
Answer to hospital woes
THE DISPUTE between John Malouf and John Coochey (Letters, October 30) as to whether the Little Company of Mary is entitled to the value of the unexpired portion of the Calvary lease (which, incidentally, might well be zero because LCM didn't pay for it, and the hospital is for public purposes, not a profit-making venture) is quite irrelevant.
The proposed payment of $77 million is for the current, depreciated value of the building, not for the ''unexpired portion of the lease'' of the land.
I (and probably most Canberrans) don't care whether LCM or the Government run the hospital; all we object to is taxpayers paying this $77 million for a building we've already paid for, a rather hefty price to pay to fix ''an accounting problem'' (Katy Gallagher, ''Church attacks Calvary 'Secrecy', October 31, p.2)! It's really amazing that a government would go that far merely to fix an accounting problem (the problem being that, on paper, the Government doesn't actually ''own'' the hospital), when there's a much simpler, less expensive way to do it viz., to make the capital element of future annual grants to LCM expenditure on behalf of the Government, giving the Government ownership of the assets that expenditure produces.
As the donor, surely the Government can do this.
And I see nothing in the documentation about Calvary, including the agreement with LCM, to prevent it.
R.S. Gilbert, Braddon
Relax on human rights
ARE WE all becoming a bit precious about supposed breaches of our human rights?
(''Lawyers blink at prison eye scans'', October 30, p1) I have just returned from a holiday in Japan and on arrival at Narita Airport I was photographed and finger printed.
If I had objected I expect I would have been put on the next plane out.
On my return to Australia I was also photographed.
Is there a difference?
Janet Thompson, Garran
Polls not showing reality
IT IS interesting to note that despite the enormous lead the ALP has over the Coalition in the NOP polls, the letters pages in both The Australian and The Canberra Times, thanks to unbiased editing(?), would indicate that there are almost equal numbers lauding the Government as opposed to those who are severely critical of its lack of fortitude in making really hard decisions and failing to fulfill all pre-election promises.
Little or no publicity has been given to the results of more than 100 reviews etc set up after the election. Despite published opinion polls it would seem that there is a reasonable percentage of the electorate who are dissatisfied with this Government and that the polls are not actually reflecting the overall sentiments of the nation.
N. Bailey, Murrumbateman
Smart spending
SET FORTH the hue and cry some ATM operators are putting their hands in our pockets and there seems to be nothing you can do about it.
Cashcard, in particular, can force people who use some of their ATM's to withdraw money in smaller amounts.
Let's say you want to withdraw $1000.
Some machines require two withdrawals of $500, some require five withdrawals of $200.
Each one of these transactions cost you $2.
So rather than the ATM fee costing 0.2 per cent of the withdrawal value (using my example above), you are charged 0.4 per cent ($500) or 1 per cent ($200).
When I contacted Cashcard to discuss the issue, I was told to ring my bank (it has nothing to do with my bank, they are not imposing the fee, Cashcard is.) Then Cashcard tell me that I chose to take the funds out and pay the fee each time.
Technically true, but Cashcard chose not to give me the money in one transaction.
So, I call a general call to arms, withdraw funds from EFTPOS terminals when making purchases or use your bank's branded ATM (most don't charge the fee for their own customers).
Let's tell Cashcard and companies of their ilk who wish to take such scandalous advantage of ATM users, ''thanks, but no thanks!''
W.J. Orlandi, Bungendore
A waste of time
THE STATEMENTS made in your article ''Fears on school seminars'' (October 30, p1) are a gross exaggeration.
As a student of Canberra High who was present at the seminar in question, I can see how the statements made by the speaker could be misconstrued as being homophobic or discriminatory. The speaker was a little too vocal on pornography as an addiction, and he mentioned that looking at ''conventional'' heterosexual pornography could lead to viewing more unusual material, which could include homosexuality and bestiality.
There were no statements made to the effect that sexual abuse was the fault of the victim.
But what should really be the point here is that after having the dangers of sexually transmitted infections and drug use drummed into us since primary school, do we really need to be dragged out of an entire class so some guy can preach to us about topics that we already know?
J. Sheaves, Page
Indonesian 'solution'
AS A FEW hundred Tamil refugees are refusing to be jailed in Indonesia for seeking asylum and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd keeps insisting they will not come to Australia, there are another 88 family groups who are coming to Australia.
They have been in Lombok since Howard turned them away in 2001, we have paid $27 million to the International Organization for Migration to keep them there in appalling conditions and now they are coming here because of an admission that they cannot be protected in Indonesia.
Indonesia's president is in the process of lining young Australian's up in front of a firing squad, the Balibo Five and Roger East's murders go without justice, millions of Indonesians live in dire poverty, 183,000 East Timorese were murdered while we watched and West Papua is being systematically ethnically cleansed.
Yet we still claim that we have the right to lock up victims of war in this place.
Marilyn Shepherd, Kensington, SA