ABC comes up trumps
The narrow-mindedness inherent in the ongoing accusations of bias continually directed at the ABC was highlighted by Sunday night's Logie results.
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Wins for shows in lifestyle (Gardening Australia), light comedy (Rosehaven), drama (Mystery Road, The Cry), music (The Set), and especially children's shows (Bluey) served to illustrate the broad and inclusive range of programming provided by the ABC, despite an ever-shrinking budget. This is not to mention the essential services provided by the ABC to regional Australians, in which commercial media show little interest.
Meanwhile, critics of the ABC focus solely on the national broadcaster's handful of current affairs programs as justification for their calls for budget cuts or commercialisation, ignoring the much larger body of outstanding and often unique programming the ABC provides, illustrating their own biases and a fixation on quashing any views that don't match their own.
Bob Guy, Cootamundra
Just a waste of money
Could it be that the current Royal Commission into the Nicola Gobbo affair is just a storm in a teacup and a gigantic waste of taxpayer money?
The use of informers (not 'informants') by police is an extremely effective tool in crime fighting. Certainly the quality of the intelligence gained is variable and the police have to be alert to the motives of the informer, but those are operational questions.
When the government or the judiciary start dictating to the police on operational matters, you have a breach of the constitutional 'separation of powers' principle.
The informer is simply (if the information is sound) telling the police where to look. It has nothing to do with the evidence required to put criminals behind bars, so there should be no risk of crooks she has 'dobbed in' having their convictions overturned.
Any breach of her duty of client confidentiality on the part of Nicola Gobbo is not a criminal offence.
It would be a disciplinary matter for the Bar Council, which if she is no longer practising, would have no jurisdiction to deal with it. In my view this is an overblown, enormously expensive lawyers' picnic.
Lorne Campbell, Milawa
We need resources
The cold weather isn't the only thing that puts pressure on homeless shelters, but the gap in mental health services places the whole community in danger with drug use thrown into the mental health mix.
Over the last week, St Matthew's Crisis Care has had increased numbers of vulnerable people every morning finding shelter, food and community but drug use and the lack of a crisis team puts us all at risk. It has been noticeable that increased drug use either ice or prescription drugs is making disturbed people dangerous, with a number of assaults of mental health workers and volunteers as well as other homeless people.
In urban centres, a crisis team can be called but on the Border, the lack of such a service puts the public and everyone else in danger. We have been talking about this for the last 10 years. It might take a serious assault before something is done, but in the meantime, we need to be wary and not take our safety for granted as the public and its services such as St Matthew's takes up the slack in public funding.