IT is great to hear that more people are visiting their local suppliers to buy smoke detectors for their homes.

No home should be without them and, in the wake of some tragic fires around the nation so far this winter, the need for the alarms should be obvious.

The Country Fire Authority is also to be praised for its approach, along with councils throughout the region, in making high-risk buildings safer in the event of fire.

Ironically, one of the buildings which was signed off only a month ago as being compliant, after certain fire safety measures were recommended and adopted, was the Cosmopolitan Hotel at Trentham.

The hotel was gutted at the weekend, but fire safety officer Brendan Brown says that without the safety measures which had been installed, the aftermath of the fire may have been much worse.

He said the measures may even have saved lives.

It must be frustrating to the owners that they did the right thing, but fire ravaged their business nevertheless.

There are many buildings throughout the region, both public and private, which host large groups of people for various reasons.

A campaign to ensure they comply with the appropriate fire safety measures is not only appropriate, it is essential.

It is a campaign which should be ongoing. It is hard to imagine why anyone would not want to ensure that such buildings meet the very highest standards of fire safety.

Latham criticisms may be more than a rant

THE Labor Party and federal opposition would be wise not to reject out-of-hand the savage criticisms this week by Mark Latham as the rantings of an angry, frustrated former party leader.

There is no doubt there is a significant element of bitterness and recrimination in the criticisms contained in a book about his life.

But denial of the fundamental reality that, at a federal level, Labor is in political strife would be folly.

If nothing else, Mr Latham's comments might serve to spark some genuine reassessment of how federal Labor can recover from one of the low points in its great history.

If they can achieve that they will not have been as worthless as some in the ALP might like to consider them.