plight of children demands greater scrutiny
Hands up those people who found it difficult to sleep after watching the 7.30 report on ABC-TV last week.
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Hands up those politicians who lay awake planning a visit to Nauru to see for themselves what is happening to children in detention?
Now everybody put your hands together to applaud the doctors who blew the whistle to show us the consequences of children in detention. Leave your hands together and pray that those doctors will not be imprisoned for the two years , because of their revelations.
Diane Collacott, Ballarat
What "public interest"?
Public Interest Immunity: refusing to produce information "if it would be injurious to the public interest to do so." [Common Law, Sankey v Whitlam (1978)]
Operation Sovereign Borders (OSB) senior staff refused to answer questions about Immigration's paying people smugglers to turn back boats claiming "public interest immunity." By that claim, OSB asserted it would hurt the public interest less to keep Australians ignorant about possibly illegal policies and actions, and hurt the public interest more to admit: paying people smugglers; not paying people smugglers.
I cannot fathom any "public interest" that would be injured by knowing. If we're not paying people smugglers, fine; done and dusted. If we're paying people smugglers, we, the public, should be informed ... it's our tax dollars being handed to people smugglers; it's our PMs castigating people smugglers as "absolute scum of the earth" [Rudd, 2009], "evil" [Abbott, 2015]; it's our parliamentarians choosing to pay people smugglers from one hand while imprisoning them with the other.
It's *in* the public interest to be educated constituents; we should know the facts of how our representatives act so we can cast our votes mindfully. When it comes to Australia's dealing with asylum seekers, our Government exercises unlimited authority and uses power without any control or limits. This is "tyranny." [Cambridge Dictionary OnLine]
"The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant." [Maximilien Robespierre, 1758-1794]
That doesn't say much for Australia right now.
Judy Bamberger,O'Connor
NEXT STEPS
Around Ballarat we see many colourful ribbons tied onto fences. Despite the brightness, they symbolise pain and angst & I imagine there is some uncertainty as to when these might be removed. Might I suggest that these be removed at an appropriate time (untied not cut) and collated into something like a tapestry that can be displayed. The message would be that we do not forget and work toward a better future.
Peter Veal, Ballarat
I agree with Lawrie Wilson (28/1/16) about the importance - or rather lack of it - that as a society we place on dealing with climate change. Adding to Lawrie's comments, and not wishing to disparage science at all, in the current climate - literally - I can only see it as a misalignment of priorities that we are worrying about space and alien life that may or may not 'be out there' and sheer madness even thinking about putting a colony on Mars when we are methodically stuffing up the Earth.
No matter how clever we think we are, we appear to be intent on ruining so much of what should make life on Earth a sparkling, wondrous experience - environmentally, economically, ethically, socially/community-wise, spiritually, aesthetically. For example, look at the consummately ugly'big boxes' that we insist on building in our commercial areas; take away the historic streetscapes of our city and we'd be characterised by utter ugliness - in the name of what? A few cheap thrills.
Hedley Thomson, Canadian,