Credit: Megan Herbert
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We need their care
My son has endured cancer twice since COVID. It has been the battle of our lives. His battles became a team effort with amazing doctors and nurses, therapists, and our ward grandmother Merridy.
She has listened to us parents at our worse and she brings comfort to the children with little gifts and some fresh fruit. I am affected from hearing that her role is being axed. She is a lovely worker funded by charities and she looks after all of us who sit next to our children fighting unimaginable battles.
There are no words to describe her role because while her wages are paid to do some duties she goes beyond this to bring comfort to parents. She is a grandmother to all. I am deeply affected and hope for a miracle. She is the person that you don’t know you need but crave when you fight cancer.
Cancer is a personal matter when it’s your baby who is sick and the oncology team become family. Please continue making our children’s cancer centre the best the state has to offer for the most unwell.
Marlyn Torres, Cobblebank
Appalled at cuts
I am appalled that RCH is slashing jobs in the Children’s Cancer Centre.
Services such as art therapy are not a luxury, they are a necessity. As a cancer mum since 2011, I have watched not only my own child but many other children get through horrific procedures with the help of art therapy and many other dedicated ″non-medical″ staff.
If the children and families feel supported and happy, the kids respond better to their difficult procedures and treatments. The less anxiety the children have, the easier and faster the procedures are, which frees up the medical staff. It’s pretty basic. Don’t scrap the workers whose job it is to make life a little bit brighter and easier for very sick children and their families. We’re already dealing with enough stress.
Michelle Jones, Narre Warren South
Hoping for change
Succession plans seldom get mentioned during elections. If Peter Dutton loses the election will the Liberal Party drift further to the right? If Anthony Albanese loses will the Labor Party drift further to the left? Neither party wants to reform taxation, negative gearing, capital gains, family trusts etc. Maybe the teals and other independents have a successful plan for changing what needs to be changed to make Australia a fairer and better place for all. If so, one can only hope they are part of a successful minority government.
Paul Chivers, Box Hill North
Lack of vision
The Age editorial (12/4) encapsulates succinctly that neither Labor nor the Liberals are able to present a vision for the challenging times and the future. Donald Trump is an unwelcome and corrosive visitor. I am reminded of the philosopher Bertrand Russell writing many years ago, ″a certain kind of madness ... the intoxication of power ... is the greatest danger of our time (and ) contributes to its increasing the danger of vast social disaster″. While writing about philosophy, it is not hard to equate his words to today’s politics.
Judith Morrison, Nunawading
Just a boy
Who would have thought that a fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, recorded somewhere around 570BE by a Greek slave and storyteller, would be so prescient in relation to Donald Trump.
Jack Morris, Kennington
Ignoramus in office
In relation to Donald Trump’s flippancy and contrariness around the tariffs issue, it is worth remembering that the ancient Romans accorded high value to the perceived virtue of ″gravitas″ or seriousness in a leader. Restraint and moral rigour, entailing sincerity, temperateness in manner and speech and an authoritative bearing went with the territory.
Trump, and his grandstanding acolytes, represent the antithesis of this Roman tradition adhered to, significantly, by America’s ″Founding Fathers″. Educated in the classical tradition, interestingly they used the historic Roman economy as a template for price stability and free trade in the new ″United Colonies″. Crucially now, Trump projects as an ignoramus for whom historical precedent counts for little.
Jon McMillan, Mt Eliza
This is Trumptopia
There’s “utopia”, sadly unreachable. There’s “dystopia”, sadly all too present in so much of our world. And, now there is “Trumptopia” unleashing its chaotic turmoil, to disturb, disrupt and potentially destroy.
Deborah Morrison, Malvern East
Stay clear of EU
Australia’s political leaders are extremely unwise to dismiss the idea of a nuanced relationship with China in favour of free trade agreements with the EU (“Canberra rejects China proposal and focuses on EU free trade talks”, 11/4).
Under Donald Trump – and very likely post-Trump – the US is showing all the signs of a great power in decline. Trump’s unreliability as an ally is symptomatic of a development that has been in train for quite a while.
For Australia to turn to the EU as its next “great and powerful friend” is madness.
We have to get over our dependency mentality and stand on our own feet in our geopolitical region. This means educating future business leaders, diplomats, media commentators and politicians, in the languages, histories and cultures of the Asia-Pacific, enabling the country to become effectively enmeshed (to borrow Bob Hawke’s language) in networks of states in the region with related security and economic interests.
China is now the greater power in the Asia-Pacific region. Of course, like all great powers, China will assert its interests in any trade, security or other diplomatic forums. But it remains Australia’s largest trading partner. Negotiating a mature and mutually respectful relationship with Beijing should be at the top of the next government’s foreign policy agenda.
Allan Patience, Newport
What have I missed?
I am at a loss. Was White Lotus the second coming and I missed it?
Shane Gunn, Heathcote Junction
This is policy?
The Coalition’s walking back of ″work from home for public servants″ tells us a lot about what parades for substantive policy these days. None of the major parties seem to want to tackle head on the major challenges of our times. Both prefer to take a low target approach – maybe a lesson drawn Bill Shorten’s tilt at PM and not forgotten.
What will shake these parties up I wonder?
Graeme Booth, Hawthorn
Housing shame
We should feel ashamed that young Australians (say, up to 35 to 40 years of age) will not have the opportunity to own their home, probably ever. Governments have made promises regarding how they will rectify this, but these policies have been almost totally ineffective. The home ownership ratio has continued to decline due largely to a supply shortage and excess demand mainly from higher wealth/income buyers, including buyers from overseas.
I hope all aspirants for high political office in the election spell out in specific detail what they are going to do to counteract this appalling crisis. And I hope they commit to improving the housing ownership ratio by the end of their upcoming term of office.
Adrian Hassett, Vermont
Lads, can you try to sing?
Last night, after watching the football, I endured the Collingwood team mutilate the club theme song as do the players of other clubs do to theirs. Could the club presidents take the players aside and give a half-hour singing lesson to make the songs a pleasure to listen to?
Bruce Love, East Melbourne
Terror and tariff
I can only describe last week as tariffying!
Carl Harman, Strathalbyn, SA