Time is running out for Alice Springs: the PM must act

I went to live and work in Alice Springs in 1967 as a fresh-faced city boy from Melbourne, the Big Smoke. The culture shock was profound. I was privileged to live and work and be educated in the issues that affect Aboriginal people. I played footy and took part in the Black Olympics Sports Weekend in the remote Aboriginal communities such as Yuendumu, Liam Jurrah’s community.

I was lucky to have that experience before the Whitlam era arrived, bringing with it rivers of gold that drowned tribal communities in a tsunami of alcohol and drugs. To see my lifelong old Aboriginal friends now desperately trying to rescue today’s young people from the last 50 years of wrecked communities in a Central Australian sea of hopelessness breaks my old heart.

It’s time for Anthony Albanese to take the politically correct discrimination blinkers off and send in the full forces of the ADF and civil police to save these beautiful communities from going under forever.

Time is quickly running out in Alice Springs. The next generation will be lost if he does not act quickly and act now.

John Bell, Heidelberg Heights, Vic

While Tony Abbott’s good prime ministerial practice of having his cabinet spend a week a year in an Aboriginal community was not maintained by his Liberal successors, there’s nothing stopping Anthony Albanese from doing so. And Alice Springs should clearly be his first choice of location. Everyone there – from the victims of crime, to those fighting it, to those perpetrating it and citizens just trying to live a normal life – needs more focus from a prime minister and his entourage than a flying four-hour visit. Indeed, if Albanese, along with state government counterparts, were to turn the dysfunctional into the functional, a voice referendum is rendered futile. That’s what I would call a win-win outcome.

Mandy Macmillan, Singleton, NSW

Youthful voice

Arguable cases for and against a proposed Aboriginal voice to parliament have been made but there is a question that demands an answer first to avoid the charge that proponents are engaged in pious humbug.

Why is there not already such a voice? Is it really beyond old campaigners such as Noel Pearson to find younger tech-savvy people to use Zoom and other programs that got us through the Covid lockdowns to generate discussion and consequent advice to parliament on issues that matter to Indigenous Australians?

Get it up and running. Show all Australians that it is mostly well-informed people giving sensible advice and the Yes vote for mention in the Constitution will be overwhelming instead of contested in increasingly bad-tempered tones as is now occurring.

James Guest, East Melbourne, Vic

I am becoming more confused daily. First, we are all Australian, second, it is compulsory to vote in Australia. That is, everybody over the age of 18 has a voice and it is called a vote. Third, there are a number of parliamentarians who identify as Indigenous or having Indigenous heritage, and they surely would represent their voters and speak for them. We are first and foremost Australians.

Geraldine O’Sullivan, Hawthorn, Vic

Congratulations on two wonderfully thoughtful articles on the voice by Henry Ergas (“Voice to entrench racial separatism”, 27/1) and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (“Horrors in my home town inevitable”, 27/1). One would have thought that would be the end of the argument but of course it won’t be.

Paul Harris, Mosman, NSW

The worried well

I applaud proposed Medicare reforms that improve access to GP care and avert “unnecessary attendances” that crowd already chaotic emergency department waiting rooms (“Tax overhaul the key to Medicare reform”, 28-29/1). As a stopgap, I’d also support better community health literacy to dissuade the “worried well” or the “just in case my symptoms are serious” healthcare-seeking brigade that now floods EDs. With minor cuts, bruises, coughs and colds often resolving on their own with no GP, pharmacy or ED care required, substantial savings could be achieved with a healthy dose of common sense.

As an emergency specialist, I am passionate, proud and engaged with training junior doctors in resuscitating the sickest and most injured patients. Looking after the third of minor ailment patients that clog EDs is not the core calling I spent years training for, offers minimal job satisfaction and distracts from emergency care to high-acuity patients. High volumes of GP patients that come to hospitals because the GP is “unaffordable or shut” is costly and chronically demoralising. Yes, see a GP if it’s required, but doctors still need a reprieve from patients who can safely stay home and quickly get well on their own.

Joseph Ting, senior staff specialist, emergency medicine, Mater Hospital Brisbane, Qld