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Your views: on ALP preselection, development, health and art

Today, readers comment on Labor pains, a changing landscape, QEH services and surrealists.

Jul 01, 2021, updated Jul 01, 2021
Photo: Tony Lewis / inDaily

Photo: Tony Lewis / inDaily

Commenting on the story: Party director quits | Candidate slams “unacceptable tactics

It is exceedingly disappointing that the SA Labor executive have not at least made a statement regarding their negligence in quotas for women in Parliament.

Ms Dawkins is a voice for the future, she deserves to be heard. Trivial angst about her membership is ironical in the bigger picture. Time for change! – Kay Herring

There is public discourse around federal seat of Spence ALP nominee, the non-aligned Alice Dawkins, whose paternal grandparents have farmed in the Barossa area since the 1880s.

Her maternal grandfather was an outstanding ALP community leader whom I knew, the only doctor in Innisfail to support Medibank in 1975, with Allan Maruff House, the Innisfail Library, honouring his name today. We ran ALP campaigns from his home. With his entrepreneurial skills he founded Nerada tea. 

Alice is well qualified to implement her vision for protecting workers of the future from tech jobs in robotics and AI. She comes from generations who have strived for social justice, used their talents to promote equality and jobs, and suffered prejudice on the Indian side. Alice speaks Chinese and Burmese. She has worked with UN Humanitarian aid in Malaysia and has ANU honours degrees in Law and Asian Studies.

She did not stay in SA  to develop a career with party office mates but instead has travelled, studied, gained work experience and now returns home (as we encourage all our young  people to) ready to serve her community. 

The problem is with factions, as ever. I have been an active ALP member since 1960 and remember that Margaret Reynolds (non-aligned) and Penny Wong both had to wait and battle for Senate seats and spectacular careers. If the Spence seat secretly/historically? belongs to the Right, why didn’t the party decision makers keep to ALP Affirmative Action policy and nominate one of their strong union women in this safe seat, named after the pioneering suffragette Catherine Spence?

With increasing information of the facts behind preselections, there will increasing support for brave Alice for Spence. – Julanne Sweeney

Commenting on the story: ‘Overbearing’ 13-storey housing block recommended for Glenelg foreshore

Whilst I agree with the commentary about development in Glenelg, I nearly choked about Charles Sturt council staying true to its values.

Most streets in Seaton have too much infill and badly approved developments, neighbours right up against fences, to the point that neighbours’ driveways are used without permission to deliver bulky goods on large trucks, often pulling down fences and trampling on gardens. Insufficient parking so streets are clogged.

New developments are supposed to occupy 60% of land but instead occupy well over 80% and built on boundaries, whereas existing properties can’t even have a decent deck or covered pergola.

It seems to be the way with most councils to cram in too many people and then collect the rates. – Bina Hannan

Commenting on the story: Cloud over possible move for women’s health services

To add to the confusion re gynaecological services at the new WCH, the gynaecologists at the present WCH are equally in a similar state of ignorance and have not been consulted at this time as to where and what the services at the QEH and the WCH will finally be decided upon.

Putting aside the important consideration of the care of patients for the moment, the personnel involved need some clarity as to their eventual fate in terms of their careers. Similarly, they need some clarity with regard to resources to deal with the workload, as the gynaecological service at the QEH is much greater than that at the current WCH.

The WCH has a backload of obsolete and out-of-date surgical equipment of $12.3m including gynaecological equipment to be financed at this very moment, with little being done to address this problem which can only get worse over the next six years before relocation is mooted to occur.

The trivialisation of a statewide plan by the words of the Minister of Health is of concern as surely a coherent plan for the care of women, babies, children and adolescents is paramount in ensuring that they receive the required services and resources of a state of the art, world class institution which the new WCH is purported by the Health Minister to be, particularly in obstetrics and gynaecology.

However we must accept that the new WCH, whilst central to the overall service, can only function if more resources are not only put in place at the current WCH now to adequately train obstetricians and gynaecologists and midwives for a seamless changeover and equally additional resources also be put into those services, which will ultimately support the new WCH, viz Lyell McEwin Hospital, Flinders Medical Centre and community services such as Domiciliary Care, mental health services, family planning and abortion services to name but a few at this present time.

As we have learnt from the RAH, a new building does not equate to a new service, which must be carefully planned and instituted beforehand rather than in the disjointed, dysfunctional and ad hoc manner it currently appears to be if the impasse with gynaecological services is an indication. – Assoc Professor John Svigos

Commenting on the story: Swimming in a sea of surrealism

Fabulous review of a great exhibition, John. Let’s hope many will make the journey to see it in COVID times. Julie Redman 

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