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This pre-dates COVID
AFL chief Gillon McLachlan speculates that the decline in children aged 10 to 14 playing community football is due to a pandemic-related issue of “kids living in their screens” (“Kids ditching footy for phones: AFL chief”, The Sunday Age, 13/3).
He fails to mention that some parents discourage children from taking up the sport because of the risk of concussion, as reported last year in your groundbreaking investigation into concussions in junior football (“Concussion causes more than a headache for community sport”, 17/9/21). Your earlier story (“Grappling with junior footy risks”, 1/3/20) reported about an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report that showed Australian rules across all levels has a higher rate of injury hospitalisation than both rugby codes and soccer combined.
Surely these health issues, which pre-date the pandemic, are part of the story.
Robert Lang, Toorak
We were given a choice
The Labor Party gave us the opportunity to do something about negative gearing at the 2019 election but too many of us thought that was a bad idea and voted for Scott Morrison instead (“Unfair housing market”, Letters, 19/3).
There’s a lesson to be learnt there, but it requires people to look beyond headlines, advertising and a catalogue of lies. Let’s see what happens this time around.
Margaret Callinan, Hawthorn
It’s not too late
The article “Changing lanes” (The Sunday Age, 13/3) provides further inspiration and impetus to improve Melbourne’s liveability and encourage people to return to the central business district.
Removing cars from the central area, bounded by Spring, Spencer, Lonsdale and Flinders streets would encourage pedestrians, bike riders and scooters back into a safe space. Using e-bikes and e-scooters for delivering goods would help remove trucks from the central areas. Combined with a congestion impost on cars to minimise traffic, greater non-car access would restore our claim to be a modern liveable city.
It’s not too late.
Denise Stevens, Healesville
We deserve better
Just as the federal Labor Party sees a glimmer of hope on the electoral horizon there is a rush for the cupboard in the back room labelled Weapons of Self-Destruction. The cupboard contains guns for shooting oneself in the foot, knives for backstabbing and a pile of dirty linen used for mopping up and smearing.
Meanwhile, an incompetent Prime Minister and his government, who have bungled every job assigned to them, can sit back and watch the carnage.
Australia deserves better than this rabble.
April Baragwanath, Geelong
Don’t leave it up to them
If there is one thing above all others to take away from the aged care royal commission’s report Care, Dignity and Respect, it is that no decisions on what care is or isn’t necessary should be left “up to aged care providers” (“Government takes aim at allied health in aged care”, The Age, 19/3).
Ruth Farr, Blackburn South
Setting a new low
Just when we thought the federal government’s lack of adequate funding and attention to aged care could not be worse, we have a new low. Aged Care Services Minister Richard Colbeck has plans to cut allied health services such as physiotherapy and podiatry in aged care homes from October.
These services, especially physiotherapy, provide relief from pain for aged care residents and are rehabilitative. To say, as Mr Colbeck does, that they are “not necessarily the most appropriate” is ignorant and even cruel. This minister has proved to be incompetent before this and needs to be replaced.
Proposed group programs do not offer the same level of relief as individual programs. Aged care residents often have a degree of apathy and depression and would not gain as much in a group program. They have very little individual attention as it is.
Jan Marshall, Brighton
It’s painful to read
After decades of cruelty to animals and evidence of law breaking by duck shooters, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews says “some of us play golf. Some people go shooting …” (“Fearful swans abandon their nests at start of duck-shooting season”, online, The Age, 18/3).
I’ve yet to see veterinarians needed on a golf course. It is painful to read attempts to defend the indefensible.
Lawrence Pope, Carlton North
No voice of experience
Stuart Robert, I assume, has never had to work in conditions that I would generously call “a dump” and despite having done so, for much of my 37 years in the state teaching system, I gave it my absolute all (“Education Minister blames ‘dud teachers’ for declining education results”, online, The
Age, 17/3).
Sure, I saw a few dud teachers in that time, but 99.9 per cent of my colleagues were highly skilled, professional educators who were not in it for the income, but the outcome.
I often said to prospective parents, don’t be fooled by the conditions of the buildings, rather get a “feel” for the way the teachers interacted and talked to the students and each other. State schools were often required to accept any student, and any teacher for that matter, without question. Private schools, certainly don’t.
For Mr Robert to make those ignorant comments smacks of aggrandisement on an offensive scale.
Frank Flynn, Cape Paterson
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