Letter of the Week

Have strong opinions, write in an engaging way? You could win our Letter of the Week, and with it a book from our friends and sponsors, the publishers HarperCollins. This month’s book prize is The Accusation by Wendy James. A powerful exploration of the fragility of trust and the lure of the mob, from the Ned Kelly Award-winning author of The Golden Child and The Mistake.

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IT’S funny how governments can suddenly find the money when people and the media push.

Where has Treasurer Jackie Trad been hiding the funds needed to reopen rural birthing suites?

It’s almost as though Health Minister Steven Miles has suddenly realised the unquestionable need for the provision of birth facilities to be within reasonable reach of country folk.

Why was a taskforce needed, at no doubt great expense, to realise this need?

Again it’s better late than never for this Palaszczuk government whose Minister should have seen this coming.

Pro action? What’s that? KEN JOHNSTON, ROCHEDALE SOUTH

JOURNALISTS often get in trouble for revealing information that is true.

Sometimes the content is embarrassing to those who’d like to keep it secret and we may be told, rightly or wrongly, that it was being kept from the public for security reasons.

How ironic that as we discuss press freedom, we have sent a journalist to Manus Island for an issue related to that.

The man is Behrouz Boochani, a well-educated journalist who recently won a prestigious Australian literary reward. He wrote about Kurdish issues in Iran – a country that doesn’t like the Kurds or respect their human rights.

Many of his colleagues were jailed because of what they wrote but he escaped. His only mistake was coming here by boat and, as a result, he has been in squalid conditions on Manus Island for over six years.

He remains there indefinitely while politicians wrangle about what to do with him.

It is also ironic that while we dispatch Border Force vessels to intercept the pathetic fishing craft that people like Boochani arrive on, three highly sophisticated Chinese naval warships sail into Sydney Harbour unannounced and unchallenged.

Poor Boochani, he was on the wrong boat. ROSS JONES, CARRARA

I AM not a Labor voter or a union standover supporter, but I find it a bit rich that a media that has been crying for the last fortnight that the Federal Police raided them looking for evidence about the leaking of papers marked Top Secret have been crucifying a union leader for making an unknown statement about Rosie Batty without even knowing if it was a truthful statement.

Please stick to the facts and by all means jump on wrongdoers like union thugs and those that steel secret documents. ROD WATSON, SURFERS PARADISE

I NOTICED in the newspapers recently that despite the majority of the Australian community voting to have the Adani mine proceed in the recent Federal Election, despite the State Government recognising that the people want this project to proceed and have reacted to fasttrack the approvals and approve the project and many Gold Coasters

I know are now applying for jobs at the Galilee Basin, now intend to act like terrorists and shut down the Gold Coast and Brisbane.

They claim that they are simply carrying out civil disobedience like Gandhi, but as we who are older and wiser know, Gandhi’s civil disobedience never affected the normal people. He hated anyone whose actions interfered with the ability of another to earn an honest living.

No, their intentions are not that which the great Gandhi would agree with, his actions only were targeting authority, he never targeted the people.

The intended actions of these protesters is closer to those of Isis who demand we listen and do what they say or they will harm us in any way they can.

Personally I have no real problem with a person who wishes to protest to express his or her view on an issue, but as an Australian, a Queenslander, and Gold Coaster, I do have a problem with a person trying to tell me I have to do this or that, I have to stop feeding my family because they want me to, that I am an uneducated fool because I don’t believe them.

I hope our Police and State Government put a kybosh on the planned attacks on average working Queenslanders and Australians and stop these attacks before they occur.

Use the terrorism laws to stop the brainwashing sessions and terrorist training these groups hold, for the sake of innocent people. RON NIGHTINGALE, BIGGERA WATERS