Change unlikely to come to the public service

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Change not going to come
Ombudsman Deborah Glass in her report says that nothing will change without a recognition at the highest levels of government that change is necessary. In light of Premier Jacinta Allan’s dismissive comments on the report and Daniel Andrews’ bewildering reaction to it, at this point, a change seems unlikely.

George Greenberg, Malvern

Same old story
There is nothing new about the politicisation of the Victorian public service. Overt political appointments to senior public service positions occurred under the Kennett government in the 1990s at a time when from the top down, public servants who gave frank and fearless advice could forget about positive performance evaluations or promotion.
Ministers made it very clear what advice they wanted, and that was what they got. Hence, wasteful restructures of departments, sell-offs of government assets and extensive use of consultants.

Daniel Cole, St Albans

Soul-destroying admin
Nothing could be better said (Letters, 9/12) regarding teaching. The time-wasting nonsense that we had to put up administratively (in my case, in the university sector) was soul-destroying and counter-productive. We weren’t there to fill out perfect forms, we were there (devotedly) to educate.

Peter Drum, Coburg

Now, here’s an idea
Melbourne traffic gurus are concerned about gridlock. Part of this is from so many cars with just a single person in them.
Here’s an idea: if people are all going to the one place, they could share a car. We could call it, I don’t know, maybe carpooling.
If so many were going to the same place, we could have a bigger car. Let’s call it a bus for want of a better word. We might even let these buses have right of way and their own lanes. Imagine if we combined these buses together and even gave them a separate space to travel. Silly idea really.
These new fangled trains on their own tracks travelling faster and taking on more passengers as they go, will never catch on.

Greg Tuck, Warragul

Consider the post
Australia Post would earn more money if it stopped closing branches. Recently, a large and busy branch at the Brandon Park Shopping Centre in Wheelers Hill was closed. It was a great post office with lots of useful things like children’s books, gadgets and gifts as well as the normal letter, bill-payment and parcel services.
This is a significant loss to the community who now have to travel a lot further to find a post office.
Some $255 million was casually allocated by Home Affairs to security services to maintain monitoring of the 140 non-citizens released from indefinite detention. The $200 million cost to run Australia Post, a service that benefits every person in Australia in every part of Australia, seems comparatively trivial.

Di Cousens, Upwey

Welfare should be first
As another $3 billion is about to be tipped into US shipyards, NDIS is being squeezed further, not to mention cost of living rises and other needs to survive with dignity. I cannot see how American shipyards will help the homeless, or those who cannot afford to live on welfare.

Rita Camilleri, Strathmore

It’s not all clear
Can we stop using the lazy abbreviation ″⁣nuclear″⁣ for conventionally armed but nuclear-powered submarines that we seem hellbent on acquiring at truly
eye-watering cost from the
United States?
The next, extremely short, world war will be fought with nuclear arms, not nuclear engines.

Tony Haydon, Springvale

A word at its worst
In its discussion around its ruling on unlawful indefinite detention of people in immigration detention, the High Court used the term preventive detention. Now, our politicians and others insist on using the cumbersome term, preventative detention. Why this insistence on unnecessarily extending a perfectly good and understandable word, preventive.
There is no such word as preventate, so how is preventative logical? Should we now start using words like collectative, selectative and so on?
Are we eventually going to have preventativisationalistical?

Ian Young, Glen Waverley

Our duty to the young
I read your words, Tony Wright, (″⁣Worse is stolen from children than the sea″⁣, 9/12) and tears fill my eyes. So many children, so much grief, so much hatred.
We fear, rightly, the ravages of climate change yet are faced with a world full of such despair and horror that hope for the future is rendered almost impossible.
And yet, for the sake of our grandchildren, for the sake of our shared humanity, we must hope against hope that ″⁣the oldest story″⁣ of revenge and death you describe so vividly will not prevail.

Miriam Gould, Malvern

Teach your children well
The bad behaviour of children and some adults cannot be blamed on teachers and society. Manners and respect are supposed to be taught to us by our parents in the home.
That is one of the biggest responsibilities of parents to help their children grow into good people and members of society.
To expect teachers to take on the role of parents and social workers is just a cop-out for those who don’t seem to want to make the time in the family to create well-adjusted children and adults.
Also children need to be taught resilience – that not everything in life is perfect. It’s a question
of balance.

Nola Cormick, Albert Park

Unintended outcome
Does blocking a freeway generate more CO2 due to increased travel times, stop-start commuting and increased congestion?
It defeats the purpose of climate change protests.

Terry Parker, Maffra

UN as a toothless tiger
I am frustrated with the lack of action by the United Nations in the Israel-Hamas war.
It is always comforting to hear that the UN is involved, but is it a toothless tiger, only reporting the injustice of the war but not doing anything about it?

Julie Ottobre, Brunswick East

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