A terrible injustice has been perpetrated on the volunteers we have in our community.
On June 11, the section 63 long-stay car park in Civic went into private hands.
Immediately, the owners refused to honour government-issued parking permits for that area.
At the Volunteering Expo last month, I was amazed at the number of volunteer organisations here. I was impressed by the police volunteers who I spoke to at the expo and by their professionalism and enthusiasm.
They perform a great service. Every hour they support the police means one more hour police can devote to law enforcement and community safety. These volunteers can't afford the $8 daily parking fees. They have to think twice about helping out because of the costs. Their good deeds in the Civic Police Station are about to come undone, due to the failure of our elected ministers, to honour the commitment to enable these volunteers to use their long-stay parking permits in that park. Where was the consultation? What is the Government going to do about this?
Gordon Akhurst, Macgregor
Men are victims too
Louise Taylor et al (Letters, July 3) perpetrate the myth that women are the only victims of domestic violence.
Reminiscent of a 1986 Office of the Status of Women campaign which claimed that a third of women would have experience of domestic violence, based on United States data. True, but that study showed half the experience was as perpetrator. A result repeated by scores of studies worldwide.
The recent Australian Bureau of Statistics Peoples Safety Survey showed that in about 30 per cent of partner-to-partner violence the woman was the perpetrator. The previous 1996 study had not looked at men as victims and only reluctantly looked at female-to-female violence.
Taylor also demands all men take personal responsibility for that of a few. So presumably she takes half the responsibility for the alleged case of the two children starved to death by both parents.
This, of course, excludes the case a few years ago of the woman who gave up her son for open adoption. Later, on a contact visit, she knifed him to death.
Interestingly when an Institute of Health and Welfare study found the majority of child abuse was done by women the study was not repeated, a case of ''all the news that fits we print''. Taylor urged men to realise that domestic violence is not just a women's issue.
Well, yes.
John Coochey, Chisholm
Mistaken solution
Libby Cremen of Families ACT (''Protecting children may prove costly, but it's essential'', June 30, p17) said removing children from families, even in circumstances similar to those associated with the child deaths and gross neglect reported in recent weeks, should only occur when all other options have been exhausted.
She did concede, given the many intractable causes of family breakdown from mental health problems and associated drug and alcohol abuse to poverty, housing stress and isolation, that her solutions from maternal health nursing through to intensive and holistic family-specific support over many years, wouldn't be cheap.
You can say that again.
But, if we start removing more childrenand standards are applied consistently, we need to remember why those Aboriginal generations we apologised to got stolen in the first place.
This'll all go back in the too-hard basket.
Tom Waring, Ainslie
Belt up on the bus
Betty Frank (Letters, July 4) listed things that keep people off buses.
She omitted one that concerns me.
I personally don't ride buses because they have no seatbelts.
Worse still, they encourage people to stand in the aisles.
Whenever a bus hits anything or even stops fast, people get hurt.
I've been involved in two road accidents in my life; both in cities and neither my fault.
In both, people who'd know said my injuries were modest because I had my seatbelt on.
Sally Pointer, Jerrabomberra, NSW
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