Walk-in nurse centres are a great service for many patients

This was something a nurse could do.

But when I phoned up my GP practice it was still going to be a requirement of paying $95 to see the doctor so that the nurse could do a straightforward dressing change.

I would have been happy to pay $20 fee to see the nurse practitioner but it would be bought at a $55 out-of-pocket expense.

The alternative was to go to the ED and wait or to go to the walk-in centre.

I opted for the latter. It took less than five minutes to change the dressing.

Walk-in centres are great for patients.

An independent evaluation of the ACT Health nurse-led walk-in centre has been announced. It has been welcomed by the opposition health spokesperson Leanne Castley. What implications does this have for their future.

I have always praised our nurse-led clinics to interstate and overseas visitors. They are an asset to Canberra.

Thousands of Canberrans use them regularly for cuts, abrasions, redressing wounds, etc. I have always received quality care. Our nurse-led clinics see thousands of patients a week, people who would otherwise have had to pay a GP or wait endless hours in casualty.

With the number of patients they see how could they not be easing the burden on our hospitals and GPs? The AMA opposes them. Is that out of self interest?

With approximately four months until the ACT election how do we know that the ACT Liberals don't have a plan to scrap them? So far we know very little about their policies other than the fact that they'll stop light rail stage 2B and hold an Inquiry into everything. It's in the DNA of the Liberal Party to slash and burn and outsource. The federal Labor Party has just saved a billion dollars by reversing the outsourcing by the LNP.

It's not good for a government to be in for so long and in some respects this government looks tired but do we really know what the alternative is? So far their policies are negatives.

Will Leanne Castley guarantee nurse led clinics won't be abolished?

I am one of thousands of Canberrans who suffer from pain, mobility issues and consequent mental health problems. Great relief is found with hydrotherapy. There are no public hydrotherapy pools in Canberra.

Arthritis ACT, with minimal assistance from the ACT government, use what private pools they can to run sessions for as many people as possible but have a six month waiting list for new participants.

Even so they have exceeded their finances and need $100,000 from the government to keep going. Without this two of the four pools will close at the end of May leaving nearly 300 people deprived of preventative health relief.

The impact on the health system will result in costs much higher than $100,000 as well as personal pain and suffering.

I don't quite follow the fabulously fanfared federal proposal to address unpaid tertiary student placement work.

Wasn't the internship issue fundamentally one of working - not just hanging around a workplace marking time towards a degree - and not being paid for it?

Sure, with some supervision. But certainly students in senior years, when most of the internship time is done, are expected to do useful independent work (as anyone can see on hospital wards, with fewer staff nurses rostered as a result).

So now, following the Australian tradition of privatising profits and socialising losses, or even operating costs - what is proposed is for the workplaces to benefit from the interns' work, and for the Australian taxpayer to pay a wage. Sort of an extension of the trade apprentice principle to all, except rather less acceptably in the context of a user-pays tertiary degree to provide most teaching.

Up till a few decades ago nurses in training used to work, learn and be paid full time on the wards, doubling up on a really tough gig by getting some formal classroom teaching, also in hospital, and studying at night.

They may have been on student nurse awards, but they got paid for every hour. And by their employers.

Those nurses are remembered by those who worked alongside both them and their later "university" taught colleagues as mostly the better trained, clinically competent and professional.

There has been an old saying about how much the need for education has changed.

In the 19th century, to transport goods like wool bales or timber, all you needed was a large cart and the knowledge of how to feed and water bullocks.

Now you need a knowledge of diesel engines, tyres and the like, and enough mathematics to falsify three log books and beat the cops.

Like Steve Ellis (Letters, May 8), a full-frontal glimpse earlier this week of the war memorial's new steep, stepped-up facade immediately brought to mind some historic allusions.

Given how the memorial often claims its existence and location is "sacred", the re-design to date seems to draw on the architecture of imposing ancient temples, ziggurats, and other religious structures and shrines from many thousands of years ago.

Some of these monuments were also places of human sacrifice when stairways and associated public gathering places were topped by altars and burning pyres, to punish recalcitrance, or to appease angry gods.

The former ACT Chief Police Officer managed a relatively junior ACT community police component.

As newer ACT community police complete a couple of years of policing the ACT they will look to continue their professional development by transferring to AFP national duties.

No CPO can demand more community police personnel. The ACT government decides how much to spend on police.

Nor can the CPO demand that AFP personnel on national duties be transferred to ACT community duties.

Having said this, it would assist in the ongoing capability of Canberra based national duty AFP personnel if they were deployed for short periods for "real coppering".

In defence of Ian Douglas and at the risk of yet another "misogyny" claim by D J Taylor (Letters, May 7) Morrison invited the female protest organisers to a private meeting which they declined.

I fail to see any "misogyny" in this. In fact, a private meeting would have achieved more than shouting and heckling, as Anthony Albanese found out. Morrison was proven to be right, not cowardly as Taylor claimed.

Take a look at the misogyny on display from the Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus when he "mansplained" a young female reporter last year.

Eric Hunter, in his critique of ABC Radio's interview with an ANU student's "unconditional support for Hamas", questioned "how well did the ABC exercise its responsibilities in getting the whole story, thus enabling the audience to make up its own mind?" (Letters, May 8).

In my view this is not just a question for the ABC, but for news outlets in general. Whereas journalists once suppressed their own opinions during interviews these days we know exactly which side of an argument they're on.

What's particularly irksome about the ABC is that they are funded by the taxpayer, a demographic that represents a wide diversity of opinion.

I ask Harry Davis (Letters, May 6) and others who think we could have a net-zero electricity generation system without nuclear power to consider the following data.

During the five-day period from noon on April 11, 2024 to noon on April 16, 2024 the AEMO energy graphs show an average capacity factor of 11 per cent for all wind generators on the grid.

The projected grid scale wind and solar capacity in 2050, given in the 2022 AEMO integrated system plan, is 141 gigawatts.

If 80 gigawatts of this capacity is wind power, the corresponding output at 11 per cent capacity factor is less than nine gigawatts.

Given the average grid demand during the period quoted in April 2024 was 23 gigawatts and is projected to double by 2050, what storage capacity would be needed to meet the shortfall of 37 gigawatts during 14 hours of no solar generation each day for five days?

The economic and engineering reality is that no one can predict what energy configuration would be needed to firm the supply at net zero emissions, without nuclear energy.