Readers Write: You tell us your views and your comments

On the domestic front, our readers wanted to share their views on child care and road safety. Internationally, the On Line Opinion article by Fiona Prior about Fox News stirred up some controversy.

Lynne of Adelaide responded forcefully to Daniel Donahoo’s “Private childcare is big business that is about to get bigger” (posted September 14, 2004).

“ Having been IN the industry for 15 years and working in both private and community-based childcare centres I would like everyone to know that community-based centres also have unqualified childcare workers and keep their staff down to a minimum requirement. All centres must sustain a high quality of care according to accreditation and licensing in order to continue offering a service. …

As for telmarketers being paid more than qualified childcare workers, it is because of the attitude portrayed through articles like this one that makes us unvalued by the community. We are on award wages according to the state we work in and both private and community based childcare centres pay at award rates...not above. South Australian qualified carers are on $14 per hour....

“‘We all do it because we love it, certainly not for the money. Can you say the same about your job? We don't care whether we are in private or community based childcare - it does not mean we cannot function as a quality childcarer.”

Denise Dalton responds to On Line Opinion’s tease for its Domain site, “Sick of the opinions of Phillip Adams and Piers Akerman and want to change your diet?”

Denise says she is a Phillip Adams fan, “but I’ll give you people a try too”. She’s looking forward to “learning a whole new way of looking at the world,” and gives a brief pen portrait of herself as “a former Conservative, Catholic born-and-bred, raised by nuns, Miss goodie-two-shoes”. Welcome to On Line Opinion, Denise…and keep reading.

Fiona Prior’s “Outfoxed: Fox News is called to account” (posted November 3, 2004) netted two correspondents from the US. They both suggested Fox News should be seen in context of the American media environment as a whole.

Barbara Toney of St Louis, Missouri volunteers, “I think you missed a key point in why Fox News is so popular. Fox advocates believe that the US mainstream media has become a mouthpiece for the liberal left, and we now have the opportunity to hear the 'other side of the story'”.

More combatively, Robert Janule of Hampton, Virginia puts another shrimp on the barbie, spicing it up with some Australian flavour.

“The author must be spending too much time in the outback of your country and her mind took a 'walkabout'. The Fox network offers both news reported in a respectable way, and opinion. Perhaps you should look at Dan Rather's methods of reporting before you comment on the Fox folks”.

Back on the road in Australia, Marshal Peters has been thinking about road safety.

“I believe that Federal Government should set up an agency … to cover all Licensing/Training/Enforcement. Presently the system is run by states, which have motives to do with revenue raising and ignore education and training (a lot of propaganda though).

“I propose that this agency have very strict guidelines aimed at excellence, and to prohibit interference or agenda hijack by revenue raisers.

“A Federal Body 'like a Highway Patrol' should be set up for enforcement, and maybe training. Police could transfer in/out of this body. This would keep the system pure from States revenue raising though Police Departments, and the willingness of certain senior police to prostitute themselves by being propagandists for the revenue raising State Governments.”

Keep your thoughts coming! Once they’re in the ether, they may even end up somewhere they can do some good.