Plan for court consistency
Dear Editor,
Victorians deserve confidence that our justice system is working, yet too often there are questions about whether sentences for serious crimes meet community expectations.
The Nationals have a plan to shine a light on sentencing and improve transparency, consistency and accountability across Victoria’s justice system.
If elected, we will establish a specialist Court of Criminal Appeal to improve consistency in serious criminal matters and ensure sentences meet community expectations, while strengthening the ability of the Director of Public Prosecutions to appeal manifestly inadequate sentences.
We will also strengthen the Sentencing Advisory Council and publish comprehensive sentencing data so Victorians can see how sentences compare with maximum penalties. We will expand the SACStat database to include Children’s Court sentencing data and provide clearer information about sentencing outcomes, ranges and trends.
These reforms build on our broader plan to tackle crime, including Adult Crime, Adult Time, Break Bail, Face Jail and 3,000 additional police officers.
Victorians have a right to know how our justice system is working. Greater transparency will help restore confidence, promote consistency and ensure offenders are properly held to account.
The Nationals in government will make sure the community can see how Victoria’s justice system is responding to serious crime.
Danny O’Brien MP
Leader of The Nationals
Where was this money when Victorians needed it?
Dear Editor,
The Victorian Government’s decision to cut 140 senior public service positions and save taxpayers $100 million over four years raises an important question: why were these positions allowed to exist in the first place?
For years, regional Victorians have watched roads deteriorate, hospitals struggle with staffing shortages and police resources come under pressure, while successive Labor governments continued to expand a highly paid bureaucracy concentrated largely in Melbourne.
The cuts, including positions within the Suburban Rail Loop Authority, suggest that millions of dollars could have been saved much earlier if government spending had been better prioritised.
Imagine what that money could have achieved across regional Victoria. It could have helped resurface and rebuild regional roads instead of continually patching potholes. It could have funded more nurses, doctors and hospital beds in communities such as Echuca, Swan Hill, Bendigo, Shepparton and Wangaratta. It could also have supported more police on the frontline and helped keep police stations operating in communities that need them.
Regional Victorians should not have to accept deteriorating services while taxpayers fund unnecessary bureaucracy and expensive projects in Melbourne.
Every dollar that can now be saved by cutting unnecessary senior positions is a reminder that government must be accountable for how it spends taxpayers’ money.
Regional Victoria deserves to be treated as a priority — with investment directed towards the roads, hospitals, police and essential services that communities rely on every day.
Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell MP
Member for Northern Victoria Region
A thank you from the heart
Dear Editor,
I would like to take the opportunity, through your paper, to publicly acknowledge and thank the extraordinary team at Dianella for the care they gave my Dad, Terry Burns, during the time he spent with them.
When someone you love reaches the stage of their life where they need to be cared for by others, you place an enormous amount of trust in the people who take on that responsibility. They are caring for someone who is not simply a patient or a resident. They are caring for somebody’s Dad, Partner, Poppy, family member and friend — a person with an entire lifetime behind them.
The team at Dianella never lost sight of that.
They came to know my Dad as Terry — his cheeky sense of humour, his stories, his personality and the gentle nature underneath it all. It became very clear to us that many of the staff had developed a genuine affection for him, and that meant more to our family than I could ever adequately put into words.
The standard of care my Dad received was impeccable, but it went far beyond simply attending to his physical needs. He was treated with kindness, patience, dignity, respect and, most importantly, genuine human warmth.
And their care did not stop with Dad.
During what was an incredibly difficult and emotional period for our family, the team at Dianella showed the same compassion to us. There was reassurance when we needed it, understanding on the difficult days, kindness in the small moments, and the comforting knowledge that when we could not be beside my Dad ourselves, he was surrounded by people who genuinely cared about him.
When Dad passed away, we lost someone who was an enormous part of our lives. There is no way to make that loss easy. But there is tremendous comfort in knowing that during the final chapter of his life he was cared for by people who saw the person he was, who shared a laugh with him, listened to his stories, preserved his dignity and treated him with affection.
Aged care workers do a job that is too often underestimated. Families see the difference between someone simply doing their job and someone who truly cares.
At Dianella, we saw the latter every single day.
So, on behalf of myself and our entire family, I want to say publicly what we have felt privately for some time:
Thank you.
Thank you for looking after my Dad.
Thank you for getting to know Terry.
Thank you for the laughs, the patience, the friendship and the dignity you gave him.
And thank you for looking after us as well.
We will never forget the kindness and love you showed him, and we will always be grateful that when Dad needed others to care for him, he found himself in the hands of such remarkable people.
Melanie Burns
Daughter of Terry Burns