In the Northern Territory, this is a requirement of every adult.

How can our “onshore” determination to protect all children from sexual predation and emotional and physical neglect, exploitation and abuse be reconciled with the unspeakable “Australian Border Force Act”, which threatens prosecution for otherwise mandated professionals should they speak about about the harm inflicted upon asylum seeker children in Australian detention?

How is it that we can draw no parallels between current government policy and the findings of the ongoing Royal Commission into the abuse of children in institutional care, which has revealed repeatedly how secrecy allows the most violent and perverse abuse to flourish?

As a registered nurse I applaud Doctors Against the Border Force Act, members of whom held a silent protest in Melbourne’s Carlton Gardens last Saturday.

I also applaud the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, which has just released its “Policy on Refugee and Asylum Seeker Health, 2015” document, which condemns Australian offshore detention, and supports health professionals’ obligations to speak out in the interests of professional standards, best practice and ethical care.

As a human being I despair at the brutal totalitarianism of the Coalition government and the Labor Party, and the callous complacency of a nation which endorses such deliberate inhumanity.

I note with concern the article on page 1 of Monday’s Bendigo Advertiser (“Theatre bill still unpaid”) highlighting the problems experienced by sub-contractors involved with the construction and finishing of one of Bendigo’s greatest cultural assets.

The Ulumbarra Theatre allows the staging of performances by major companies and has already added substantially to our reputation as a progressive major regional city.

The article certainly shows the major contractor, Contract Control Services, has little regard for the sub-contractors it employed.

We are assured that payments have been authorised and paid to CSS on behalf of the contractors and the deadline for payment, set by CSS, of June 19 has well and truly passed.

Cash flow is important in any business and our local sub-contractors should not have to bear the problem when they undertook to work on the theatre.

The editorial on this subject engenders negative feelings about CSS and I am sure that other projects being constructed under CSS control will have much greater scrutiny by the “customer”.

It is well past the time when our State Premier should become involved, and his discussion would be better directed to the lead contractor CSS, as the amount in question has already been approved and funds provided by his administration.

Having said this I do not feel that the Ulumbarra Theatre has “lost any lustre”, as the functions I have attended have been magnificent successes thanks to the calibre of the performers and the management and staff of the theatre.

Audiences would have been unaware of the financial problems, and their concentration would have been on the total experience of our Ulumbarra Theatre.

I congratulate the mayor on his letter of support and I am sure he has echoed the thoughts of the patrons who have attended or will be attending his local production.