She is a very worthy recipient.

I have and do extend my most sincere congratulations to Sergeant Singe for the time and effort she puts in “above and beyond” the call of duty and for the many hours she gives to the local community in her own time.

A very worthwhile cause that Sergeant Singe also does a lot of work for is the Police Blue Ribbon Day. 

I remember visiting Bendigo last year to be the Blue Ribbon Day guest speaker at the wonderful function put on at the Bendigo Civic Centre in memory of those police members who lost their lives in the service of the community. Blue Ribbon and Bendigo are often in my thoughts.    

Tragically, Constable Bill Benbow lost his life in a wall collapse in Richmond many years ago when I was one of his sergeants and it meant a lot to me a couple of years ago to travel to Bendigo and speak at the dedication in the name of the late Bill Benbow of the short stay facility at your local hospital.   

It is police members, volunteers and people like Sergeant Singe who provide great support to Blue Ribbon to help it achieve what it does to keep alive the memory of those police members who are no longer with us.

My wife and I were enjoying breakfast at a cafe in Carlton last Saturday morning and struck up a conversation with a couple nearby.

When they discovered we were from Bendigo their very first reaction was "What do you think about the mosque?"  

We replied that the mosque didn't concern us too much.

Our city has now become known far and wide for one thing; the antics of mosque protestors and people jostling each other in the street and hundreds of police deployed from proper duties to keep both sides separated.

It seems that there are more people from outside Bendigo worried about the mosque than people who live here. I am very suspicious of people who turn up to protests wearing hoodies and balaclavas, whichever side they purport to represent.

The news report I saw that night made Bendigo look like a very unpleasant place to be.

I heard a comment that if you don't turn up and challenge the anti-Islam, anti-mosque people you are condoning their behaviour. Maybe. But when opposition turns up it certainly looks ugly.

Do they need permits to hold rallies? Are streets and footpaths available anytime for this purpose? Could the anti-mosque people consider meeting at a footy oval? Or be directed to one?

People who want to support their case could go there and listen to their speeches. The rest of the population could then go about their Saturday business happily and safely.

We seem to have more people taking to the streets about a mosque that is yet to be built than they do in Parramatta where there is a very real chance that their mosque was somehow complicit in a murder.

They seem to have faith in their local police and politicians to deal with what appears to be atypical mosque behaviour.

Ironically, there seemed to be much more hysteria in and around Rosalind Park than there was in Parramatta this last weekend and we certainly pushed them aside on the ABC TV News on Saturday night.