At a time when we constantly hear bad news stories about how horrible people are and how terrible our health system is it's a breath of fresh air to be able to tell a good news story.

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During our regular morning walk along the left bank of Lake Tuggeranong, my wife accidentally performed a face plant with pike and a 3.7-degree of difficulty. Immediately a young gentleman appeared from nowhere (not quite but it sounds good) and offered help. Two more people offered assistance. In spite of all the negativity there are still lovely people out there.

We then visited Tuggeranong Walk-in Centre. They gave immediate and excellent care, triaging her first. We are very lucky to have them.

They referred us to Canberra Hospital. The new emergency unit is an excellent state-of-the-art facility. Again she received amazing care from our wonderful, predominantly migrant health professionals. Sure she waited a few hours but the triaging system is more than fair. She received multiple scans and checks.

Apart from bruises, scrapes, a black eye and a lump on the forehead she's fine and will be available to play for the Wallaroos should she be called up. I'm not sure if they have an age limit. I would like to thank the people who stopped to help and our wonderful health sector workers. Sure, specialists cost a lot and there are problems with the funding of our health system but for emergencies it's generally excellent.

Peter McLoughlin, Monash

Chris Steel has had a long and varied list of ministerial and portfolio responsibilities over the years, but I wonder if he may have missed his calling as a comedy scriptwriter?

His failed $76 million HR system without any users was pure Yes Minister, with its brilliant episode about a hospital without patients. MyWay gave us The IT Crowd, with passengers asking, "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"

Now Big Splash has brought Darryl Kerrigan and The Castle to Canberra, with Mr Steel discovering that "just terms" requires rather more legislation than just "the vibe". You can imagine the exchange. Access Canberra: "Minister Steel reckons we can terminate the Big Splash lease". Darryl: "Tell him he's dreaming!"

Difficult budget cuts

There are calls to cut government expenditure. Ordinarily the biggest cuts can come from the biggest expenditure areas and those with the fastest growth. Concentrating on the thousands of small areas outside the largest often achieves little.

The 10 biggest direct expenditures account for $420 billion. The 10 biggest tax expenditures (in the form of exemptions and rebates) account for $200 billion in uncollected annual revenue. Together this $620 billion a year, compared with a current annual deficit of $32 billion might suggest the task of cutting is easy. But when you drill down there are no easy cuts.

The furore over the "tax cut" budget measures, and the government vetoing any change the $10 billion a year GST exemption on food, almost rules out any cut in tax expenditures.

Over the past four years growth in public debt interest (29 per cent), NDIS (15 per cent), aged care (10 per cent), defence (7 per cent), general revenue assistance to the states (5 per cent), Medicare (5 per cent), public hospitals (5 per cent), schools (4 per cent), age pension (4 per cent) and disability support pension (3 per cent) are areas where reductions are almost impossible.

What about middle-class welfare? Difficult. Childcare........

© Canberra Times