A
future for News Weekly (letter)

by Nicholas Partridge

News Weekly, February 7, 2009
Sir,

First, I stand by the letter of mine you published on the demise of The Bulletin (Letters, News Weekly, February 16, 2008), in which I asserted that there is no other magazine — and there has been no other — that deals with really important issues in the way and with the competence of News Weekly.

Now more than ever, we continue to need expert explanation, and not just description — the stock-in-trade of your competitors.

One thing we might discuss is just how we could get so much of your good work into the mainstream media. I encourage you to pursue that line of enquiry.

But let me list, please, just some of my favourites — if that's the right terminology — over many years:-

First, the war against the homemaker — male or female, it needn't matter. When and how will it end?

And the war against female biology too. It's now time to ask just where that has got us.

The collapse of both the financial system and the ABC Learning Centres has thrown this into ever sharper relief. So what is to be done now?

Second, the nature of land ownership and the pricing thereof, such that few mortgages can be sustained without two or more people in the paid workforce — this has become a via dolorosa if ever there was one!

Don't get sick, sacked, pregnant, divorced, or dead. Don't expect to be able to care and raise your own children. All of these things entitle a "mortgage-provider" to wind you up.

I encourage News Weekly to revisit these issues as often as it can.

There are many more issues of course, but at least News Weekly really tries to come up with real-world remedies.

I can only hope that at least some of them will eventually make it into policy.

Perhaps the progression of events will finally give News Weekly the recognition that it richly deserves.

Nicholas Partridge,
Shenton Park ,WA