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Petrol prices fall amid COVID-fall out
Happy by name and by nature
Petrol prices in the ACT are continuing to fall, according to the most recent quarterly petrol price report from comparethemarket.com.au. The report, which looks at the average cents per litre (cpl) of unleaded petrol in major capital cities around Australia, showed the ACT had the most expensive petrol in the country over the March quarter, paying
You might not expect podiatrists to be cheerful about their work, given all the feet, but Charlie Reynolds and Ben Haggett certainly are. “It’s enjoyable,” says Ben. “You can have a patient limp in with a lot of pain and after 20 minutes, they walk out with that pain substantially reduced.”
The duo met while studying in Newcastle, becoming firm friends as well as colleagues. When Charlie needed paternity leave cover at Your Happy Feet in Ochre Health’s Kippax Health Hub, Ben was the natural choice. Ben loved Canberra: “We have the best bike tracks in Australia. It’s a pretty place and you can ride from one suburb to another without having to go on the road, with all these little tunnels – it’s unreal, really well set up.” Meanwhile, the practice was growing and Charlie needed ongoing help, so Ben stayed. Since then, they’ve handled some complicated cases: “A regular patient came in for general nail care,” says Charlie. “I could see
Loss of rights to trial by jury one leg was slightly swollen. I asked her about it and she wasn’t worried, but it didn’t look right to me, so I did some vascular testing. We established that she had poor circulation, so I walked down the corridor to the Ochre Medical Centre, got her an immediate appointment and it turned out she had a DVT leg clot that needed acute care from the doctor and then in hospital. That’s the benefit of us being in an integrated health hub.” Some breakthroughs are less dramatic: “I had a new patient sent in by his wife as he had flatly refused to see a podiatrist,” says Ben. “He had so much pain from 15 corns one foot and 10 on the other that he could barely walk. Corns feel like walking on stones, so 25 is huge! I cut them out and debrided his callouses. Now he comes in regularly to get his feet tidied up. He’s gone from being a naysayer to one of my best clients.” Your Happy Feet (02 6133 9654) is based in Ochre Health’s Kippax Health Hub, 76-80 Hardwick Crescent – between Kippax Fair and McDonald’s.
STILL OPEN with additional precautions: Automated (no touch) hand sanitiser on arrival Chair disinfected between patients Our state-of-the-art clinic features an air purifier.
02 6133 9654 | www.yourhappyfeet.com.au Advertorial 16
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Charlie adds: “It can be a simple fix. Or it can take six months to learn what’s going on and create an orthotic that’s brilliant, so they can walk properly. I saw a patient yesterday who originally come in around four months ago. She was almost in tears with issues she’d had for years. Since then, we’ve made many small adjustments, pulling apart six or seven pathologies and progressively knocking them off the list. Yesterday she said she was feeling fabulous – very happy and comfortable!”
an average of 143cpl. The analysis showed prices in Canberra have been “falling slowly” over the past two months, from 146cpl to 143cpl on average. As at Monday 6 April, the analysis was pointing to Giralang and Nicholls as the ACT’s cheapest suburbs to fill up at 122cpl on average, while Hawker and Tuggeranong were looking to be the most expensive at 138cpl.
The ACT Government’s decision to temporarily remove the right to trial by jury has been condemned by the ACT Law Society and ACT Bar Association. The decision is part of new temporary measures to support the ACT’s operational response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Announced on Thursday 2 April, the COVID-19 Emergency Response Bill 2020 temporarily amends 20 pieces of legislation. All of the amendments will have a sunset clause, meaning that they will phase out once the community and economy has recovered from this crisis. One of the operational changes that will be made as a result of this Bill is to allow ACT courts to change the way evidence may be presented in court and to allow judges to decide how trials may be held. This will allow ACT courts to adhere to social distancing requirements in their operations. While it is acknowledged that there is a need to reform existing laws and processes to allow the continued functioning of the courts during the COVID-19 emergency, concerns have been raised about the changes. ACT Bar Association president Steve Whybrow
said the Association and the ACT Law Society “strenuously opposed this unnecessary and dangerous precedent. The Legal Aid Office and the Human Rights Commissioner have also voiced their concerns”. “The justifications for this change are said to be the adverse consequences of delays in finalising criminal proceedings. The delays in the ACT are already amongst the shortest in the country. No other jurisdiction in Australia has taken the extraordinary step of revoking an accused person’s right to trial by jury. In circumstances where there will be no shortage of accused who have and likely will consent to trial by judge alone, there is simply no justification for this legislation.” Mr Whybrow anticipates the change could result in legal challenges by accused persons forced to undergo their trial by judge alone, and inevitably appeals from any convictions obtained in such circumstances. He called on the ACT Government and the ACT Supreme Court to engage in discussion as to how the business of the courts is best managed. “There are better solutions to the problem that do not result in abandoning fundamental rights,” he said.