By the time this edition of the Weekly goes to print, I will be winging my way back to Australia after a few weeks’ holiday going to Gallipoli with my old mate, Adam Duthie, former ACT rugby centre from the ‘80s, and spending time in Cambridge with my cousin, Mary Vickers. Mary is a very positive person who sees good in everyone, and has a positive view on life. She recently bemoaned the fact that the only news reported these days seems to be bad news. She has a point, which got me thinking.

There are a lot of good news stories in Canberra that never get reported.

I’d like to see, say every three months, the local papers only report good news stories for a day (with maybe just one page devoted to essential other news, which may include bad news). Likewise on that day, the local radio and TV also just report good news stories.

I believe it would be uplifting for people to hear and read about the nice things that are happening in our community; to read and hear about the good things local Canberrans are doing to help their fellow citizens and to make our city and country a better place.

Instead of just reading about all that is wrong with our health system, it would be nice to read of some ground-breaking invention or innovation a team of doctors and nurses at the Canberra Hospital came up with to help save patients’ lives. Or the kindness shown by an ACTION bus driver to a sick or disabled passenger that went way beyond the call of duty. Or the acts of charity people like the late Stasia Dabrowski showed to Canberrans down on their luck by running a soup kitchen at her own expense for decades, and thus winning the Canberra Citizen of the Year award (1996).

We get so used to bad news that a spurt of good news stories would buck us up and give us confidence that we live in a nice city in a nice country, and the world is not really an awful place.

Similarly, I have always wanted to see a day when the local paper was just devoted to animals, and there were no pictures of humans in it – just animals. You would probably only be able to do this once, maybe twice a year, but people could send in heart-warming animal stories, and groups like the RSPCA ACT could send in stories of the animals in their care and encourage suitable people to adopt them and give them a good home.

I think many of us would find it a refreshing change to see pictures of a litter of kittens and photos of a heroic cavoodle called Maggie whose barking saved her 80-plus-year-old owner from a dreadful housefire whilst that owner was asleep. It would sure beat the more usual photos of Andrew Barr, Shane Rattenbury, Anthony Albanese, and Peter Dutton!