Newcastle Herald letters to the editor, Friday, June 5, 2020: A missed opportunity to help our homeless

The massive decline in immigration coupled with the unprecedented rate of domestic unemployment has hit the order books of the construction industry.

Because of the subsequent great recession, the government is looking for ways to stimulate the economy particularly the residential builders while the pandemic has shown the authorities the massive problem of homelessness in our communities.

With such a problem on hand it is obvious to me that the state and federal Coalition governments would have seized the opportunity offered by these two great needs of our economy.

Unfortunately from what has been leaked to the media, it appears that this preacher PM is proposing to spend some $1.2 billion rewarding those he believes have had a go and got themselves into the privileged position of owning a home or two, with all this money to be spent subsidising the putting new kitchens and bathrooms into these privileged homes instead of turning this great chance to make a start on the massive and cruel problem of homelessness.

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The real estate and developers bodies are predicting real and severe drop in prices so you would think if this $1.2 billion was made available to the many community run housing groups they could quickly get proposals from these distressed developers and builders to fill their order books and maintain the workforce and as a result produce something that would make a real contribution to the quality of our society.

With interest rates so low, any homeowner that wants to put in a new kitchen only has to call their friendly bank to get an instant extra on the loan, so this proposal is a double winner.

If this proposal goes ahead it will make the Rudd Government's "pink batts" scheme look like genius but turn the Morrison government into a inconsequential kitchen cabinet.

THE effrontery of Gladys Berejiklian as she wants to freeze the wages of public service personnel is beyond my comprehension.

Has she forgotten who it was that she called upon to go to the front line to help combat the coronavirus? She called upon nurses, doctors, etc, to come out of retirement, medical students to come forward, to assist the overwhelmed serving personnel. The police, paramedics and other first-responders willingly went to the front line.

Has she forgotten the firefighters who risked, and in some cases lost, their lives in the bushfire emergency and who were so overwhelmed the military was called in to assist them?

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And did they do it? Yes they did. They saw it as their duty and willingly obeyed.

Now she wants to slap them in the face as a way of saving money, yet at the same time, has declined to follow the example of other leaders and maintained her and her colleagues' own salaries.

To use the vernacular, she has got more front than a rat with a gold tooth. Disgust is the first word, not in the vernacular, to come to my mind.

HOPEFULLY we are coming to an end of this health and economic crisis. This current federal and state governments are now realising the importance of the Australian workforce and their representatives i.e. the trade union movement.

Instead of trying to reduce the wages and conditions of Australian workers, we should be improving and not allowing these overseas countries whose health and safety work conditions are third world.

We can rebuild Australia by first making overseas multinational companies pay their fair share of tax, employ and train Australians, and invest in Australia.

THE continued stubbornness by the Queensland Premier has claimed another victim with the cancellation of the Pan Pacific Games, due to be held in October.

This event, held every two years on the Gold Coast, is one of the world's largest sporting events, with some 11,000 players of various sports.

This event brings Queensland businesses and hospitality huge revenue, without this event many motels and wild businesses will suffer.

Open the the borders to save your people and your credibility.

ON any reasonable consideration of the facts and not withstanding Australia borrowing $60 billion not required to fund JobSaver and JobKeeper, Robodebt is a significant whoops-moment economically for our government.

A financial blunder of massive proportions from an administration which for decades has boasted economic management was in their DNA.

The $60 billion error comes close on the heels of the $714 million dollar Robodebt fiasco, a monstrous and illegal attack on many Australian citizens, an attack which has caused needless loss of life among its many victims.

Stuart Robert, the witless minister responsible for the fiasco has blamed the ATO computer and the Robodebt computer by saying, they failed to speak to each adequately. Then TV viewers were treated to the sight of two of the governments self-nominated economically-gifted geniuses in "Scotty from marketing" and his treasurer Josh Frydenberg providing wrong advice to superannuants who are considering drawing down on accrued superannuation during the COVID-19 crisis.

The dynamic duo told superannuants the government scheme was structured so as to prevent superannuants' accounts from ever being hacked. The dynamic duo evidently was unaware of the 150 superannuant accounts already hacked under their scheme?

WHY is the NSW Premier so keen to open up the Queensland and NSW border as there are more travellers from NSW who travel to Queensland for holidays, than Queenslanders to NSW for holidays?

Gladys Berejiklian should push to keep the money within the state of NSW in doing so support regional NSW country communities and their businesses.

Stop playing blind political activism games and concentrate more on the poor NSW budget and economy which has been in a mess since last year with over spend on all projects.

The NSW Government says they are good financial managers, I say not.

IS there potential to bring sand back to South Stockton Beach from mining from the north of the beach where the northern drift of sand has been in movement since around the 1950s? Is this solution being acted upon now? To me it seems it would be the most obvious and easiest, cheapest way to replace sand to the beach where it is needed until offshore sand mining can be achieved.

THE government offer of a $1000 bonus to public sector and frontline workers in lieu of a wage rise is an insult. Give them the increase they deserve.

THE Newcastle City Council-owned King Street car park, at the east end of the city, has been closed for several months now. I presume that there is some kind of structural defect in the building. Why haven't the council started to fix these defects so that the car park can be opened again?

YOU don't accept the standard that you walk past, that's a load of rubbish, but the one you're walking towards, and that's where all our worries should be about.

ONE has to wonder sometimes. Football fans have been locked out of attending games for a few months. We all paid for our season tickets, but so far we have only attended one game. There has not been any talk of returning the cost of our tickets, but for an additional $20 or so we can have a cardboard cut-out of ourselves in the stand. This is just pure greed. The clubs or the NRL should be ashamed of themselves. If they need to have a gimmick then do it for free to give something back. I understand the concept, but it isn't right to keep asking for money from game depleted fans. Where does the money go?

SO the irrelevant local state Labor members have climbed out of their COVID safe bunkers to follow the script to complain about everything and anything to get back into the Herald. Not even the unions are backing their leader. How about solutions rather than whinging?

DAVID Stuart (Short Takes, 3/6), your defence of Gladys Berejiklian is badly misplaced. On well north of the average Australian wage, earning over $400,000, she can do without her 2.5 per cent. Our nurses who earn well less than the average wage can't. Imagine 400,000 people with 2.5 per cent to spend. As any economist will tell you, what drives the economy and job creation is spending. Not inefficient and costly job creation schemes which will mostly benefit already wealthy developers. It's simple economics.

MAC Maguire notes the hypocrisy inherent in the recent photo of Trump brandishing a bible. There's a post WW2 prophecy out there that goes, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross".