LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Friday August 25, 2023

Who'd have thought? I imagine public school teachers could have saved taxpayers a NAPLAN bucket-load because they knew these things already.

Public school teachers know the actual names of the kids who need extra assistance; they know that with appropriate resources they can make a huge dent in addressing these things; and they despair that the multimillions spent on this test could have been put to effective use on already targeted kids.

Public schools are underfunded while many non-government schools are overfunded, or at least at 100 per cent of funding.

Tinkering with teacher education reforms, literacy and numeracy delivery and tougher suspension policy are all fine, but until governments fund public schools at 100 per cent, then teachers are effectively hamstrung in providing kids with the education they deserve.

Don't blame the teachers or the kids, blame the system.

THE Intergenerational Report reveals that Australia's population is set to age and grow, requiring its workforce to work longer and harder to support the older members of the population ("Australia's care workforce set to soar, as population ages", Newcastle Herald, 22/8). Australia's "care economy" needs to grow, with many more nursing homes, expensive surgeries for the aged, more mobility aids, etc. To fund this fairly, Australia's policy makers will need to rethink Australia's superannuation, taxation and healthcare systems.

But Australia's future is not as bad as other nations such as Japan, South Korea, China, Germany and Spain. Australia, as a prosperous nation with a temperate climate in its southeast and southwest, will remain a desirable destination for immigrants and refugees. In the future, there will be a flood of people headed our way because their homelands have become unlivable due to global warming, famine, war or political turmoil.

Australia will have an opportunity to select the most productive young immigrants from this flood of people. When added to Australia's total population, these people will reduce the average age of Australians and raise their productivity.

ONCE again, this 85-year-old enjoyed the magnificent facade of the QT Hotel on the corner of Hunter and Perkins streets ("Ready for the boom", Weekender, 12/8). Before David Jones, this building was built by the Scott family, popularly known way back, as Scott's Corner.

Also, at Hunter Street west ('Bank Corner' area) for many years there was Walton's. Originally Marcus Clark's, it was uniquely known for its 'sling-shot' internal system of 'customer-change' delivery. A staff member was in a raised office with a number of transfer wires connected to each counter. A customer's purchase docket and cash was transferred via a container up to the office, then change came back down the wire.

I HOPE Anthony Albanese commits as much as the country can to help the Ukrainian people. This war was started by Russian tanks and troops invading a sovereign country. The Russian war machine has directly targeted civilian infrastructure to try to freeze the population into surrender. The fabric of civilian life has been targeted by this brutal regime: hospitals, schools, children's playgrounds, city centres, markets, train stations, residential buildings, and grain storage areas.

Constantly threatening to use nuclear weapons or starve the people of Africa, Putin and his enablers are thugs. Then there are the atrocities in occupied areas such as Bucha on civilians, the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia (700,000 kids).

Who would want to come under Russian rule? Certainly not any country under previous Soviet control. In Russia your chances of saying anything negative about the war quickly ends in jail or fines and, if you are a journalist, opposition politician or high ranking businessman, you may find yourself dead.

This is not a proxy American war. A brutal Russian regime started this war as it thought it could easily win and appease a vicious dictator chasing glory.

The world cannot let Putin win.

IF my calculations are correct, the promise of 1.2 million homes to be built over the next five years equates to 659 a day based on a seven-day working week. If we assume a six-day working week and deduct 10 public holidays, the figure rises to 792. Is this going to be another broken promise?

ALBO predicts emphatically that Australia will vote a big 'yes' in the upcoming Voice referendum. It makes me reflect on the old political saying that it's not who votes, but counts the votes.

I'M old enough to remember paper bags at the grocery store. Then we had supermarkets. Paper bags were removed from them to save trees. They were replaced by plastic bags.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

FACED with a choice about how to firm the local power grid, South Australia rapidly installed the world's first big battery in 2017. Elon Musk delivered on his commitment to construct within 100 days from contract signature, and the battery has since been augmented and is a resounding success. If, in 2023, red tape is blocking more agile solutions for NSW then perhaps governments should deal with it, rather than expensively extending the life of ageing facilities such as the Eraring coal-fired power station.

ONE thing we can say about Matt Ophir - he can never be accused of being unpredictable ('Free ticket out of here', Letters, 24/8).

THE bright spark ('Free ticket out of here', Letters, 24/8), who suggested Mr Maguire take a ride on a jet plane doesn't realise that, as much as he'd like to, he can't shake the lot of us off with the promise of a free ticket.