Illustration: Cathy WilcoxCredit:
Let's be honest: big business and their lobbyists, such as the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, are only interested in what's good for business ("Big business urge political leaders to avoid 'dog whistles' in population debate", December 11).
What is paramount to them is their revenue and profit growth.
Rather than hire, train and retain Australians, they prefer to go to other countries and recruit. It's the easy, cheap option.
There is no thought or care for the consequences on the wider community, such as dispirited Australian job seekers or over-utilised infrastructure.
In signalling a slowdown in migrant intake, the politicians have demonstrated they are listening to the wider community for a change. - Graham Hansen, Denistone
Illustration: John ShakespeareCredit:
The Prime Minister's mooted intake cut of 30,000 per year would make very little difference to the effects of immigration on society.
Yet we have the vested interests of the Business Council, the Property Council and the Australian Chamber of Commerce issuing a "warning" to the government not to proceed with any cuts.
The general retort of these organisations is to build more infrastructure at the taxpayers' expense, and then privatise it. - Duncan Cameron, Lane Cove
The logic behind needing to continuously import people to survive and as a by-product choke our major cities seems to be a very complex subject that only top economists and people in business can fully understand and appreciate. - Peter Bower, Naremburn The Property Council is shameless (Letters, December 11).
They want to build more units so they make billions, while they tell the average citizen to have reduced wages, put up with more pollution, more congestion and higher taxes to pay for lagging infrastructure. Keep fighting Premier. - Eric Claus, Kings Langley
Demanding Hong Kong-style construction be continued results with a loss of community and lifestyle, and taxpayers footing the bill for never-ending infrastructure development.
Sydney would remain one big construction zone and the current road and rail congestion would be worse if this self-centred group continues to feather its own nests. - Duncan Cameron, Lane Cove
One of the fallacies continually trotted out is that immigration is needed for economic growth. Israel and Singapore have managed their economies well without the need for population growth.
They do not have the luxury of natural resources so have invested in tech industries. When is Australia going to wake up and do them same ? - Warren Mitchell, Mosman
Your correspondent suggests that the elderly lose their family home and garden to centralised constructions of multiple dwellings with pocket handkerchief-sized yards.
What future are we contemplating with these bleak, Orwellian-like suggestions? - James Laukka, Epping
Why is everyone so interested in me giving up my four-bedroom house on a quarter acre block, now that I am an empty-nester?
While I can afford to maintain it I don't see why I should give up the home my late husband and I built and lived in with our four children for more than 50 years.
I am not interested in unit living and I am far from needing retirement or nursing home accommodation. Leave me alone. - Coral Button, North Epping
Hard to swallow Premier's attitude to pill testing
Hopefully the NSW government will listen to the voices of experience from the Noffs Foundation and trial pill testing ("Public is leaving pollies behind on pill testing", December 11).
Having worked with at-risk young people for more than 40 years, I know that a non-judgmental discussion of risky behaviour in a safe environment is the most effective way to change behaviour.
Our young people deserve informed policy not "tough on crime" posturing. - Peter Hobbs, Balmain
The Premier says she doesn't think pill testing will save lives ("Premier rejects pill testing after death at music festival", December 11). Such an important issue needs more than a thought, or a belief, before policy is enacted.
What we need is the evidence. I have no doubt there is plenty of evidence as to the effectiveness, or not, of pill testing conducted in other countries. - John Mizon, Collaroy
Gladys Berejiklian is stuck in the '80's time warp where the likes of Nancy Reagan championed "Drugs – just say no" as a solution to drug use.
It didn't work then, and it won't work now. Festival-goers are young, their decisions are not always right, and that is why - as a society - we have a responsibility to help.
There are multiple studies and trials that show pill testing often results in less drug taking.
Please, Premier, have a realistic look at the benefits of pill testing before more young people die through drug misadventure that could be avoided. - Bonnie Capell, Korora
If drug testing had been available, the death and critical injuries at the festival may have been avoided.
Our Premier sticks to her right-wing world view, that rules are more important than people, and justifies her opposition to possible lifesaving testing with spurious arguments that offering testing would normalise drug taking. - Michael McMullan, Five Dock
Dear Premier, you are no doubt familiar with the concept of poll testing of electoral popularity.
If you are worried about your election experience going bad, then you poll test; proceeding if the results are favourable, holding back if the results are more threatening.
Pill testing is similar, in that both forms of testing do not encourage people to take more pills than previously, they just allow you to avoid the bad ones, or to hold off until the pills available are safer. - Garry Dalrymple, Earlwood
If your friends are so uninteresting and your music so unbearable and un-danceable without the assistance of mind-altering drugs, then it's time for some new friends and a wider taste in music, not publicly funded illegal drug testing. - Jennifer Giles, Elizabeth Bay
Liberal Party solution to most things: prohibition - Tim Schroder, Gordon
Easy to see through climate loophole
How is it that we have fallen so low that our government, and the putative alternative government, would not rule out a loophole to avoid our international commitments to reduce the imminent danger of global warming ('"Rorting the planet': Australia's climate pledge shortcut", December 11)?
Failure to address climate change is a crime against future generations, both at home and abroad, and so "with courage let us all combine" to advance Australia, and the world to a fairer, better, coal and oil free future. - Colin Hesse, Marrickville
Just who do the pollies think they are cheating? The other Paris Accord signatories? The weather? The Great Barrier Reef? Their children? - Renata Bali, Thurgoona
Engineer a solution
Your writer on high-speed rail misses the crucial flaw in almost every infrastructure project in Australia ("Roads and rail, here's why we could do better", December 11).
There are no adequately experienced hands-on public service engineers working on planning of projects with the licence to advise the government and to oversee and direct external consultant and construction groups throughout the project's progress.
Leaving public projects almost entirely in private hands leads to cost overruns as witnessed by hospitals, light rail and, I predict, high-speed rail. - Harold Roper, Woollahra
Unfair competition
The underlying tenet of economic liberalism is competition in the marketplace, and the belief that government interference in the free market inhibits open competition to the detriment of consumers ("NSW ports privatisation in firing line after ACCC takes legal action", December 11).
Given the ACCC is alleging that one of the largest privatisations of the NSW Coalition government entailed anti-competitive, and possibly illegal, deals, then one is entitled to ask just what the NSW Coalition government actually stands for?
The answer is only too obvious, especially when the taxpayer is expected to compensate one private entity for the effects of competition from another. - Stephen Foster, Glebe
Sound argument
When the first stadium was proposed, I opposed it because it was public land and parts should be used for public housing ("Architect says doomed stadium a 'world-class' design", December 11).
My worries about noise flooding proved baseless. Hardly anyone ever came to the very few matches.
All was quiet in south Paddington. More reason to oppose this fantasy of Berejiklian's chainsaw gang. Please, Michael Daley, keep your position firm. - Jocelyn Pixley, Paddington
Clearly architect Philip Cox never attended a football match at the Sydney Football Stadium when it was raining. - Riley Brown, Bondi Beach
Food for thought
As a bar attendant, I would like to add a couple more pub rules to the Good Food list ("A few pub rules for the summertime crush", December 11).
One: Know what you want, and what your friends want, before you get to the bar.
Two: Give the person behind the bar your order all at once, do not order every drink individually. This rule especially applies to English visitors.
Three: Have your money ready.
Four: Say please, say thank you. - Wendy Young, Glebe
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Economy insights
The interesting thing about OECD report cards on the Australian economy is the view from overseas always seems to be "off the money", seeming to lack the nuanced "inside information" that tells the real story ("Parties in tax tangle amid concern over drop in house prices", December 11).
The house price cycles in Australia over many years reveal booms and so-called busts that are virtually identical.
When the market turns down, some of the gains of the boom are retraced, and a period of stagnancy emerges to last for three to five years. The whole process readjusts the long-term capital gain trend line back to normal. There is no real "bust" at all. - Alan Carruthers, Artarmon
The OECD, a non-political organisation, is right to call for continued tax reform policy debate.
At the moment this important topic has been sidestepped by a desperate government looking for a miracle pass to get it to the election try line.
Tax reform in this country is long overdue. - Michael Blissenden, Dural
It's hard to feel sorry when those with property portfolios complain about a dip in home values while far too many deserving people who want a home of their own are being excluded from the market.
For two decades there has been concern about tottering home prices and forecasts of an inevitable correction, investors have been well warned.
We are currently excluding far too many people from our housing market, it's those who benefit from a drop in home prices that the government needs to focus on, not those whose greed has led them down a slippery financial path. - Trevor Smith, Bundeena
Squares squeezed out
Before extending the daily hours of public art's ability to provoke, consider the plight of the ever-diminishing public square in our renewed urban environments ("Wanted: Bravery in public art", December 11).
In our neck of the 'burbs, public squares are not just an endangered species, they are nearing extinction.
Planning rules and guidelines in the form of so called "flexible planning instruments" obligingly allow developers to build their retail plaza and sell it to the community as a "public square".
A "win-win" for local council and developers but a lost opportunity for the community along with plucky public art.
If we ensured more real public space, namely parks and squares, were built provisional with new development and no legal strings attached, we might just encourage public art to flourish. - Cleveland Rose, Dee Why
We're not seeing startling, bold public art because too many of us don't see any worth in it, which says something about where our values are presently cemented.
And we wonder why we have developed a culture that has no substance to it. - Neville Williams, Darlinghurst
Easy to see wheel deal
Any motorist that uses the M4 daily would be far better off under Labor's cash-back scheme than the Liberals' free registration scheme ("Spend $15 per week on tolls for half-priced rego", December 11).
Obviously the Berejiklian government thinks the people of western Sydney are incapable of simple maths. - Peter Miniutti, Ashbury
Return flight for birds
Relocating those pigeons 800 kilometres away will be a waste of time if they're homing pigeons ("Pigeons get the bird", December 11). - Michael Deeth, Como West
Kiwi kindness
Every time I hear Jacinda Ardern speak, I long to be a Kiwi ("Ardern apologises to victim's family", December 11).
Can the next election include a referendum on Australia being subsumed under the Kiwi Parliament until the Australian rabble get their act together. - Frank Gasparre, Eastwood
Test of agility
Your correspondent is correct in his summation of the Twenty20 cricket mentality afflicting the Australian batsmen (Letters, December 11).
This Test match highlighted not just the negative impact of the short game on Test cricket, but also a positive – the amazing athleticism of today's fieldsmen.
The great English batsman Colin Cowdrey could have shown our batsman a thing or two about the art of building a test innings, but I doubt he would have taken Usman Khawaja's brilliant catch, nor completed the stunning run out by Pat Cummins. - Peter Ryall, Hallidays Point
Hunter's tracks
And when the Gladys Berejiklian oblivion train finally gets past Sydney, it will take longer to get to Newcastle than it did in the 1970s on the Newcastle Flyer (Letters, December 11).
The money the Hunter area has been pouring into the state government coffers for years has never been returned to improve infrastructure. The Hunter area has been punished for being Labor heartland. - Wendy Atkins, Cooks Hill
To submit a letter to The Sydney Morning Herald, email letters@smh.com.au