We’d like to express our sincere gratitude to the community for helping us at the dinner for the Nepal Earthquake Appeal at Fairy Meadow Community Centre last Saturday.
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We are a small community with only a few hundred members but always giving generously to the call for help whenever we can.
Most of our members came to Australia as refugees, we remind ourselves very often that we are very fortunate to be given a second chance in life in Australia and that we do not take for granted such kindness. Whenever we can, we try to make a positive contribution to Australia.
With less than two weeks, we have raised a total of $17,186 for the victims of the earthquake in Nepal. This money will be forwarded to St Vincent De Paul state office to help the victims.
It was an opportunity for the Vietnamese community to show once again their compassion and solidarity towards the victims and their families.
We thank the Wollongong community very much for taking part in this fund-raising event. Together we can make a difference in someone’s life.
Teresa Tran, president, Vietnamese Community in Wollongong
Reply to the letter by Matty Ryan, ‘‘Budgeting for lunacy’’ (Mercury, May16). I appreciate Mr Ryan’s honesty in acknowledging Labor made big mistakes in office.
What some people do not realise, is that things the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments legislated such as the NBN, Gonski education reforms and NDIS are still to be paid for because they were never funded.
I do not expect Mr Ryan to change his political views, but to look at the seriousness of our debt problem. Cutting services and/or increasing taxes are never popular, however what is the alternative?
The real lunacy is to dig ourselves into a debt that we cannot be free of, through continued borrowing and spending.
Adrian Devlin, Fairy Meadow
The macroeconomic goals of government should be low unemployment, economic growth, low price inflation, and avoid a trade deficit.
We have become obsessed with the fiscal policy parameters; the tax and the spending parameters completely divorced from context. What does it matter how big the deficit is as a stand-alone divorced from context?
The function in which the fiscal deficit is pursuing is important. The debt to GDP ratio figure should depend on how strong our savings are and how much is being leaked out in imports. So there is no figure that is appropriate.
We shouldn’t be obsessed with the figure, we should be obsessed with what it’s doing. If we’ve got 6.1 per cent unemployment and lots of underemployment now, well the deficit is too small and it needs to rise because it means that non-government spending, private sector spending and what we get from the exports sector is not sufficient to employ enough people.
The only solution to that is the government has to employ more. That means government spending net of its taxation revenue has to be higher. How much debt the government’s got is irrelevant when divorced from context.
Don Kelly, Kanahooka
Dragons leading the comp and only two players selected for Origin. That can only be a good thing for the club’s chances in the second half of the season.
Dave Jennings, Towradgi