I was a very surprised and proud mum when my son Kaan Sengul (14 years of age) advised me he had entered this completion over a couple of weeks ago.

And his suggestion has been selected in the final five.

Great to see how the community has been given the chance to participate and also given the opportunity to vote.

Keep up the great work...

Nazan Sengul

Elizabeth Farrelly ( ‘Finding meaning in your life for true happiness’, Mercury, October 30)  writes ‘’Happiness is an occasional by-product of purposeful engagement in a greater cause. It’s work.’’.

So spare a thought for the unemployed, especially the young who see that dream  of finding a job disappearing.

True happiness has to shared by the whole of society.

Then it becomes one we can all embrace. One that satisfies individual and universal needs.

It’s a sharing ideal that was promoted by a ‘sermon on a mount’ and by past philosophers who laid the basis for the social contract which was scuttled by the Abbott and Hockey budget.

But we can work to achieve that true happiness .

Which is why as Farrelly points out ‘’Plato made philosophy the most blessed  of vocations’’. We should all say an amen to that.

Reg Wilding, Wollongong

Canberra Uni’s presentation of an honorary doctorate to Julia Gillard for her role in advancing gender equality and education is not deserved.

I recall Julia’s response to me during the federal inquiry into the education of boys 2000.

I had raised issues related to the impact of her mentor Joan Kirner’s closure of Victoria’s secondary technical schools.

This ‘’reform’’’caused terrible declines in the social and educational well-being of the poor young men I was working with.

Most were lost to the education system and gainful employment.

As this group reached their mid-twenties they were the young men from Victoria who made up 90 per cent of the national increase in suicide (1997 ABS).

Julia’s response to me was oh well men at the top go on to earn more on average than women.

Poor young men and their families are grossly over-represented in the unemployable bottom 5 per cent of our population.

I can’t recall any effective action by Ms. Gillard to aid these young men.

Oh and Julia the roughly 50/50 ratio of males to females at university in 2000 you cited to me is now 57 per cent female to 43 per cent ,ale.

Where is the outcry?

Julia Gillard an icon of gender equality and education? Not if you are a poor young man.

Andrew Humphreys, Narrawallee

Just a quick note in response to a letter sent in on October 30 suggesting bus loads of tourists traveling past Cringila may be distracted from the areas beauty because of some scrap metal sitting out the front of a scrap yard next to Cringila pub.

Next time you drive past have a look across the road there's a thing they call the steelworks that might distract the tourists a little more than some scrap metal next to a pub.

By the way "can I have my shovel back please Dad".

Patrick Ryan, Woonona