I don't believe that the sentences that are handed down for these despicable crimes of late are to the full extent of the law.

You must be kidding when you read or see the news on a drunken, uninsured car driver runs over and kills a pedestrian, that he doesn't get any jail time, or a convicted murderer gets only 12 years for reoffending again, for another attempted murder, rape assault.

So come on Premier, get rid of these soft judges and magistrates.

Bring in mandatory sentence for these crimes. That way some lawyers will not be shopping for soft judges to hear their clients crimes in court.

If the jails are full, then build more jails.

Get with it.

Lawrence Wren, Fairy Meadow

With private health insurance being deserted faster than a club when the raffle finishes, why don't private fund members be able to deal directly with a private hospital of their own choice?.

Instead of almost half of their expensive and ever increasing contributions being squandered away on fund membership administration costs, the entire private hospital industry could offer pre-arranged services tailor made to suit individual local contributors requirements.

Excess payments could be easily eliminated as those members who require hospitalization would be channeled away from the public hospital system directly to where they want to be in the private system.

The present Australian health system is in an absolute mess and is sicker than the people trying to use it.

Dave Cox, Corrimal

Not many would be aware of how many appointments have been handed out by the deceitful Abbott/Turnbull government over the past three years to “extreme cultural warriors”.

Many are long term appointments such as heads of statutory authorities, chairs of boards, new directors, the head of the Public Service Commission straight from union bashing with the IPA, ambassadors, heads of cultural institutions, award boards and more.

I think the icing on the cake is the appointment of Janet Albrechtsen, who is a journalist for the Murdoch-owned The Australian and Neil Brown, a former LNP politician.

Both critics of the ABC and both have been appointed to the panel that advises on nominations to the ABC and SBS boards.

In 2010, Labor introduced an independent nomination process to de-politicise public broadcaster board appointments and ensure that they are made on merit.ABC Friends’ national spokesperson, Glenys Stradijot said that “we are in for a return to the bad old days when the Howard government stacked the ABC’s governing board with its political supporters”.

I doubt there has ever been such a sustained and broad attack on the independence of institutions in this country.

Don Kelly. Kanahooka

Indian Myna birds are definitely a problem.  

They take over habitat and food from our native birds and are a destructive pest.  

The photo accompanying the letter in last Saturday's edition however is a native Noisy Miner bird which is not a pest and is a protected species.  

Cathy Jaye, Albion Park

ED’S REPLY: Thank you to all the letter writers who have written in and let us know we ran the wrong species in our letters pages.

We are now well and truly aware and promise never to mix a Myna with a Miner again.