A great part of the area's charm is the ancient rolling hills, rural and coastal combination and village atmosphere.

We have witnessed such features being eroded around Shellharbour, now a big mortgage farm.

While we must accept that the progress of housing and infrastructure is a fact of life, local councils are entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring preservation of valued environmental heritage.

The propensity of councils to sell public land that is highly valued by the community such as Iluka Reserve, Kiama Downs or Fern Street in Gerringong in the face of staunch community disapproval must be stopped.

There would be few ratepayers who would feel any tangible benefit from these sales.

The one-off financial sugar hits would be lost in the consolidated revenue column of the council's yearly financial statements and ominous precedents for future sales set, but all of us would have to live with the resulting blocked views, lost amenity and the acceptance that another piece of our beautiful heritage is lost forever.

Terry Sugden, Kiama Downs

In reply to the page 10 article "Shorten pledges to restore penalty pay" (Illawarra Mercury, Monday July 2, 2017) workers have been dudded, as politics and hypocrisy are on display.

Bill Shorten said "he would abide by the Fair Work Commission's decision on penalty rates”, but now says he will not.

Shorten established the Fair Work Commission as an independent body, however if Bill becomes Prime Minister he will overrule the Commission which means it has lost its independence.

Shorten puts on his union hat and sounds like the workers champion in declaring "I will restore Sunday penalty rates".

Sounds good, but think again?

While Labor leader Bill Shorten was head of the Australian Workers Union, the organisation's Queensland branch struck a deal with the Target retail stores that paid workers $47.91 a week less than the retail industry award.

A workplace agreement with cleaning company Cleanevent during Bill Shorten's reign came under the spotlight of the royal commission investigating union corruption.

Under the agreement the union signed, casual cleaners, mainly working after hours and on weekends, got $18.14 an hour, while under a new award they would have got $50.17 an hour.

A level 3 cleaner got $19.86 an hour on Sundays instead of $41.44.

The union applied to terminate the 2006 agreement in 2015, after the royal commission heard Cleanevent had paid it up to $25,000 per year in a deal that traded off the penalty rates of cleaners to save the company $2 million.

The Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association "SDA" have negotiated away cuts to penalty rates of thousands of their members.

An example is food retailer, McDonald's where workers were worse off under their agreement.

Over a week, an employee working four weekdays and one Sunday would be paid $11.53 less under the union agreement. This double standard by Labor and their union mates is unbelievable.

Adrian Devlin, Fairy Meadow

Damn you Johnathan Thurston.

Only joking, the greatest rugby league player.

Go the Blues.

Steven Thomas,  Shellharbour