With people doing it tough every night of the week, lining up at  soup kitchens for sustenance and upon good Samaritans for blankets and bedding  it is immoral for any government  to have $4,500 million socked away from selling off assets owned by the people of NSW.

What is the value of a society when we are prepared to accept it as the norm for people due to circumstances they have no control over, to be reliant upon finding  a doorway or park bench to put their head down for the night?

Mr Mc Dougall is unfortunately, right when he says we as a society seem to forget that some point of time any of us now snug, warm and well fed; may ourselves be standing cold and forlorn on a freezing night in a line at a soup kitchen.

Barry Swan, Balgownie

How does government get away with taxing farmers for harvesting water captured in dams located on their land?

Compare this obscenity with overseas based coal mining companies that have been issued domestic Australia drilling licences, the approval of which then irreversibly harm precious artesian basins and aquifers?

Yet, government appears to overlook a “trifle” matter concerning the application of a hard-hitting levy, in effect giving carte blanche to overseas domiciled drilling conglomerates to rip the heart out of Australia's prime agricultural land and elsewhere that mitigates the supply of precious groundwater supplies, I hasten to add, allegedly unfettered.

In comparative terms it seems grossly unfair.

DJ Preece,  Balgownie

Ross Gittins' pendulum theory of history replaces economic reality.

Unfettered markets are being left behind, (Illawarra Mercury, July 20).

A big dipper would be a more appropriate analogy to describe the boom and busts of market capitalism.

Governments control markets, not some unfettered pendulum.

And it’s a struggle between two opposing interests that determine the state of the market.

An inner struggle that determines who benefits from it.

Who owns the means of production is at core of the struggle. Labor parties campaigned for those means to be owned by the many. Conservative parties for those means to be owned by the few.

A struggle that ensured that profits flowed to personal and society's needs. The new technology means the struggle now favours the owners.

The less workers now needed has resulted in wages decline and chronic unemployment. Ross Gittins points out, "Jeremy Corbyn in Britain was elected on a program of nationalisation, the same program that the returned service men and voted for after World 11". It was a program that also had peace, not war, at it's centre. A policy needed today.

It’s time as the good book says, " To turn the swords into plough shares".

And to build bridges not walls, to spend money on schools and hospitals and not waste it on expensive fighter planes and submarines. All for some future world war that if it ever eventuates will be our last.

Reg Wilding, Corrimal

Great work Trent Hodkinson.

 Your recent actions have been inspirational.

You are a credit to rugby league and all men everywhere but, even more so; the bravery of Hannah is the real inspiration.

Steven Thomas, Shellharbour