The examples of seawalls at Cronulla saw the loss of substantial sand from the beach, at Tweed they contributed to the increased erosion (2011 report).

In the 1964, 1975 storms, water entered the pavilion, the Kiosk and the surf club building at North Wollongong.

The 1975 storm caused the loss of dunes in front of the Norfolk pines at North Beach, resulting in the construction of the gabion walls along that area.

Bar for a couple of  lesser storms there has been no other significant threat to the embankment or the buildings in the last 60 plus years.

The areas have stood the test of high tides and swells in this period.

If the grass embankment was to erode in a severe storm the size of the storm would likely to be of similar size that 1964 and 1975. Those storm events showed the waves passed over the grassed area without significant loss and if it did erode so what?

Whereas lesser storms and even king tides could deplete the beaches of its sand.

Is it time to look at the consequences and the events that could occur to understand the need for such a seawall?

Ian Young, East Corrimal

Sitting outside my home I am once again being smothered by diesel exhaust fumes from dirty, poorly maintained diesel locomotives that run the length of our escarpment.

Pacific National has a monopoly on the diesel train business and I wonder if they care one or a hundred of their older locomotives are spewing out tonnes of diesel exhaust gases?

It would be interesting to know how many people are suffering illnesses from these poorly tuned engines.

The irony is of course that our railway is electrified for most of these trains but I have not seen one electric locomotive on the Illawarra line.

Ken Loft, Austinmer

Health Minister Sussan Ley should return to the back bench – all she cares about is her bottom line.

I’m on a fixed income and been a member a non-profit health fund for fifty five years.

What Minister Ley is advocating is to deregister members of non-profit health funds and shuffle the members into one of three share driven funds namely, Medibank, Bupa or Nib. What arrogance.

Her next despicable act is to funnel health fund rebates away from members and redirect the $6 billion saved into state government treasuries. A move, if she succeeds, will cost me an extra $211 dollars a month and bring health insurance monthly payments to close to $600.

In our case all things being equal, every 100,000 persons on fixed incomes with private health insurance will be deprived of benefits and handing over $253.2 million per annum to the states.

John Macleod, Berry

It's about time the State Government came clean over the apparent top secret deals it made with the Opal Card system company.

Apparently almost half the money the transport users of NSW think that they are paying in fares, is not reaching the public transport coffers at all.

The NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance seems very reluctant to release any information about the inner workings of the Opal Card deal – the costings of the deal must be wrong.

That would explain why Treasurer Gladys made a sudden about face on the fare structure and conditions of use. 

Dave Cox, Corrimal