The state government announced this week it will adjust stamp duty to the consumer price index, giving people a fairer system. I think a fairer system would be to pay back all the stamp duty paid by people since the GST was introduced. Stamp duty was originally to be abolished then.
Darryl Tuckwell, Eleebana
POLITICS is the jockeying of vested interests for supremacy.
John McLennan, Charlestown
I HAVE never been happy with the truncated coverage Channel 10 generally gives to the V8 Supercars. However, on Sunday evening they really excelled themselves. After deliberately avoiding the sports news, I sat down to enjoy the V8 Supercars highlights on channel 51. Instead of getting the advertised program, I watched an aircraft crash investigation, which had the audacity to end after a drawn-out investigation that reached no conclusion. Still no information about the Supercars.
Dave Hamilton, Jewells
POSSIBLY the only positive thing about a couple of the regular contributors to Short Takes might be their blood type, but I'd guess that's negative too.
Mac Maguire, Charlestown
GERMANY’S 2016 estimated electricity trade of 78.86 billion kilowatt hours in exports and 28.34 billion kilowatt hours in imports means they are utterly unable to have a stable grid by themselves. They also had PPP electricity costs 64% above the OECD average in 2014 (Australia was 10% below). South Australia and Britain also import and export electricity when convenient for them. If you want to be convincing you need to cite a closed system without massive hydroelectric dams (as you will not let us build any more dams, will you?) and include the costs of electricity.
Sean Farnham, Kurri Kurri
I READ with amusement the outcry from local councils about cost shifting (Councils feel cost shifting, Herald 2/11). Councils complain loudly when governments shift costs onto them. On the other hand, councils are quite happy to shift their own work onto others. I have worked for many years as a volunteer bush regenerator in Green Point Foreshore Reserve. I and my fellow citizens of Lake Macquarie have done thousands of hours of unpaid work while paying our rates to a council that does very little to regenerate this important bushland. Come on Lake Macquarie City Council, fund bush regeneration in Green Point Foreshore Reserve.
Graham Couper, Eleebana
WHEN government ministers are being interviewed and asked what is going on in their Muppet show, I am sick and tired of responses that boil down to “nothing to do with me, I am only interested in continuing the great job we are doing”. What great job are they talking about? I don’t think they can’t claim credit for the controversial unemployment numbers (‘Policies paying off in jobs data: government’, Herald 16/8), or the claim that the economy is in great shape, all of which is occurring despite them.
