A further five-year option can also be taken up by Supercars ('Wharf Rd shuts for Supercar set-up', Newcastle Herald 15/10).

Novocastrians, who contribute untold monies to stage this event, need to consider the values being promoted in their name.

What behaviours are children being encouraged to emulate?

Featured on the billboards surrounding the Supercars circuit are advertisements for alcohol and gambling.

One newspaper ran a story that the superhero of this event Scott McLaughlin had "promised to turn the Newcastle 500 into a bare-knuckled street fight" (Daily Telegraph, 12/11).

Video footage from the Gold Coast and Sandown circuits in the last few weeks have shown serious crashes presented to viewers in the context of an exciting, death-defying motor race ('Residents spinning out at crash video', Topics 14/11).

No reference was made in the reporting of these accidents to the proximity of homes in the upcoming Newcastle 500 ('Accident fuels debris fear', Herald 1/11).

Surely these are not values consistent with the public interest. In my opinion Australian society does not condone the association of car racing and alcohol, yet here we are providing Newcastle's streetscape for its promotion.

Is this really the image of Newcastle we want to showcase to the world, now and in the future?

WELL written, Judith Wilson (Letters, 8/11). We fully support your comments about Narla Village at Belmont North.

Our mother has just passed away after residing at Narla for four years, and we can only say that the care and warmth afforded our mother by the Narla staff was nothing short of outstanding.

Their dedication to looking after our mother deserves high commendation, and the communication between Narla and families who have a mother or father residing at Narla is appreciated.

In an age where it is easy to criticise, it is also an opportunity to provide praise and it was nice to see that Judith took the time to write to the Newcastle Herald.

Narla fully involved us in their care for our mother and also outlined earlier this year renovations (currently taking place) that would improve the lifestyle and comfort of their residents.

It is this planning with residents in mind that shows Narla is not thinking of profit, but the well-being of people who live in the facility.

Thank you to the staff at Narla in looking after our mother. We can only provide words of praise for the past four years.

MAL Sinclair (Letters, 5/11) was right about real-world issues, but the story exposed a problem with the modern world; that is, the growing intolerance to opposite opinions.

I believe the response to a disliked opinion was aggressive with a Swansea High teacher who reportedly said it does matter what a woman wears and that students need to learn in regard to sexual consent/assault.

The student response to such relatively mild comments was to call for the teacher to be sacked, stage a protest out the front of the school and state that if anyone else has that opinion it needs to be silenced ('Students take stand on women's clothing', Herald 29/10).

The young woke students don't have to agree with their teacher.

They can express disagreement and engage in debate, if they wish.

But in my opinion to call for a teacher's dismissal and to silence opposite opinions exposes a far worse attitude than that of a teacher who has conservative views on women's fashion sense.

THE Your Right to Know campaign, supported by major media outlets, including this newspaper, draws attention to the deliberate government suppression of public information, and follows police raids on newspapers.

But the efforts of government to keep information from the public are not limited to state and federal governments. I believe we see the same secrecy and failure to account to the public in our own Newcastle council. Even more galling is the fact that this council was elected on a policy of transparency and honesty. The council has been prepared to incur legal costs, paid from our rates, just to keep details secret.

Without actions by residents' groups and other concerned parties, the details of the Supercars services deed would never have emerged ('V8s race deed kept secret', Herald 9/6/18). In my opinion the council remains married to secrecy, as only public outrage caused the release of costings for the move to the new offices ('$35M lease', Herald 19/10) though significant details of expenditure remain undisclosed.

Freedom of Information inquiries meet with obstacles I consider contrary to the spirit of the GIPA legislation. Our council has never released full costings for the car race, nor for the annual bump-in costs, race preparation, removal of safety measures, nor the sum paid to Supercars for the dubious privilege of hosting the event.

Forced into an analysis of the economic benefits of this event, the council chose a cold-snap weekend in May 2017 as a baseline ('Professor questions Supercars research', Herald 2/9), I believe to exaggerate the size of expenditure, while simultaneously keeping costs secret. We are indebted to investigative journalists for their work, but surely we deserve better governance.

IN reply to Kevin White (Short Takes, 15/11), I am guilty of watering a new lawn on my property. It is for both aesthetic purposes and as a contribution to the environment.

Like all living plants, grass takes up carbon dioxide and releases oxygen. Grass not only removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but it also traps dust to keep it out of both the air and your lungs.

When grass dies, carbon is released back into the atmosphere.

So yes, I do give my lawn a watering as required, more so while it is being established. I do not use more than is necessary and will abide with further restrictions as they are introduced.

What we do need is for governments to build some new dams and divert tropical run-off (Bradfield scheme) in the wet season. Remember, Townsville and north Queensland had over two metres of rain in a week earlier this year (ABC, 15/2) most of which ran off into the gulf countries and the rest into the channel country, eventually filling Lake Eyre.

FOR goodness sake, can we stop bickering about climate change versus climate cycle now? It's so last century. Every person living on Earth at this moment will live and die on this planet - it's the only one we've got so doesn't it make sense to keep it in good shape? Think of it as a teenager's bedroom: the air smells of dirty socks, left-over food and discarded stuff litters the floor and the cat's left a long-dead (endangered) parrot under the bed. If we want to breathe fresh clean air, to eat good food grown with thoughtful cleverness and drink pure water from carefully-husbanded sources we need to start now. We're going extinct.

IN reply to Joan Lambert (Short Takes, 14/11) regarding the Greens and climate change: Ms Lambert, I'm sure you are a well-read person, but to say that 11,000 scientists couldn't be wrong about climate change is a bit beyond the pale. Do you realise that Mickey Mouse signed that petition and a few more onerous names appear as well (The Australian, 7/11). They weren't all climate change experts, just scientists who think that because they have letters after their name it adds weight to the argument.

IT was unclear to me why Brad Hill (Short Takes, 12/11) wanted to call out "the pathetic Greenies and do gooders over the horrific fires". He didn't say. One can only presume that he finds that their claims during this difficult time divisive and that full focus should be on getting through the bushfire crisis. The irony is that I believe Mr. Hill is being hypocritical by responding, and thus being divisive, himself. An alternative explanation to his outburst is that as a card-carrying man-made climate change denier, this event has resulted in an inconvenient truth moment and he is lashing out.

THE country is crying out for a sensible and practicable long term solution to drought. Here is a silly idea, why not produce fresh water in various places around the country then pipe it inland to do silly things like provide drinking water for towns, keep rivers flowing and allow irrigation for crops to feed animals in times of drought?

The fact that it would create thousands of jobs to do this and hydro- power could be set up along the pathways is probably another drawback. Just a thought.

WHEN your heart stops, you die. Our rural areas of Australia are our country's heart, and it's dying. The fluid that keeps it beating is water rather than blood, even though our farmers give blood, sweat and tears every day. If you have a heart problem you either increase flow or give it a jump start. We need to increase water flow to the heart of Australia. It could come in the form of new arteries, pipelines from coastal areas, catchment areas utilised for 100-year flood control, monsoonal areas, desalination plants (which is the world's largest water resource) or sub-artesian basins. Please give our heart a jump start because if you don't we will most certainly lose our heart and soul of our country. These guys need help. They are our battlers, but this is one battle that they and we are losing.