Mr Morrison seemed to hang his hat on the fact that Australia Post is owned by the government and that Ms Holgate was squandering taxpayers' money by purchasing four expensive watches - a mere $20,000 in total - to award to four Australia Post officers who had negotiated significant contracts with three of the four big banks that will effectively ensure the viability of Australia Post outlets across Australia. Mr Morrison was wrong; Australia Post receives no funding from the government and is required, by law, to operate commercially.

An interesting contrast is with NBN CO, another wholly-owned government organisation, which last year paid $78 million in bonuses to employees, including $4.3 million to top executives including the CEO (who is already paid $3 million a year). When this figure became public two months ago, a spokesman for Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said that salary arrangements at NBN Co were a matter for its board and there was not a peep from Scott Morrison. Incidentally, Christine Holgate did not receive a watch; just the four people who secured the contracts.

TREASURER Josh Frydenberg is obliged to talk up the Australian economy, but a closer examination of the March employment figures that he touts show the Australian economy is still on the edge of the "economic abyss" ('Treasurer confident nation has emerged from recession', Newcastle Herald 17/4).

I believe Mr Frydenberg's 'full-time employed' figure is a furphy. It includes 57,000 people who were on JobKeeper but worked zero hours in March, when full-time work actually fell by 20,800 presumably since there was less work to do. And there is a very low bar for fulltime work these days: 20 hours per week makes you a full time worker. April's employment figures will tell a very different story I expect as workers fall off the government's JobKeeper "cliff".

Australia's COVID recession 'recovery' has largely been based on the "wealth effect" and low interest rates. People spend up because their net worth on paper has risen. What happens when interest rates rise, asset prices fall, and the wealth effect becomes negative? Australia can no longer rely on rising exports to drive the Australian economy. Firstly, our exports will pick up slowly, since many of our customers' economies are still recovering from the COVID recession. Secondly, Australia's overseas markets will decline in the next 20 years as our customer nations' populations age and decline. China will no longer require as much of our coal and iron ore, as the Chinese have built their industrial infrastructure. The only hope on the horizon for Australia's exports is India.

Australia's traditional driver of consumption and GDP growth has been real wage rises. However, real wage rises have been deliberately suppressed by ideologically blinkered, successive Coalition governments. Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe argues that sustained economic recovery still requires this real wages growth. But real wage growth requires a buoyant labour market, and not the present stagnant one with 3.5 million casual and part time workers. We desperately need industrial relations and tax reform to provide a fairer distribution of income and wealth, and to put money into the hands of consumers who will spend it. But does either major party have the political courage to undertake this reform?

JOHN Arnold and Richard Mallaby, (Short Takes, 15/4), seem to have some misconceptions about electric power in NSW. The NSW Treasury have serially failed to make accurate predictions about the financial outcomes for this state let alone subjects they know nothing about such as climate change. There is no evidence of more frequent natural disasters occurring. In fact, the evidence has been that over the last 120 years there has been a declining incidence of deaths globally from natural disasters and particularly since the 1930/40s.

The Treasury has been using what we would call climate theory, not "real science", to predict their conclusions. Renewables are not replacing, in any hurry, coal fired power stations which will be required for many decades to come to just keep the lights on. It's not government funding for renewables that is a worry but the multitude of subsidies, grants and easy finance that they receive and thermal power does not.

Previous government funding for thermal power stations came at a time when there was no alternative. And thankfully, for NSW, they did. There is no "inevitable transition to other industries" happening as Ching Ang, (Short Takes, 15/4), claims. Removing coal mines and coal power stations would only result in a transition to blackouts, high electricity prices, de-industrialisation, and consequent lower prosperity for this state. Do people want any of that?

JOHN Smith (Letters, 19/4) says it would seem very clear from various polls he has seen that more than 85 percent of the population agree that a dignified and pain-free option of voluntary assisted dying should be available under strict guidelines. What polls are these?

As I argued last year (Short Takes, 6/11), the percentage of voters in favour of assisted dying varies depending on how you frame the question. Compassion is a powerful persuader, but hard cases make bad laws. The anti-euthanasia lobby group Hope Australia has commented a number of times about the "myth" of a pain-free euthanasia death, for example as shown by research into the lethal injections of death row inmates in the US. I've already responded to Mr Smith (Letters, 10/2) about the voluntary nature of the assisted dying he champions and how, in too many jurisdictions, voluntary morphs into involuntary, no matter what safeguards are proposed. He has, to date, offered no counter-argument against any of my points.

IF Thursday's meeting about liquor laws ('Meeting about liquor laws', Herald 19/4) is "for those who oppose the change to the decision to wind back the city's liquor control laws", then does this mean that those who do not oppose this decision are not welcome to attend? It could be a COVID-19 thing, but I'm dubious. After all, how many hoteliers or similar will be able to take part in the Q&A? I ask because I also find it very telling that every single one of the speakers seems all for the lockout laws; hardly a varied "range of stakeholders", and definitely not what I'd call a balanced affair when there is absolutely no-one whose livelihood depends on the hospitality industry stating their side of the story. To me this whole gathering sounds less like a "meeting" and more like a very thinly veiled propaganda rally.

MEMO to the Australian government: about 35,000 Australians are wanting to return home to no avail. The International Covenant on civil and political rights states that "no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country". The old mantra that some of us are more equal in the eyes of the law to return than others seems in play. Methinks no politicians are stranded overseas, thanks to the generosity of the Australian taxpayer. This mob could not organise a booze-up in a brewery.

READING about the "unconscious bias, white privilege and institutional racism" so firmly rejected by John Rumble (Letters, 17/4), I'm willing to bet that Mr Rumble is not a person of colour. He describes these things as "Marxist dogma" but I am not aware of Marx ever having written about these modern concerns. Mr Rumble has a perfect right to be (apparently) of the far right, but he should check his facts and perhaps his own biases before broadcasting these ideas.

I LOVE my country, but not for the first time I was shaking my head at the concerns of some of my fellow Aussies, when I was reduced to a blubbering fool by news of the death of a much cherished brother in law in PNG. This great man only had a few years education before he became the main provider for the extended family, through bloody hard work, hunting, fishing and subsistence farming. He never once complained and took quiet pride and some contentment in his achievements. His entire life was devoted to his family and would have, at worst, been extended if he'd been lucky enough to have been born here. So much of what we have in this country is taken for granted by so many.

AS the New Zealand bubble opens there's still no timeline for when international borders will reopen, with Mr Morrison noting on Monday that coronavirus was raging globally and some nations were recording more than 6000 cases per day. Maybe he thinks he would scare people saying there were 274,000 cases in India just yesterday alone, or maybe he doesn't want people to worry that the vaccine plan here has been a complete farce and that India's number would remind us all that we are dealing with a real problem globally. Maybe we should be aiming at a slightly more reasonable target, but I forgot - he doesn't think much of targets, does he?

I HOPE Bill Slicer has read Wal Remington's comments (Letters, 20/4). We all have a tendency to vent our spleen when our favourite team endures a less than impressive run. A true team follower learns to take the good with the bad and continues to turn up in support week in and week out.