AS the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccination has been slow due to people overestimating the risk factors of COVID-19 vaccinations compared to adverse events such as complications and possible death resulting from elective surgery in a hospital, side effects from routine medication etc, then maybe a rethink from the government is order. What about cash incentives?

If you get a blood clot from the COVID-19 vaccinations and are hospitalised, then $500,000 and all medical bills paid. If you are vaccinated and die from a blood clot, then $1 million to your nominated beneficiary. This will be a lot cheaper than the cost of a vaccination marketing campaign.

INDIA is in a terrible state due to the pandemic, a situation I believe is largely the result of gross mismanagement by the government. The spread of the virus was difficult to control because of high-density cities that made lock-downs extremely difficult for residents and safe separation is impossible. A highly infectious new variant may also be a driver, but there are other factors including an underfunded health service and a severe shortage of doctors. India needs about 600,000 more just to meet the WHO recommendations for doctor to patient ratio. Unfortunately, the situation is getting worse. A study by the Indian Journal of public health found that because of population growth India will need another two million doctors by 2030.

Yet training more doctors is but part of the solution, as it is becoming increasingly clear that India is in a highly competitive battle with developed countries to retain the services of those newly minted doctors. "Out of the total number of graduates, 10 per cent are opting for pastures abroad. The basic fact is that India needs them, and India is not in a position to retain them," says Dr. Vedprakash Mishra, vice chancellor of DMIMS University, a medical college in Nagpur.

In 2007 the WHO estimated that over 100,000 trained Indian doctors were employed overseas; about half in the US followed by Canada and Australia, where about a third of doctors had done their initial training overseas. Many are from developing nations. In 2017 there were 4771 Indian doctors working in Australia as well as 2287 from Africa and even 116 from Oceania. Absurdly, they were not always working as doctors because many skilled migrants find it impossible to find a role in that field.

From an economics point of view skilled migration is a bargain. It's also immoral, but morality isn't part of economics.

MICHAEL Hinchey (Letters, 10/5) raises the interesting point of the lingering "us and them" attitude that many older Australians, including some correspondents to this page, still hold in respect to Australians who have arrived here from other countries.

Perhaps they harbour the fear that many "Australians'' felt when we opened up to migration from Europe and Asia after World War II regarding jobs, lifestyle and morals. Perhaps it is latent racism; "they", especially if "they'' are from Asia, are fundamentally different to "us" (in fact they are not really as good as us) and could never really be truly Australian.

For those concerned, I'm afraid it's too late. We passed the half-way mark in 2018; 51 per cent of Australians were either born overseas (29.8 per cent) or have at least one parent who was born overseas (20.9 per cent). So you're going to have to live with the fact that Australia truly is a multicultural country. If it's any consolation, it's probably only a few generations ago that both your parents were born overseas. Mr Hinchey is correct: we should all be clamouring for the government to help our fellow Australians return home no matter where they are.

MUCH has been written about returning our citizens from India. To return 9000 citizens by air in COVID-safe conditions, would take many flights and be extremely expensive. May I suggest that it would be prudent for the government to lease two or three large cruise ships to do the job? People could be tested before boarding, during transit and before disembarking. The period of the voyage could serve as their "hotel" quarantine period. I have a friend, his wife and child that are stuck in England. A similar service could be implemented to repatriate Australian citizens in the UK and Europe.

THE definition of a footpath is a thoroughfare intended for use by pedestrians, so why is it people park their cars across them? We live in an area where elderly people use their walkers and mobility scooters and to see them having to use the roads is wrong. I have complained to our council and police to no avail.

What will it take for someone to oversee this problem? Oh I know, someone's death. Shame on the council, or police, whoever it is. You only see the council rangers at major events policing this problem and I have never seen a police officer booking someone. Elderly people have rights too.

THE amount of money needed to rehabilitate the 23 open-cut mine pits in the Upper Hunter could be as much as eight times that currently in the NSW government's environmental rehabilitation bonds ("Up to $25bn to fix mess", Herald7/5).

This is bad enough, but the coal industry clean-up needed is far greater. The Australia Institute report only considered the cost of back-filling the pits. An arguably more serious environmental concern is the 12 million tonnes of coal ash that Australia produces each year which is mixed with water to create a sludge stored in large containment dams. Coal ash is toxic, and the sludge in the dams next to the southern end of Lake Macquarie, for example, has levels of heavy metals, including cadmium and lead, above healthy environment guidelines set by the Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council.

The burden on taxpayers of cleaning up coal-ash pollution is not unique to Australia. In a settlement reached earlier this year, the US customers of Duke Energy will bear about 75 per cent of the projected clean-up costs up to 2030. The total clean-up cost for eight coal-ash retention ponds is estimated at more than $8 billion. It seems the real cost of electricity from coal is far more expensive than many claim.

THE old Barnsley Weir has had a long life considering it was constructed in association with Cockle Creek Power Station around 1925 ('Tenders open for weir bridge at Barnsley', Newcastle Herald 8/5). The weir was strengthened in the early 1960s to take coal trucks when coal trains ceased running to Cockle Creek Power Station. With the closure of the power station in 1976, Coal & Allied desired to close the road and demolish the weir. Lake Macquarie City Council desired to keep the road open.

IT'S typical Coalition partisan politics, in my opinion, to see a Labor member for Paterson excluded by the PM from his Williamtown upgrade announcement ('Flying high', Herald 8/5). Meryl Swanson can take some solace from the fact that in 1973 Liberal Party premier Robert Askin failed to invite Australia's prime minister Gough Whitlam to the opening of the opera house in 1973.

I DESPAIR at the inaction of our Australian government on reducing carbon emissions. Europe is so frustrated that it is threatening to impose carbon tariffs. Meanwhile our government is prolonging Australia's dependence on fossil fuels with taxpayer money. It is subsidizing LNG import terminals in the budget. Angus Taylor is promoting and facilitating this latest aberration. He should be "Fossil Fuels and Emissions Increase Minister".

AS John Hewson points out ('Australia is in a climate transition muddle', Opinion 7/5), and was confirmed by your editorial's wording ('Runway works key to new airport era', Opinion 8/5), of the same date, Australia does not know what it is doing. There should be a national power infrastructure plan, not a gas one. China, for decades, has been putting together a smart power framework, for supply and use. If anyone is left standing at the end of the fossil era, China looks set to stand head and shoulders above the pack. Fossil is choking, noxious, cumbersome, unwieldy and inefficient. This is not sound for the soaring per capita power use of a population more than 7.5 billion people and rising.

I BELIEVE Australian citizens stranded in India, and sections of the Australian media, should be laying a lot of the blame for the dire situation in India on the inadequacies of the Indian government in trying to stop the spread of the virus and not being critical of a government trying to protect people in this country. Restrictions put in place by the Australian government should remain in place until the situation in India improves.

I WOULD be pleased to never see another photo of Scott Morrison in the cockpit of an aeroplane ('Flying high', Herald 8/5), or is he a trainee pilot as well as leading the country? On the other hand, I was happy to hear about the "Centre for National Resilience" at Howard Springs for Australians returning from India and I eagerly await information as to how this facility differs from a quarantine centre.