Consider night shifts, a shift in which fatigue is already high, skeleton staffing with the same acuity of patients, nurses working night shifts receive no 'meal break' on a shift length of 10 hours. Believe it or not, public sector nurses on night shifts are only entitled to two 20 minutes 'interval breaks' in which the nurse remains on the ward, can be interrupted at any time and with breaks that are not guaranteed as they are considered 'paid break'[s]. At any time, a nurse is faced with the decision to provide the basic care for patients or medications or work through their 'interval break' to ensure the safety of patients, but on night shift, this has a significant impact on a shift with already substandard breaks to prevent fatigue.

How can embedded safety measures which reduce fatigue be negotiated out of an award? So when nurses are saying they are missing breaks, it is of significance in preventing fatigue. Where did the 'meal break' go during night shifts?

We cannot be silent anymore.

AS I see it, it's those who support "voluntary assisted dying", rather than those who oppose it, who try to make the debate into a religious argument, perhaps to deflect scrutiny from what they actually propose.

For Greg Piper MP ("Piper tells MPs to put faith aside in debate", Herald, 20/7) it's not right that someone's religious beliefs play such a defining role in the lives of others. Weren't historical reformers like Wilberforce and Martin Luther King driven by religious beliefs? Chris Gavenlock ("Support for voluntary assisted dying bill", Letters, 24/7) sees a minority group of politicians at the behest of a "well-resourced hierarchy of religious organisations" enforcing their personal beliefs on others. But don't other politicians try to force their beliefs onto others? And the organisation leading the charge against VAD, Hope Australia, welcomes people of all faiths and none.

Compassion drives opinion poll support for VAD, but levels vary according to the question asked. No one wants unbearable pain and suffering, but, as Palliative Care Australia says, pain is not an inevitable part of dying.

Chris Gavenlock says it's not compulsory to participate in VAD, but abundant evidence suggests that's not how it works in practice. And even VAD can be a horrendous end of life experience. Check Oregon's Death With Dignity Act 2020 Data Summary (available online). The Oregon Act is the model for what is proposed for NSW.

I AGREE with David Stewart (Short Takes, 26/7) that there is something truly contemptible with ScoMo's judgement.

After initially appointing Commodore Young to manage logistics of the vaccine rollout in April he obviously decided that both he and the Commonwealth Vaccine Operations Centre lacked the necessary clout to finish the job.

So, in June, he then appointed Lieutenant General Frewen to do something. This was advised to the National Cabinet meeting of June 4 but the role detail was not discussed.

How is that for efficiency, while we still wait to book simple appointments at the Belmont super hub?

The man may market you something but please don't buy it unless it is a real life vaccine.

Wow, 50,000 just appeared from nowhere. What's going on?

IN contradiction to the Scott Morrison Government's assertion that the Great Barrier Reef is being saved, his government has approved our ADF together with USA military forces and those of several other nations, some 17,000 in all, conducting war operations on the Queensland coast and in and around the Great Barrier Reef. This practicing for war involves beach landings and land, air and sea operations including firing live ammunition, is hardly conducive to saving and regeneration of one of the wonders of the natural world.

WELL Premier Gladys Berejiklian, you should be proud of how you have single handedly kept NSW open for business. With these great skills you have opened all states to take part in keeping business moving.

You and your ministers must be celebrating with high fives and throwing down the champagne with such great management skills.

How can you demand other states surrender their vaccine supplies to fix a problem you and your cacogenic government caused. You and your government priorities were greedy business groups over the priority of the safety of the people of NSW.

Your government has spoliated from the citizens of NSW to feed the big end of town with contacts that run millions over budget, speed cameras collecting millions for private concerns, trains that require major alterations, buses requiring complete rebuilding so they can take our jobs and money overseas.

I believe you have turned back the hands of time to the year's 1939 to 1945 where the citizens of NSW are under martial law with all its overtones of leather wearing, gun packing, gas carrying police removing our civil rights. Hail, I say hail to the premier as you have risen.

RECENTLY we have heard of proposals to install wind turbines off Newcastle as well as complaints from people about residents using wood burners. While writing this letter it is a sunny, windy but cold Sunday, so I had a look at the energy mix expecting to see renewables dominating the supply, but at 12.00 noon in NSW. Wind was 25 per cent, solar was 12, hydro was three, so renewables managed to supply 40 per cent of the electricity demand with fossil fuels supplying 60 per cent. Later today when the sun sets and wind dies as it usually does in winter after 4pm fossil fuels will have to supply the total demand. We are told to grow the wind generation so we can put wind turbines off the coast. The photos showed North Sea wind turbines; however, the North Sea's average depth is about 95 metres. Off the coast of Newcastle, the water is 200 to 300 metres, at about 20 miles off the coast we fall off the intercontinental shelf into thousands of metres of water. So other than building these wind turbines off Newcastle beaches how will we secure them to the ocean floor? Given even Bob Brown will not accept wind turbines within sight, I cannot see Newcastle accepting it either.

For those who want wood burners outlawed, in the 1950s most houses had combustion stoves which were used for cooking and heating. In the 1970s we had regular blackouts. This was before NSW built all of those 'evil" coal fired power stations.

I'D like to be eligible for some government aid for working without a break throughout this pandemic. Apparently I'm not even going to be reimbursed for following a directive to undergo a COVID test before I could drive in the gates. Instead my entitlements were used, but I thank the lord my leg and arm weren't taken. No plausible reason was given to me either. Some co-workers were directed by phone to isolate for 14 days, all sick and annual leave used up. Where are our freebies?

NOTHING like seeing performative anti-lockdown rioters in Sydney thinking this is the USA and their January 6 moment. I believe Alan Jones and his lapdogs on Murdoch's Sky after Dark bear some responsibility for bringing misinformation to the stupid, and the federal government gives them millions and denigrates the national broadcaster. Talk about biting you on the bum, Prime Minister.

WELCOME to the great divide, state governments playing politics and opposing anything and everything just to score political points, protesters gathering en masse breaking the law, involving an innocent horse and abusing police for doing their job. Shame.

ALL those involved in these protests over lockdown shouldn't be tested for COVID but instead IQ because this stupidity is not the way normal Australians act. Who in their right mind carries the flag upside down or takes out their frustrations on a horse?

WHY do all the lefty journos want the PM to say sorry? Sorry for what? He organised over 50 million AstraZeneca doses which we received. We now have millions of Pfizer coming in weekly. Just tell this lot to suck it up and everyone get the needle.

WATCHING the vision on the idiot box of the freedom protesters in Sydney, if the reports count the number at about 3000 people attending, then it must be that the reports from the Anzac memorial service in Newcastle one year as being 50,000 remembering the Diggers, are from a similar source.

I AM a bit worried about Lewis' dog that it will need to spend 15 days in quarantine with the Queensland premier after their junket to Japan (Editorial cartoon, 24/7).

THE protests at the weekend were certainly not in the public interest. The same as the BLM protests last year. However no civil action or public outcry occurred last year, as is the case now. Neither group should have marched. So why is one treated differently than the other?

IS Newcastle's rejuvenated Honeysuckle Foreshore a winning asset for the city?