Last week during heavy rainfall, a homeless person sought refuge in the vacant house next door. I called homeless services in Newcastle and Lake Macquarie the following day, and found that they are all closed due to lockdown, with the exception of one service - Oasis Centre Hamilton. There is no support for the most vulnerable people right now.

NSW prisons are in complete lockdown, meaning that incarcerated people are now subject to solitary confinement, completely isolated.

Furthermore, NSW courtrooms are closed to the public. This is equivalent to Soviet Russia or even North Korea!

Whilst our schools remain closed, young children already struggling with learning disabilities and from poor households are falling behind.

The isolation being forced upon our children will have serious permanent impairment of their development, as they are being denied contact with their peers at their most critical phase of development in their life.

Of greatest concern is the complete lack of scrutiny of the NSW government. The government has refused to attend parliament. We need strong political action NOW to hold the government to account and restore democracy by reopening parliament.

"FATHER forgive for they do not know what they are doing" - words attributed to Christ on the cross by St Luke but equally applicable to the circumstances in which Australia now finds itself.

Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton have irrevocably set us on a path to an uncertain future by making enemies of both China and Europe in one fell swoop.

The American submarines will not be delivered for at least 20 years but the economic isolation of Australia will commence immediately as we not only rely on China for our exports of raw materials but also for our imports of manufactured goods.

In order to destroy trade unions, successive Coalition governments have destroyed our manufacturing industries, thereby leaving us at the mercy of China. But we have now chosen to be the local and junior partner in an encircling operation of China by the US and UK.

The Afghanistan fiasco has demonstrated how the US leads its allies into unwinnable wars with both the UK and Australia now led bloodied and bowed out of the Middle East in order for the US to embark on its next military adventure, this time in the Indian Pacific.

Time will show that the formation of AUKUS will prove to be the most momentous and egregious political decision since The Dismissal, yet this decision, so hastily arrived at without consultation of the Australian people, can never be reversed.

SCOTT Morrison can't be upfront about where he spent Father's Day. Why should we believe him about nuclear submarines? With an election coming up, and Peter Dutton looking over his shoulder, isn't it entirely possible this deal is more about Morrison's political interests than the long term interests of the country?

It will be 2023 before the government even chooses a submarine option from those available, and well into the 2030s before the first one is received. By that time, the Coalition's submarine acquisition debacle will have been running for 20 years.

The most likely outcomes of this saga are billions of dollars wasted, distrust and hostility entrenched, a large target on our forehead, and a war we'll be told we have no choice but to join.

HORROR movie right there on our TV - I wonder if when Skyhooks wrote that song they were looking into the future at the miserable performance of our federal government, seeing our grim reaper Peter Dutton standing in Washington when announcing the nuclear submarine deal.

Our federal government has not only trashed our relationship with China, we can also add France to that list.

We could add to the horror list the government's miserable performance with the vaccine rollout and of course its complete non-performance when it comes to climate policy.

Hopefully Australians will get rid of these horror stars at the next federal election.

THE French are not happy with the decision over the change of plans concerning the new submarines; the proposed supply of these subs has been fraught with delays and cost blowouts and they are not very efficient as a defence or attack submarine due to many issues.

The old deal was a bad deal right from the beginning. I do hope the new deal will see ship construction jobs returned to Australia and the technology capable of being updated as time goes by.

With China being given free reign of so much of the Australian market, we have to strengthen our capacity to close the door to China; as to France huffing off, I am certain that within a few days they will come back after flexing and stroking their egos that have been compromised by their failure to deliver a product on time, on budget and fit for purpose.

THE French have respected and held Australia in high regard since WWI, but that friendship seems to have now come to an end. We had a $90 billion contract with France to build a fleet of submarines and now we have reneged on the deal.

Our government has decided to become the deputy sheriff for the USA. Because the Yanks have a beef with China, our mob has sucked-up to America and, to use an Abottism, shirtfront the Chinese.

Mr Morrison has already harmed our economy by upsetting the Chinese, now it's the French. And New Zealand is not too fussed about having nuclear powered submarines in the area, nor is Indonesia.

Who next can ScoMo peeve? Australian trade needs good working relationships with other nations. We don't need a leader who seeks to raise his profile by pretending he is a tough guy! The sooner he goes, the better.

We need a leader who uses diplomacy, not bravado.

AUKUS translated into French is U-SUK-AU.

IT is sad that what we do in Australia upsets other nations. But it is perplexing that the other nations can do exactly the same and more in their nation's economic and security interest, and we are expected to welcome and applaud their effort. We, as a nation, need to get tougher in our stance.

SOME people may wonder how the Morrison government deceived the French for 18 months. Well, they've been deceiving the Australian taxpayers for considerably longer than that.

ANDREW Hirst, how have the critics missed the mark ('Gladys' critics miss the mark', Letters, 18/9)? She showed poor judgement with the Ruby Princess debacle and as far as taking the lion's share of returning travellers, this has thrown NSW into lockdowns. Remember the hire car driver? Even before these people came back, she was told that the protocols she had in place were not good enough. Her poor judgement has led to her criticism.

APPARENTLY as the result of special allocations of vaccine, Sydney has raced ahead of the rest of the country in vaccination rates, while regional NSW has been affected by vaccine shortages. When Sydney reaches 80 per cent, will Sydney people be allowed to travel to regions with lower vaccination rates? Or, more logically, will people in regional NSW be allowed to travel to Sydney to get vaccinated?

THE latest health advice: if you don't get fully jabbed, you could get fully sick; and if that happens, Gladys won't let you go fully anywhere.

THE logical place for the hydrogen hub is the old steelworks site ('New dawn: Federal government declares Hunter a national hydrogen hub', Herald, 20/9). It's flat, it's dry, it's state-owned, nothing endangered, on the harbour, close to rail and can be built fast. Crack on, I say!

IT'S just not cricket. If the Biloela Tamil family excelled at cricket, tennis, soccer, boxing, cycling, gymnastics or table tennis they would have had a visa years ago, and permanent resident status in time for the Tokyo Olympics. Instead they are just hard workers trying to raise a family in peace.

I POLITELY suggest that Peter C Jones (Short Takes, 20/9) like Carl Stevenson, needs to do some or better research to find the many Labor candidates that were never union officials.

OH silly me! I thought blind trust was the trust we gave to the Americans, after war games, in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

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