'Nobody should be left behind'
Re "No Housing Fixes", The Times April 13.
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There are solutions Mr Prime Minister! Affordable housing is one of life's essentials and needs to be tackled head on.
Resident-owned communities have been operating in the US for decades. 75 per cent of all apartments in the New York City area are owned by residents themselves.
Florida has 700 such resident-owned communities providing affordable housing for 160,000 families. Under these projects, here in Australia, anyone wanting a roof over their heads could be accommodated for less than $200,000.
It's time the pollies got their heads out of the sand and looked after everyone needing a home. There are lots of votes in this! Nobody should be left behind!
Keith Davis, Milton
Hospital concern
Wow, the new Shoalhaven District Hospital will be seven storeys high. That's seven more storeys for our Nurses to be overworked and underpaid on.
John Panneman, Conjola Park
'The honeymoon is over'
Looks like the honeymoon is over for the new Shoalhaven City councillors as the cracks are starting to show with some in labor who supported The Greens Mayor block. It has come back to bite them with the mayor who had the casting vote to outsource the public amenities cleaners, and to make things worse, to a Sydney company. So much for Shoalhaven loyalty, outsourcing was not on the "gunna" list at the last council election.
This dept has been let to run down just like the outside maintenance dept over the years. The rot started long before COVID and it all starts at the top at the expense of rate payers and council workers.
Wal Bourke
'We need an active assertive member'
In the three year time period since Fiona Phillips was elected as the federal member for Gilmore, what has she done? We never hear of her or hear anything about her, she seems to have gone missing in no action.
We need an active assertive member that is strong to represent our community not someone that is just going through the motions of pretence. I base these comments on those put forward by neighbours and friends.
If she is lucky and stays as our federal member it will be required for someone or something to wake her up so that the residents of Gilmore are heard as they should be by appropriate forthright action by our elected Federal member.
Dennis F Johnson JP
Deafening silence on issues that count
We are already well into the current Federal election campaign, yet despite the noise coming from all parties, there is a deafening silence on the issues that really count.
Issues such as climate and the environment, housing affordability, health and tax reform, even systemic corruption in public life. These are all drowned out by mindless economic "gotcha" attempts to attract media attention.
The economic reality we all face is that on a macro-economic basis political parties have little power to effectively manage the economy, and therefore no real basis to claim that they are long term "better" managers of the economy.
Pandemics and commodity prices dictate macro responses and both parties are in lock step in their responses to those. Where they can make a big difference is in micro-economic reform in areas such as tax reform, investment incentives, public education etc.
But, perhaps apart from the Greens, none of the main parties have anything much to offer here. An election without vision and we will all pay a long term price.
Barry Tomkinson, Little Forest