Our readers tell John Howard what he should do in his third term - Part 2

From: Nigel Edwards
Sent: Saturday, December 08, 2001 3:30 PM

Without a doubt the first issue on the third Howard governments agenda has to be the economy, as it was for the previous two terms. Economic management is so vital to the well-being of the country that it has to remain at the top of the agenda. As has been proved repeatedly, you must first have economic health to pursue any social or other reforms, something Labor repeatedly underestimates

Without a healthy economy, nothing else matters.

From: Sarah Moles
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2001 1:21 PM

As someone who lives and works in rural Australia I regard the natural resource issues facing the country as particularly serious... If we don’t get our act together, particularly with vegetation and water management, we are heading for an ecological disaster...and can kiss goodbye to agricultural export earnings... The PM's Science and Innovation Council should be really pushing this if Howard doesn’t jump on it ... and he should be taking careful note of the wisdom offered by people like Prof Peter Cullen ...

On a completely different note ... Australia urgently needs a population policy ... until we have one, our immigration policy should have no net increase in population and priority should be given to asylum seekers/humanitarian reasons.

From: "Aronde Palmerosa"
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2001 8:34 PM

The first issue that should be addressed will be the least likely issue addressed because the things that are important but difficult are often the last tackled. This is because these things require guts, they require strength and they require the foresight to disagree with the majority. These are things the Howard government have shown they do not have the capacity nor stomach to do. The things, the issues of which I speak, are the social issues, the community issues, the things that will put food on the table and hope in the hearts of those who currently live without. The things I think should be tackled first require wealth in the community to be shifted from those who have plenty to those who have only debt.

From: E.J.Thomas
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2001 10:10 AM

I wrote in concern of the Environment and asked why is it that we are in need of so much clearing.

This applies particularly in my home state of Queensland.

In the North of the state we seem to have a anti green mentality where hundreds of hectares are cleared for no apparent reason.