Previously, Shaolin’s insistence on financing the development itself resulted in financial embarrassment for both council and developer.

This time the Abbot was accompanied by financial backers As it now stands, a condition of the 2014 Planning and Assessment Commission’s approval for development insists “that the site shall not be subdivided in any form and must be retained in single ownership”.

It’s been a lengthy and justly contentious journey so far. Shaolin have now held the site for 11 years and it is to be hoped that those councillors, who remain on council, and who were so uncritically enthusiastic about Shaolin Mark 1, will be more judicious in their appraisal this time round.

The Abbot has proposed a six-month interval to prepare a development application.

Meanwhile, if experience is a teacher, until the revelations of another development application and a good look at what “Zen” and humility translate to on site, the lesson is – “to be taken with a grain of salt”.

Ann Sudmalis in her Gilmore E-News update, emailed on Saturday, September 16, states that she is putting Gilmore workers first and unions last.

Unions Shoalhaven know how much Ann values her workers in Gilmore. Remember she voted very strongly for getting rid of Sunday and public holiday penalty rates.  

This “gift” impacted on workers across the Gilmore electorate by reducing their take-home pay because of a cut to their penalty rates.

This is hardly a “gift” to our local communities, less money means less to spend and its hits communities and local businesses hard.

Unions Shoalhaven join with all Australian Unions and continue to campaign long and hard for their workers and the community at a time when cuts come at record low wage growth and a raising cost of living which leaves working people and their families vulnerable to reductions in their take-home pay.

The real story here is the Turnbull government introducing anti-worker laws and anti-union legislation, the worst we have seen in a generation.

This is a desperate plan by a government that doesn't have a plan to address inequality. Inequality is at a 70-year high and proves the system is broken.

The rules that were meant to protect worker's rights are now not strong enough.

It has nothing to do about protecting workers. Ann and the LNP government are obsessed and cannot let go of attacking unions as this is the one thing that Malcolm Turnbull can unite his party around.

Sorry, John Hanscombe, hurricanes, monsoons and cyclones are as destructive as they are simply unpredictable.

What is predictable is their locations but their intensity and frequency is not. Any abnormal sequences of these events send us off to the record books to seek comparisons from previous times.

To infer what we do in Australia could possibly influence world temperatures is laughable.

Your reference to Hitler and Mussolini in trying to link the world’s attitude of Neville Chamberlain is a most interesting analogy but bereft of logic and reason.

With Neville Chamberlain, it’s much easier to be wiser after the event. Just another point of view for consideration.