Those fortunate enough to still have a job in your newsroom would have seen first hand the devastating effect changes to employment can have on workers; the lowest-paid and most basically skilled are always the first to be taken advantage of. It's not fair.

Naming and shaming has been a good tool to use for punitive measures and I truly hope the public embarrassment these businesses may face inspires them to demonstrate the value of their hard workers in the most obvious way possible; paying them a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. Mike Hills, Brown Hill

Ballarat appears to be growing at a much faster rate than most of our state's country towns and cities such as Ararat, Maryborough, St Arnaud, Dimboola, Hamilton, Casterton etc., with many more similar towns to our north and east of the state.

Stawell is another town doing it tough with the closure of the local gold mine. I have been there twice in recent weeks and it is like a ghost town with a resultant depressed housing market. The population of most of these smaller country towns and cities hasn't altered in 50 years or more, and in most of the much smaller rural towns, population has declined.

I feel bringing hundreds of VicRoads employees into Ballarat will force up house prices with the eventual outcome it will become as unaffordable as Melbourne and Sydney. Surely, with modern technology and the NBN, government departments such as VicRoads could be spread throughout the state, growing the struggling rural towns and cities such as I have mentioned above, and taking the pressure off cities such as Ballarat, Bendigo and Geelong, as these cities are growing rapidly with the resultant pressure on infrastructure, particularly traffic congestion which is only going to get worse.

I feel our political leaders, both state, federal and local, need to get together in a bipartisan manner and look into decentralisation more thoroughly to get people out of our capital cities and into areas where population growth has been stagnant for decades. Another area to look into is tax incentives for capital city businesses to move to the country, and which in turn would encourage existing country businesses to stay and grow their businesses. Another area that also needs looking at is giving home purchase stamp duty incentives for retirees to move from our capitals to the country and free up additional housing in our capitals to increase affordability, particularly for first home buyers. The above problems are surely not that insurmountable that a bit of goodwill and common sense from our politicians can't solve.

Keith Pitman, Alfredton

The more I learn about the current plans for the redevelopment of the Ballarat Station precinct, the more concerned I become.The plan for the site is to hand over a significant proportion of land and facility to the developer, including the heritage-listed bluestone rail shed. Accompanying this gift of public land, your government plans to provide 25 million dollars of taxpayer money to the developer to realise the plan, which includes a hotel and convention centre. I understand the developer is committing 19 million dollars to the project, but will wholly own the end product. I fail to understand why this is a good deal for the people of Ballarat and the wider community of Victoria and Australia.

As with many Ballarat residents, I support the view that a major investment is required for this site, however, if your development plan proceeds, I believe current and future generations will inherit an expensive lemon. We need to keep in mind the developer will hold freehold title to the land, therefore if the re-development is deemed commercially unsuccessful, the developer may sell the site, rendering it forever lost for public use.

As a key regional Victorian city, current residents and visitors to Ballarat enjoy the vision and legacy of previous leaders and decision makers, and what a great legacy we have. I am heartened by the injection of funds into regional Victoria, however the question has to be asked: Is the Ballarat Station precinct development about government glory or genuine public benefit? We need a plan for the Ballarat Station precinct providing best bang for the buck

Paul Lambeth, Soldiers Hill