Letters to the Editor July 16, 2018

Why then is infrastructure for Primary Industry totally ignored?

We can’t get funds to complete our No1 agricultural road, namely the Grain Valley Way. This has been council’s priority for many years.

Gunnedah’s only Cotton Gin on the Clifton Road is principally accessed by 13 kilometres of gravel which is worn below the base in a matter of weeks exposing old narrow culverts over which you drive.

Grading to roll the gravel back is frequent.

Many trucks, B Doubles and stepdecks can be seen, three at a time, going each way in the peak months. The season can be from April to November. The Cotton Gin brings much needed dollars and employment to our small shire.

Clifton Road is a through road from Carroll to Breeza with general traffic and stock trucks to Scone abattoir. Miners access this road from the Currabubula connection.

Our council is doing its best to develop town and agricultural industries, but can’t get basic funding for our major access roads.

The government buzzword is infrastructure. Is Gunnedah too insignificant to count?

M Vincent SNR, Piallaway

I would like to publicly express our thanks to the MEN of LEAGUE who recently held a BBQ get together at the Calala Tavern for the farming community of Loomberah.

It was a truly wonderfully organised and catered for get together that seemed to lift the spirits of the farmers that attended.

As people may appreciate, it can be very hard and not always within the makeup of country folk, to accept certain kinds of help when offered however this day was embraced as a day of relaxing, switching off, if only for a short time, from this terrible drought. This was attested to by the conversations and smiling faces of neighbours and community members.

This day was as someone remarked “just a chill out day to just sit talk and relax”, it was the perfect moral boost to think that other people in the community do understand what we are going through.

Once again tremendous effort and organisation by the Men of League and all the sponsors on the day.

Everyone in attendance really did appreciate this generosity of spirit in which it was given, to us and all the contributions that The Men of League have given in the past to the various causes.

Kathy Cameron, Loomberah

What is Barnaby Joyce's attitude to the unsatisfactory responses from Santos to the 23,000 submissions on its Narrabri Environmental Impact Statement as exposed by the Fairfax press? What is his view on the fact that the proposed $3 billion Narrabri CSG project is within a recharge zone of the Great Artesian Basin? What is his response to the fact that a separate water baseline report revealed "significantly higher salinity" of the water from 850 wells? 

What does he think of the fact that the project's design took "no account" of contamination risks to aquifers from the generation, transport and management of 35 billion litres of waste water? 

How far does he trust Santos after they have seemingly ignored the responses to the original EIS except to declare that the project was based on a model the CSIRO reviewed as "state of the art"? 

Will Mr Joyce inform his electorate of any conflict of interest he may have, now or in the future, with this CSG project? 

And what do Mr Joyce's National Party colleagues think of the proposed project? 

So many questions, so many long-term concerns for the whole nation. We await a responsible reply.

Bert Candy, Glenvale Queensland