No doubt the skill of a second-hand car salesman that Barnaby has finessed at various watering holes over the years has given him a grand sense of his powers. But how he, of all people, could ever imagine he has the credentials to try to justify the treatment of women by the Nationals' boys' club, is just raw arrogance. No wonder this is the same mind that continues to deny that climate change from a cosy position of well-paid privilege while his farming families are being battered by more droughts, floods, fires and extreme weather events than ever.

Clearly the Nationals have slowly become aware they have a major problem with women. But, typical of their lazy, high-handed belief that their supporters will believe anything they say, they have chosen to take spin to the its mind-boggling limit. Firstly "Noddy" McCormack had the nation in stitches when he tried to use the two National women in parliament to justify the party's policy on gender equality. Now Joyce is simply showing the thickness of his hide and his short-term memory by volunteering his own simplistic angle on the issue.

With the entrenched and blinkered patriarchy that is today's National Party and the nastiness and self-interest that drives most of what they do, it's time for strong National women to stand up and be counted. After all, they are the only chance of changing a party culture that is destructive to itself and the nation. Sadly, that bull will tiptoe carefully through the china shop first.

Bert Candy

Glenvale, Queensland 

I refer to the recent NDL poll results with the critical areas that voters found important to them when casting their vote at the State election.

I note in the top three in the poll results was big infrastructure projects.

This is critical, rural infrastructure needs continual funding and upgrading to attract private investment and employment for people in rural NSW in the long term.

By investing in roads and rail infrastructure in particular, to improve freight productivity which allows our goods to get to and from our saleyards, from places of produce to our ports and gives agri-business and farmers more choices and a better deal about how goods are transported.

Getting the intermodal freight hub completed in Tamworth is vital as it plays a huge role in decentralising the way goods are moved as I mentioned above but also it would important to mention the job opportunities for people in a prosperous rural city such as Tamworth.

I urge the Berejiklian-Barilaro Coalition government to continually invest in critical rural infrastructure, I urge the government to promote this policy during the election campaign, so we can let’s tap into the potential and make NSW the agribusiness state.

Shane Moran

Tamworth