Residents are only allowed to claim the rebate for air conditioning units installed by government-approved providers and the ALP candidate incorrectly claimed people in this region would miss out.

The good news is that Tamworth does have an approved installer. Garlick’s Heating and Cooling Tamworth can be contacted to install air-conditioners as part of the NSW Governments Rebate Program. It appears the ALP candidate has not done his homework.

I encourage the community to get behind this wonderful initiative and make the most of an opportunity to stay cool.

Kevin Anderson MP, 

Member for Tamworth

As the saying goes: "If you do something once and it causes you pain, why would you risk doing it again?" 

Barnaby Joyce needs to consider that advice as he announces another baby for him and his partner. A new child and his claim to being "a hands-on" father should signal a dilemma for his immediate political future ("Barnaby announces baby No 2 at club", January 21).

Previously, in a feeble attempt to rationalise his intemperate indiscretions, he blamed the long absences from the family hearth as a causal factor for rampant philandering in Canberra. Nothing to do with self-control, personal ethics or appreciation for the partners at home who hold their families together while they feed their egos; it was simply the tyranny of distance. His closet-chauvinist political hangers-on applauded his insight. 

Joyce, full of thought bubbles as usual, even suggested that partners (current) should be permitted employment on other politicians' staffs as a solution to the sex-less problem. That was quickly hit on the head by a Coalition that saw it as just another barnacle on their sinking Ship-of-State if voters rightly complained about nepotism. So the ever-present dangers for weak-kneed, Canberra-caged politicians remained; as evidenced by the Andrew Broad affair.

Now, as a National politician with a confessed aspiration to be reinstated as Deputy PM, surely Mr Joyce realises that would involve even more lengthy absences from his expanding family. Once again he would be alone and distanced. The question has to be, why would he ever contemplate returning to the circumstances that he believes triggered his past indiscretions and created so much pain for so many people?

Congratulations are certainly due on the latest pregnancy. But perhaps it would be better for both Joyce's "hands-on" fatherhood ambitions and his new family if he resigned, picked up his hefty pension, pursued a sinecure from one of his corporate mining pals that kept him at home, and worked on consistency between his actual behaviours and his professed principles. Unfortunately, it seems wombats will waltz first.

Bert Candy Glenvale, Queensland

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