Poor response
Early Saturday morning our home in Quirindi was burgled.
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They took my wallet, Jan's handbag, our mobile phone and our car which was subsequently torched at Coledale, a suburb of Tamworth.
What else they may have taken if we had not disturbed them is not known.
We have subsequently learned that two other homes in Quirindi were broken into at a similar early hour.
We contacted triple zero almost immediately. However the police could not put out a bulletin until they verified that it was not a hoax call.
We sat about waiting for the Quirindi police but it was two constables from Tamworth that eventually turned up.
Neil Forscutt, Quirindi
Turn the rivers west
Bob Scherf is right; a Snowy Mountains type scheme to turn the eastern flowing waters over the great dividing range to the inland river system is a no-brainer.
A cursory look at the whole east coast of Australia would indicate that about every 200 kilometres or so is an opportunity to harvest water heading to the ocean and pipe it back over the range and into one of the south western flowing rivers.
A massive and costly task indeed, but is it any grander a scheme than building the Sydney Harbour Bridge or The Opera House or any of today's motorways. I have seen the piping of water in overseas countries. We have large scale oil pipelines and yet we pass this suggestion off as being too big, too expensive and too hard.
I dare say China or Katar or UAE would have done this years ago. The jobs created would be massive, the benefits to industry and agriculture immeasurable. Imagine if Lake Eyre remained as full as it is now after the summer cyclones. Imagine if the "mighty" Murray was again mighty. The benefits are enormous.
Yes, there would be a coastal effect with less water finding its way into the Pacific Ocean, but surely that is manageable or is Australia just not up to the job.
John Fuller, Tamworth
Barnaby Joyce
In my opinion Barnaby Joyce should have taken the moral decision taken by Andrew Broad and resigned out of parliament. But apparently his ego is triumphant. He believes that the electorate won't punish him for his known and admitted misbehavior.
In my opinion his authority, support and respect from colleagues has evaporated. McCormack does not campaign with, or for, him.
He has spent $78.9 Million dollars on water that does not exist. Water that can be replenished in the next flood because they left the infrastructure intact. Of course this was not all his fault, it may have had a different outcome had he not taken advice from the Queensland Labor government.
He is the federal government's drought envoy (whatever that is), and this is surprising because his only drought initiative is to hand out money. In all his time as Minister for Agriculture or Water I don't believe he has come up with one idea on how to drought proof this Nation, not one.
His radio interview with Patricia Karvelas was described as "unhinged" by journalists via the "Insiders" programme.
Forget about youth unemployment, forget about poor post codes, forget about the homeless and forget about the philandering.
I believe Barnaby Joyce has a CV that should exclude him from our Federal parliament.
Neil Forscutt, Quirindi
New Moore Creek subdivision
It appears that TRC will continue growth at any cost. Water is vital, you can't survive without it. With hotter drier summers and indeed drier all year round cannot see how Tamworth can sustain 100,000 people but they are only interested in the dollar signs. We will all suffer when Chaffey runs dry at the end of year.
Graeme Reeves, Calala
The cost of doing nothing
Barnaby Joyce is seeking the dollar value cost of opposition party's climate change policies, as a local looking at my future on the land I'm looking at the cost of successive governments doing nothing (or very little) on climate change.
The current Liberal National government claim that their actions will keep global warming capped at 1.5 degrees, but the scientists and experts are telling us that we are on a trajectory for between 3 and 5 degree temperature rise in both my and the next generation's lifetime.
What is the cost to my family's business bottom-line if these temperature rises were to eventuate?
What are the theoretical calculations alone just to soil moisture loss and surface water evaporation rates?
How does that fair to our regions further west that are already operating on a knife edge?
What is the cost to our region and more broader globally of doing nothing?
My vote will be based on clear evidence delivered by experts, not spin.
Peter Wills, Breeza