The people of the New England have displayed integrity, intelligence, trust and admiration for the MP of New England electorate and most importantly the pride of being a citizen of the New England and for that reason I sincerely congratulate them, with their sound reasoning in such an important event.

Well done people of the New England and for that matter the whole of Australia.

Greg Daly, Limbri

I write with interest that the Tamworth regional Council is still besotted with the idea of being a population of 100,000 people for Tamworth even though the city is now on level four water restrictions due to probably the worst drought since the British settled this country.

This is one of the silliest ideas I've heard for a long time as have many other people. For starters Australia is the driest inhabited continent on the planet, and there may be very good reasons why that over 60,000 years the indigenous people never passed the 1,000,000 mark. Like this sinister drought. Over population, over exploitation of resources, el nino, la nina, etc have destroyed other civilizations in the past e.g. the Sumerians in what is now modern day Iraq. Also the bio-diversity report just released doesn't make for happy reading especially regarding too many humans on the planet.It confirmed what I have long thought over the last ten year.

If there is no rain, dams will never drought proof the countryside as some misguided people seem to think. Keepit Dam, now dry, and towns now running out of water should kill off that myth once and for all.

The worrying thing about the fish kills in the Darling River earlier this year has to be the deaths of 30 to 50 year old Murray Cod fish, who have survived many a severe drought. Why? Are their deaths the fish equivalent of the canary in the coal mine? The destruction of the river system? A warning to us?

On that subject Barnaby Joyce was quoted as saying he'd put the irrigators ahead of the environment any old time. People don't seem to realise that, if the environment is destroyed everything else - irrigators, towns, livestock breeders - is destroyed with it.

A brief change in subject. Barnaby's grand passion for coal fired power. Just after Easter England went to a week without using coal fired power. Ireland three weeks. A British energy spokesperson on CNN two weeks ago said that gas will be phased out along with coal. Will there be a need for Adani? And will the whole operation be automated, and run by computers in Brisbane? Over to you Barnaby.

Muriel Capel, Barraba

On Page 95 of the NSW Road Rules it states "Approaching a round-about: Vehicles entering a round-about must give way to any vehicle already in the round-about". Why do people enter the round-about when cars have come to a stop? They end up blocking the cross traffic. Apart from the safety rule to give way, people seem to ignore the courtesy rule as well these days.

James Lambert, Tamworth

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