Tamworth water security
The proposed measures announced yesterday for Tamworth water security are stopgap at best. The Farmers will be losers when water is taken from the river. The council notion of 100,000 people will lead us to disaster, with drier hotter summers it is a crazy idea. Already 2019-20 is reported to be another scorching one. Region can only support gradual sustainable growth.
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Graeme Reeves, Calala
Barnaby Joyce's expenses
I read with concern the article on Barnaby Joyce's expenses as drought envoy. This is the man who said last year about the proposed Dungowan Dam improvements that the $75 million just "whistled" at him, sitting idle, while at the same time ruling out the $500,000,000 that was required.
What did Barnaby learn as drought envoy? That times are tough? What did he accomplish?
This is also the man who promised Guyra a pipeline from Malpas Dam for horticultural development, but failed to deliver. Adam Marshall had to step in to fund it at the state level. The delay has seen Guyra relying on trucked water for another month or two, as the pipe is being completed.
Last July he and Bridget McKenzie were inspecting the drought outside Tamworth, kicking a few sods and saying that drought is a state matter.
When will people realise that this is a man who just "talks the talk"? Nothing of use for this safe electorate: and please don't raise the APVMA, that in my opinion discredited and disastrous move at a cost of $30,000,000.
Felicity Forrest, Uralla
Inland rail
Pauline Hanson says that she will hold up the government's plans for tax cuts and other things until she gets not only a coal-fired power station but also the diversion of Queensland's coastal rivers into the dry inland.
While she's at it, she would actually do something useful if she added that Barnaby Joyce's mad Melbourne-Brisbane railway has to be built in the right place.
Instead of having it run first over black soil which turns to mush when wet and then over an actual flood plain, the railway should run over granite. That is, through Joyce's own electorate of New England and then Queensland's Granite Belt.
Queensland (and the nation, by the way) would thus get a much-needed and profitable railway which wouldn't have to close down because of maintenance costs. Both would also get -- for free -- the duplication of the Sydney-Brisbane line. At the moment, that line is just a useless single track which can't be duplicated because of the cost of bridging the coastal rivers. So, two railways for the price of one. You'd think that the National Party bit of the LNP would understand all this.
Pauline? There are good headlines for you here.
Grant Agnew, Coopers Plains, QLD
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