A VOTER complaining about the V/Line train service has been labelled an “old stager” in an email mistakenly sent to him by the member for Murray Valley Tim McCurdy.

Rutherglen Newsagency owner Jim O’Toole had sent two emails to Mr McCurdy and the member for Benambra Bill Tilley over the past two weeks expressing his frustration over problems with V/Line operations.

To Mr O’Toole’s surprise he received a reply to his second email that read: “Please call this old stager and invite him to a meeting at my office in the next couple of weeks, thx.”

While he hasn’t taken the comments to heart, Mr O’Toole said the lack of acknowledgement from both Coalition government members made him question their commitment to their electorates.

“Because they are not in a marginal seat, they are very secure and I don’t believe they care about the fate of rail services in the North East,” Mr O’Toole said.

“What upsets me is there are a lot of people who rely on a good rail service and they certainly don’t demonstrate that they care to their constituents.

“The sentiment around town after my first email was published in The Border Mail was ‘good on you’ someone needed to say it because these politicians aren’t batting for us.

“It took my daughter 7.5 hours to be dropped at the wrong bus stop and I don’t like the idea of having a daughter stranded in Euroa.”

Mr McCurdy was in Parliament at the time of sending the email and said “old stager” is just a term he regularly uses.

“It would have been accidentally, that’s why I don’t try to write emails to constituents,” Mr McCurdy said.

“I apologise if he feels offended that I haven’t replied to him but I hope I have made up for that by requesting him to come and catch up with us.”

Mr McCurdy said his office receives hundreds of emails every day and they only respond if people are requesting something.

“It’s our normal protocol that if they aren’t asking for anything and it’s a ‘for your information’ email, we will look at it and move on,” he said.