Over half the direct questions to candidates at the recent VFF forum were directed to him. Letters to the editors of Indi single him out. The Jon Faine ABC broadcast held in Wangaratta followed in the same vein where he was unfairly targeted during the event.

Marty, like other National Party candidates, is party to the Coalition agreement with regard to allocating preference votes. He has behaved with dignity throughout the campaign, he has business experience and is the right age to go to Canberra and give us years of loyal service.

He will join the Nationals in a strong Coalition team, with a direct voice in government, strengthening the influence of country regional voters in Indi.

BARNABY Joyce is the worst Nationals leader I have seen in 40-odd years of adult life.

If he is the best talent the party has to put forward then it is in very bad shape indeed. As I have said in the past, I did not vote for Ken Jasper or the Nationals in state elections but I always gave him my second preference vote even though it was not recommended by the party I voted for.

I did this because one thing Ken definitely did as a politician was stick to the principle of doing what he thought was best for his electorate, even if that meant going against his parties policies. That is something to be commended in an MP, not derided. Barnaby Joyce could well learn from Ken on this front rather than caving in to his Liberal masters and big business interests over key Nationals policy like he does regularly.

At the last election, Ken backed Cathy McGowan against Sophie Mirabella because he determined that the former would look after the electorate and be more available than the latter. At this election there is a National party candidate that Ken obviously feels can also look after the electorate in a personal way so he has preferenced him, and with his political roots that would be expected and prudent. But having backed Cathy over Sophie at the last election, how could he possibly recommend Sophie being No.2 on a voting ticket above Cathy?

That would make him a hypocrite, which he is not. Barnaby Joyce and many other politicians know all about what it is to be a hypocrite.

Recent years in the electorate of Indi have felt as though we have been gifted with a huge breath of fresh air and our dignity returned.

This is due to our having self-respect and integrity returned by electing a wonderful and entirely decent person in that of Cathy McGowan.

We have not once had a situation where we had to hear blatant obvious untruths from our representative and demands for a very costly electoral re-count such as we had previously.

Nor have we had to observe, as previously, a person displaying no human feeling or compassion for a fellow human in very obvious physical trouble, as was seen nationwide on Q&A.

The electorate of Indi can really stand proud with what we now have.