Tania Maxwell and Carol Roadknight ran the event as part of the Enough is Enough campaign which seeks changes to our justice system, improved community safety, harsher penalties for perpetrators of violent and sexual crimes and parole reform.

Tania and Carol are tireless in their efforts to honour victims and to fight for a safer community and I commend them for their efforts. Thanks to Cullen’s Bus Lines in Wangaratta who donated the bus which took people to Melbourne and Sign Effects in Wangaratta donated the signage.

People are sick and tired of murder being committed by perpetrators on parole. Parole has its place, but individual monitoring is the key to community safety.

We need our police numbers back to where they used to be and we need to protect the community, not the offender.

It is unfair to attack the Murray-Darling Basin Authority over recent management of the Hume Weir.

The Hume Weir was completed in 1936 to provide water and irrigation supplies to the communities of Victoria, NSW and South Australia. It has fulfilled this role and provided flood protection to those downstream since then, with a single exception, that being when remedial works had to be addressed urgently in 1997. 

The weir’s prime role is to store and supply water entitlements to water users. But under long-established release protocols and modelling the MDBA can lower water levels to reduce the risk of future high flow downstream. These releases are restricted to protect irrigator entitlements, a portion of which has been carried over or banked from the previous year to supply current crops.

The Hume Weir eases flooding peaks downstream at all times. Even a full weir slows and moderates peak flows entering from the Upper Murray. 

Much of the criticism of the MDBA seems to be based on ignorance or personal interests or, in some cases, seems politically motivated by those with a mindset against the Basin Plan.

I refer to the letter to the editor from Derek Robinson of Wodonga (The Border Mail, October 24). In the last paragraph of the letter you have printed an incorrect statement by Mr Robinson that says, “stop local gunshops selling illegal firearms”.

This is a slanderous accusation, as our business definitely does not sell illegal firearms and I am 100 per cent certain there is no evidence to the contrary.  We adhere to very strict and controlled laws and regulations and only sell legal, registered firearms to the appropriately licensed customers.

We, of course, have to possess a police-issued Firearms Dealer Licence. Every single firearm that comes through our doors is documented in an ongoing Register of Firearms, of which there are both paper and electronic copies that are also then forwarded to the Police Firearms Registries.  

For every firearm we sell, the buyer has to apply to the police firearms registry for a Permit To Acquire (PTA), which is approved and issued on a case by case basis. Once the licensed customer receives the PTA from the firearms registry and hands the original to us, then and only then can that person take possession of that firearm.

The Border Mail apologises for printing an incorrect assertion that some might have thought reflected badly on local gunshops and fully accepts those businesses adhere to strict controls in a professional and responsible manner.