The line infrastructure and its maintenance are the responsibility of the Australian Rail Track Commission (ARTC) which reports directly to the minister. 

The minister states that the track meets the performance standards set by the Victorian Government when it leased the line to ARTC, but experience has shown that the standards are wrong.

In industry common sense prevails and it is not only standards that establish the success of a project, it must also be deemed to be “Fit for Purpose” and a train service that consistently fails to run on time, experiences delays and transitions to busses to complete many of the scheduled journeys, is not fit for purpose.

The government has invested over $1 billion in a line that is plagued with mud holes. ARTC has data that identifies the problem areas on the line and the minister must release this information to competent civil engineers who have the knowledge and the experience to eliminate the problems.

While on the train it is important that the minister takes the opportunity to evaluate the condition of the 40-year-old rolling stock and makes a judgement on its reliability and suitability for a modern rail service.

He can then sit down with the Victorian Minister for Transport (Jacinta Allan) and establish a timetable for the acquisition of safe, modern, reliable rolling stock that will be manufactured in Australia.

I wrote a letter to The Border Mail four years ago regarding the fact that it seems that humanity in general is in a state of denial of existence.

We never hear anything significant in the news about the world's population increase. Why not? The world’s population is increasing by more than 125,000 a day to reach the total of 8,000,000 according to The World Population Clock as I am typing this email. That's 80,000,000 more in the next year.

We read about global warming (rarely nowadays) refugee issues, all forms of violence, wars and civil disturbances that are going on for all sorts of reasons, accidents of all sorts on the ground, on the water and in the air and in a multitude of other matters that affect our lives. Why don't we ever hear about our most pressing problem which is overpopulation?

We are living in a state of denial. Let's make it simple. What would things be like on this earth if we could halve the present world's population down to 4 billion people? How would things change? What if we halved it again down to 2 billion? How would things change.

This might seem like a silly way of visualising the situation but imagine the protests in the Middle East and what they would be like halved and then halved again? Our species is the only species on this planet that can deliberately control its population and we aren't making any attempt to do so.

Why are we continuing to deny that we are a plague species and are an overpopulated species that has no long-term future? 

The economy must progress no matter the consequences. Cars rule this planet and without them we would be nothing. I don't think that we will ever wake-up to reality.

We are not a very intelligent species and I think that given the very short evolutionary time that we have existed on this planet, we haven't much of a future as most species that have ever existed on this planet never achieved.

The winner of the letter of the week is Bill Buckpitt, of Wodonga. Collect your prize from The Border Mail’s offices at 1 McKoy Street, Wodonga.