Here we had two excellent letters, highlighting a looming crisis in the most basic of resources in the country – water – and another letter highlighting a crisis in rail infrastructure here in the North East of Victoria.

And what do we get on page 12? An opinion piece on craft beer by a federal member of Parliament, Anthony Albanese. If I ever needed further convincing that state and federal members of Parliament are so far out of touch with the realities of the problems confronting this nation, this article would have to be it.

Well done to Jean and Emma.

David Everist, in his latest rambling piece, fails to explain at all what he means by “Milk debate muddied by the media”. After reading it I was not one bit wiser about the issues and not even more knowledgeable.  There were no facts presented and as is often the case he resorted to name calling.  “What a morsel for nut-chewing tree huggers?”

What on earth does that mean? I’m rather partial to nuts and I like trees but, hugging them; no, not really.  If your argument is weak or non-existent start to throw around labels. I was once called a “chardonnay, socialist sycophant”. Don’t mind a chardonnay, quite like some socialist ideals, but a sycophant never.

Surely Border Mail you can come up with something better than On the Wallaby.

Dear Border Mail, thank you for pages 6 and 7 (March 21) detailing complaints regarding the NBN.

I was talked into changing to the NBN last year by a Telstra representative and have regretted it ever since, so much so that I have complained to the ombudsman. Telstra has overseas customer service operators now who are extremely unsypathetic to any problem that a Telstra customer may have, especially when it comes to the NBN. When my contract runs out I will be ditching the NBN and Telstra who are certainly not the company they used to be.

We really need a change to our system of electing governments. Presently, oppositions block legislation purely to make the incumbent government look incompetent – even though much legislation presented to the Parliament is basically understood by both sides to be necessary.

What if:

1.       We had 5 year parliamentary terms and alternated governments at each election.

2.       We abolished the Senate.

In this way, each party would know that they would have a chance to govern and implement their pet policies. They would find it easier to co-operate in the best interests of the country, knowing that they would soon have their chance to change bad policies but also knowing that they would not their good policies would be difficult to change. There would be no political profit in either side being obstructive just for the sake of obstruction and point-scoring.

The new government could always be guaranteed a superior number of seats, say five. The opposition could consist of members elected on a proportional representation basis and the majority opposition party would become the next government.

Could someone please explain why the rain gauge at the Albury weather station is not working yet again. Fifty millimetres of rain in the last 24 hours again not recorded at the official weather recording site.