I work directly opposite the Jindera NBN Tower, and no work took place on the tower on the said day of the outage, nor on the next day when the next outage occurred.

In fact, during the hours of 7am to 5pm, nobody worked on the tower all week.

The issues with the Jindera NBN service are far worse than what has been said, and at times, most people I know on the service are lucky to be getting 1/10th of the speeds we have been paying for.

This has been an ongoing issue for over 12 months, and NBN Co keep blaming the providers for the issue.

The local community forum group page is covered with complaints about poor NBN service and poor NBN speeds.

The issue is, whenever people complain these complaints just get pushed aside in the ongoing he said/she said battle between NBN Co and providers and us. The consumers are stuck in the middle getting a service which is far worse than the ADSL2+ service we had previously.

If the Adani Carmichael coal mine goes ahead it will be one of the greatest tragedies in modern Australian history. 

Statements about additional jobs in Australia or “India needs coal” are from Liberal and Labor politicians whose party coffers are fattened by Adani's “donations”.

The poor quality coal from this mine will actually destroy existing coal jobs in NSW (according to coal industry experts) and many of the 60,000 jobs dependant on the Great Barrier Reef. 

India does not need coal, it needs energy.  Politicians paint a picture of poor Indian children doing homework by the light of burning animal dung. These children cannot wait decades for the extra coal to be mined and delivered, new power stations built and the Indian national grid extended.  Solar panels and batteries can be installed in days, providing clean energy with no ongoing fuel costs. 

When discussing coal imports recently, India’s Energy Minister Piyush Goyal said: “We want to completely stop its import over the next two to three years.” 

This mine is the latest litmus test as to whether Australia is serious about our future or happy to destroy it.

To allow the mine to proceed would be the most stunningly stupid political decision made in a long time. 

Our environment provides our air, water and food and there are still beautiful parts of it for us to live in and enjoy – the Albury-Wodonga region being one of the best.  

There are no jobs on a dead planet and there is no “planet B.”  We are part of the environment, not apart from it; if we destroy it, we destroy ourselves. 

We cannot afford any new coal mines, least of all this one. 

The housing crisis is is looming and talked about by banks and economists and solutions are there but governments continue to skirt them.

There is no doubt that negative gearing and capital  gains tax need to be changed. The money locked up in housing needs to be released into the broader economy.

People must be encouraged to self-fund retirement from high-value city homes and there must be incentives to make a regional shift in retirement.

The city home is money locked up and many occupants get the aged pension. This needs to change and the aged pension burden lightened so it is there for real need. Imagine the boost for many regional towns if there were incentives to encourage many out of the city.