Clearly the party does not give the Australian electorate much credit for being able to see past personalities. The federal election is not a popularity contest. But as long as the major political parties in Australia continue to view it as such, they will fail to win the confidence of the Australian people. It’s time for the rusted-on right-wing conservatives to just accept, most of Australia does not agree with you. 

The only remaining hope I have is that the people of Warringah do the rest of Australia a favour and get rid of Tony Abbott so that he and his outdated ideas and lofty ambitions can be put to bed, once and for all.

He is not only out of touch with a modern Australia he is out of touch with his own electorate, having spoken strongly against same-sex marriage despite overwhelming support for it within his seat. Clearly, Mr Abbott thought his personal opinion more important than that of 75 per cent of people in his electorate. Another politician who has completely lost sight of what an elected representative is supposed to represent – the views of the people who elected them.

Politicians and irrigators must respect the independence of the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder (CEWH) and suspend the current campaign to have environmental water transferred to irrigation interests.

Water held by CEWH is the result of either early allocations of high security entitlements or water carried over to service planned environmental needs for this season. The CEWH has not received any NSW general security water allocations to-date as is the case with irrigators and should not be expected to sponsor irrigation needs.

The CEWH has the ability to trade water at any time if holding supplies in excess of environmental needs and not impacting the ongoing health of the environment. This is a decision that has to be made by the CEVH independent of political pressure of any type and based on best available science.

Lessons learnt during the Millennium drought when environmental water was “loaned” to NSW and Victorian irrigators and could not be repaid as the drought continued should not be forgotten.

This “loan” resulted in less than 1 per cent of the total water consumed left available to the environment in 2006-07 as the drought continued, and had serious environmental impacts especially in the Lower Murray and lakes regions.

Only the CEWH can, and should be making critical decisions on the use of environmental water, free of political inference, and always with the interests of the environment taking priority.

The winner of the letter of the week is Laurie Frost, of Wodonga. You can collect your prize from the offices of The Border Mail at 1 McKoy Street, Wodonga. Send your letters to the editor to letters@bordermail.com.au.