Tim Fischer was ahead of his time, speaking openly about the threat of climate change in a 2009 letter to the Henty Field Days committee, promoting the need for a holistic approach to energy at a 2012 Energy Expo in Oxley and giving the Pope a copy of Julian Cribb's The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It.

His passing is a great loss. Sincere condolences to Judy, Harrison and Dominic.

We have a sick government when they transfer an Australian resident to a country, Papua New Guinea, when he has not lived there for over 30 years and apparently was only born there, leaving at the age of 3. His ancestors are war veterans of World War 1 and Australians.

What has happened to rehabilitation and having done your time? The trauma that this person must be going through would be unbelievable. The Prime Minister says he is a Christian, but he is allowing these situations to occur. The Hypocrisy of this government, says one thing and does another!

Hopefully the tide will turn on this government and changes happen.

Saturday's Border Mail always brings a fresh rant from your resident "old man" sitting on his porch shouting at the traffic - David Everist. Every week he delivers an ill-informed tirade against his current favourite enemy and this time it's vegans.

He's either blissfully unaware of the enormous impact of meat eating on climate change and resource depletion, or he chooses to ignore it. Who else gets a weekly column to vent their spleen and attack ideas, or more to the point, attack the people who have ideas? Rather than mount a sensible cohesive argument in favour of meat eating, he just raves.

Calls to cease live exports are dismissed as just "bleating". If the ideas are being spread via social media he writes them all off as "uninformed" and then adds his own in-joke: "Fair dinkum, the rubbish being peddled is enough to cause heart disease".

His one brief attempt at a logical argument is thrown in at the end, almost as an afterthought: "Livestock producers should not have to defend what they do, as in a free market decisions will be made for them."

What is he suggesting? Do farmers not have to abide by social norms and laws about common decency? Does he really think a "free market" can be used to justify animal cruelty?

It's hard to know if this is what he really thinks because he doesn't seem to be able to move beyond shouting insults at people who disagree with them, but it certainly sounds like this is what he is saying.

Replacing his column with some quality journalism would be a good move.

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