You bet I am angry. All through the pandemic people talked about how important it is to buy and eat local produce as well as buy products made in Australia.

Our own food is of much higher quality because we have stricter regulations in Australia. Why on earth would I want to eat pasta made in China? We have wonderful pasta made right here in Australia.

How can anyone trust food coming from a country that does not respect its own people, has no respect for human rights and little respect or regards for the rest of the world, indeed from a country that wants to take over the whole world?

Why would we spend our money overseas instead of supporting our own economy? Don't we have already enough cheap and unreliable products flooding Australia made by Chinese slave labour?

We want to let Coles know (and any other companies importing food products from China) how we feel about it. Let's all discourage them from investing in imports from China.

It was not surprising to read in The Border Mail last week that Simon Welsh praised the Victorian government's action in allocating $5.3 billion to build 12,000 public homes over the next four years. Of course Simon is entitled to his opinion but in the interest of fairness that article should have mentioned Simon was the endorsed Labor candidate in the recent Wodonga Council elections.

Simon received a total of 688 votes or 3.03 per cent of the total vote. Perhaps Simon plans to replace Mark Tait as Labor's candidate in the State seat of Benambra or Eric Kerr in the Federal seat of Indi.

I have a different opinion and declare I am a member of the Wodonga branch of the Australian Liberal Party. The Labor government's plans will not solve the housing problems in Victoria.

To build 12,000 homes/units over four years will help 12,000 families but at an average cost of $441,667 per house/unit is far too expensive.This amount of $5.3 billion could help far more people over four years if investors from private enterprise built the homes funded by their own resources and the state government paid a rental assistance to low income families to rent these homes.

Labor with its ideology of the government owning these houses is inefficient. The private sector funded by investors would increase infrastructure resulting in increased economic activity and would assist more Victorians as well as more Victorians being able to afford housing.

Under the Victorian government's plans to own the houses, it will be funded by Victoria's debt which according to this week's State Government's Treasury budget papers has an operating deficit of $23 billion and a debt of $154 billion within two years.

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