Letter of the Week

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THE public, including myself, have a right to criticise any politician who lacks performance, but when it comes to their marriage issues, I regard that as being private.

Whatever Barnaby Joyce spends on his own family is his own private business, and some of these heartless critics need to mind theirs as well, when it comes to other people’s personal life.

At least Barnaby is a noble man, who has remained committed to financially supporting his wife and four daughters, as well as his current partner and two infants, a huge family of nine to support.

The man is a legend, full of motivation and loyalty to our struggling farmers, and when away from Canberra, he spends endless hours travelling in his own time and at much of his own expense, visiting our drought ridden farmers, and arranging financial assistance to put food on their tables.

Barnaby is the man who has been arranging convoys of semitrailer loads of hay to help feed their starving stock, and is a highly respected drought victim farmer himself.

I suggest you Barnaby knockers direct your criticism at Labor and the Greens instead, who treat our farmers with utter contempt.

KEN WADE, TWEED HEADS

ON Sunday, the Sunday Mail exposed the protesters from Extinction Rebellion for what they are, spoilt brats with plenty of money who wish to destroy our democracy.

The fact is that these protesters are not interested in anything but what they can gain.

They do not understand the way we, who were brought up by those who made this country great, see Australia.

Many of those who are under 40, have no idea and want no knowledge of what we believe in, they believe in only their own selfish wants.

This country was made great by a common belief, we stand together.

The younger generation may learn this lesson if they walk away from their lattes and smashed avo and look deep into our culture, Australia a country that is one nation without selfishness.

RON NIGHTINGALE BIGGERA WATERS

OH, the schadenfreude; left-wing film-maker Michael Moore has suddenly woken up that renewables are a scam.

The new documentary Planet of the Humans, backed and promoted by Moore, set out to discover why we’re still addicted to fossil fuels.

The director, Jeff Gibbs, said: “It was crushing to discover the things I believed in weren’t real, first of all, and then to discover not only are the solar panels and wind turbines not going to save us ... but (also) that there is this whole dark side of the corporate money ... It dawned on me that these technologies were just another profit centre.”

No wonder that Gibbs tried and failed for years to get environmental groups to help fund the film; it’s not about the “environment” and never has been, and they know that.

It is about over-throwing capitalism by stealth to install global socialism. Capitalism rewards hard work and initiative. Socialism rewards laziness and corruption.

That is why socialism always fails; and it always kills millions as it dies.

PETER CAMPION, TOLGA

HOW lucky are we there are not many electric cars on the road.

With the protesting clowns holding up traffic for hours they would cause a far worse traffic jam.

ROD WATSON, SURFERS PARADISE

NO Israel Folau and we still won!

It was the All Blacks who got a real glimpse of hell!

KEN JOHNSTON, ROCHEDALE SOUTH

WHEN a referee presented previously fairly innocuous rugby offender Scott Barrett (of the All Blacks) with a red-card in a Test against the Wallabies on Saturday, he may have opened up a can of worms for the entire international rugby community.

That thorny issue, “contact with the head” now seems likely to become a dominating theme affecting refereeing in the looming Rugby World Cup of 2019.

I’d like to recommend a possible solution to this building administrative controversy which I tentatively refer to as the “Traffic Lights Colour-Carding Method of Penalizing Offenders.”

a) A Yellow Card for offences such as dangerous play and professional fouls etc. (what is being done at present I find completely satisfactory).

b) An Orange Card for serious offences equivalent to what Scott Barrett, and others have been hitherto been handed a Red Card. However, one important difference would be that a referee on the field cannot give a straight red but only an orange, for which the punishment is to leave the field for a full 20 minutes, as further the possibility of receiving a full Red-Card is considered.

c) a Red Card is given only after a “panel” that is sitting in a Video Review Facility at the venue has carefully assessed the offence on the spot, relying on multiple-angle viewpoints plus employing such lawyer-like disciplines as “precedent” and “comparison with previous offences” (ie they would need to check previous decisions (from a video-library they’d have access to) which they’d compare with the present offence – and they would have 20 minutes to do so.

A final decision would be made and the offender would be allowed to return to the field (after the 20 minutes is up ) or instead given a full Red

IVAN PAUL VELLA