Key issues: healthcare, forced council amalgamations, greyhound ban, local job losses, but most of all, a feeling that no one is listening to us and no one cares. This is a message that resonates all across regional NSW.

Case in point. Hundreds in the Orange community lobby for effective palliative care services in an aging electorate. Doctors vote no confidence in hospital administration twice and beg the Health Minister to listen. Her response: full support for management and a reprimand to staff for talking to the media. This does not represent a government willing to listen to the people.

On polling day, thousands set out with the sole purpose of placing the Coalition last; punishment for ignoring whatever issues were important to them and to members of their community.

Radical change is needed if the Coalition are to re-invent themselves as a political force at the next election.

A good start would be to bring in some fresh faces into Cabinet, especially those who might actually listen to their constituents.

This has been a 'speak to the hand' government and has just been given a different hand gesture from the voters of Orange.

THERE’S no need to waste sympathy on the NSW Nationals after the Orange byelection. It would be more productive to find out what planet they're on.

It was the Country Party which forced the introduction of preferential voting and then made sure that everyone else had to stick to the system. The Nats have been told since at least 1990 that their beloved voting system has defects which can be fixed, but they have flatly refused to consider any change.

Result: they take consolation in the likes of Tony Abbott, who said after Labor won the 2014 South Australian election that the system sometimes gets it wrong. So they took no notice in the Queensland election of 2015, when Labor finally learnt how to use the system to its own advantage. “Vote for whoever you like, but put the LNP last” was the message which went out.

That slogan worked so well for Labor that it was used in the 2016 Federal election. And of course it was the message which Alan Jones and Ray Hadley brought to Orange, to great effect. It seems that the Nats had already forgotten the voter discontent in a certain country electorate which led to the political career for one Peter Andren.

AT a time when we are fighting so hard for inclusion, acceptance and equality Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Committee has decide to not invite the Prime Minister and ban him from attendance due to his support for Tony Abbott's plebiscite.

It disgusts me to the core that an organisation such as Mardi Gras could possibly think this is OK. To exclude someone goes completely against the whole purpose of the parade.

As far as I am concerned the Mardi Gras board has no right to dictate who can and cannot attend the event.

‘Mate, Don't Hate’ does not endorse or condone the actions and behavior of the Mardi Gras board.