To Chris Byrne: thank you, I agree with some of your statements, however I disagree on some points as would be expected on such controversial subjects.

In early days they burnt wood, coal and coke in open, uncontrolled grates. Today we mainly burn wood in controlled slow combustion stoves which makes it less polluting.

Solar farms? Yes, they could be built in arid regions then there would be no water run-off problems, but who is going to make it viable to run cables hundreds of kilometres to connect to the grid? At present there are at least three running or under construction in the Central West because they can easily connect to the grid.

Wind farms: again, same story. We have thousands of hectares of non-arable land suitable for their construction. But mention wind farms and you have an objection list of a hundred that you could expect, even the proposal on the escarpment on the New South Wales-South Australian border where you can see forever and not a tree or house in site received the usual objections.

Battery storage is in the experimental stage. There appear to be some good systems available but we have no long-term results.

Now, I think we all agree the government must show some forward thinking and assistance to these major schemes and make them viable. They must not keep on selling of vacant Crown land and travelling stock routes.

Then there is the general public, who must change their attitude towards these new ideas and be more open minded to change, and keep pushing politicians to make change.