YOUR SAY: Craig Kelly has votes and he has misplaced votes | St George & Sutherland Shire Leader

Some questions for the Liberal voters of Hughes to contemplate while we await the next election. You voted for Craig Kelly, will you again? If not, will you vote for another ratbag representative of the corrupt and incompetent Morrison government, knowing that they totally bungled the vaccine procurement and “stroll out”? Will you vote for the Libs knowing you are also voting for the rednecks Joyce, Canavan and the corrupt Minister for Sports rorts McKenzie? Yes, a few things to ponder while you read the idiotic drivel in the letters from Kelly we received recently? Kelly and Palmer, what a team?

Good luck to Melanie Gibbons. She’ll need it. Craig Kelly has proven to be a local member who fights for his constituents and I’ll be voting for him when Slomo calls the election. Gibbons has done bugger all as the state member and leaving the ship during a pandemic to go up a grade reeks of opportunism. Liberal voters should vote for Kelly because even though he will not be running as one, he has more Liberal party base beliefs than most people running around saying they are Liberals. He has my vote.

I have just received another strange letter from Mr Craig Kelly. In it, he reveals his latest brainwave — wanting to cut politicians’ salaries during the lockdown, with the justification that “we all need to be in this together, including financially.”

I wonder if this is the same Craig Kelly, who is quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, August 24, as giving his reason for joining the United Australia Party, that outfit owned and run by the Queensland billionaire, Clive Palmer. Excusing his latest about-face, Mr Kelly confessed that he joined the Palmer gang because “the crude reality is that I’ll have greater resources …”. He went on to boast that “we have a huge war chest” to fight his election campaign.

So, Craig, it was all about the price at which you could be bought after all!

Each morning I am comforted by the fact that The Shire has so far been spared the worst of the current pandemic despite our local member’s strident campaign against the factors that are preserving us — social discipline, science, cooperation and vaccination.

Each evening I fear where more of Craig Kelly and Palmer’s billions would take us.

Denis Fitzgerald, Engadine

I want to applaud Dr Mike Freelander, Federal MP, for his speech at Parliament, which you have reported on the Leader of August 18.

What is particularly striking when you look at the names Dr Freelander was addressing his scathing speech about recent anti-lockdown sentiments to – George Christensen, Craig Kelly, Matt Canavan, Gerard Rennick is that you could have a similar speech and replace any mention of COVID/vaccination by climate change and global warming. Dr Freelander wouldn’t need to change a single name in that list. His attack on these politicians would be valid all the same.

And as he was highlighting the real danger of doubting the measures taken by authorities across the country to fight the spread of COVID, and in particular its delta variant, he could have added the names of media figures representing maybe an even more serious danger to the same effect, because of their wider audience. I am talking about the likes of Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt, Rowan Dean etc., of course, also all staunch climate change deniers.

Coincidence? I can only quote Al Gore’s famous expression here: for a certain section of the political spectrum, the inconvenient truth that science often lays out is simply unfathomable, unacceptable, and for all these dangerous rebels, blind rejection of facts, Trump-style, is the only way forward.

Olivier Clement, Kirrawee

Dear Craig, in your latest letter to Hughes electors, you claim you resigned to better “represent our local area and to uphold the values that I believe in.” Unfortunately, Craig, you were elected to represent the views and values of your electorate, not your own – and with all due respect, you resigned because, as the Chief of Staff put it politely: “he could not meet the standards set by the Prime Minister regarding his commentary about COVID-19.”

We all know how low that bar is – and you did not clear it.

As to your initiative to not make vaccines mandatory – really? Australians have benefitted for years from a national vaccination schedule for Hepatitis, Tetanus, TB, Rotavirus, Measles, Polio, Papillomavirus and countless other vaccines that have and continue to protect the population from severe illness. Many of these are required before children can enrol in childcare and school and mandatory in a wide range of professions. So do you really want to wind back 40 years of successful preventative health because of a ‘belief’ you picked up from the internet?

As to calling COVID vaccines’ experimental’, I guess that ignores the fact that this week alone, a total of around 36.66 million doses of vaccine are being administered every single day around the world. That’s some experiment.

A reality check is long overdue. I can’t wait for the election.

What’s with all this Craig Kelly bashing? I’ll be voting for him and proudly so at the next election. He sticks up for the old fashioned values many today have jettisoned for woke populism. He speaks the words I want to hear, he doesn’t follow the pack and that’s good enough for me.

A big thank you to AZZMAN for stopping to help out a Ute that mis~navigated a driveway on Kingswood Road Engadine on Sunday. What could have been an expensive and much more stressful situation for those involved was saved by AZZMAN stopping on his way past to help out a small group of helpless people, a local hero!

Robyn Pritchard, Engadine