Our van and car was a mess, so no holiday for us. We spent most of our time trying to keep up with the dust, not to mention we ended up with not feeling so well after breathing it all in.

I think most of them were locals. This is why I am writing this hoping the locals or anyone else would read this and slow down before someone gets seriously hurt or killed. There are small children riding bikes and playing in the area.

Please have some consideration for other people and slow down, there are 40 kilometres an hour speed limits and the amount of speed some people do is frightening.

Leighann Curry, Warrnambool

I HAVE been unable to read in any of the newspapers published in central Victoria just when the disputed return for the recent Ripon election as ostensibly forwarded by the ALP's application to the College of Disputed Returns for a recount has been effected.

My neighbours in Maryborough tell me that exactly the same thing happened at the prior State Election after a recount Louise Staley was elected.

I lost all favour towards this candidate when I received my third totally unwanted postal vote application from her paper wasting office.

Roger Ustick, Maryborough

AS violence and drug use rises in Victoria, so too it appears, does our governments apathy to public safety.

Outdoor shooting ranges are strictly monitored at all times for a reason. Outdoor public events (non shooting) typically call for at least one security agent per 100 people as part of standard occupational health and safety measures.

Yet in less than three weeks, a small army including children as young as 12, will be allowed to descend unmonitored with shotguns, on thousands of public waterways around Victoria, often in close proximity to residents, in a one-sided ambush of our struggling numbers of native waterbirds.

No government body has been able to provide the public with maps showing the locations of the thousands of public lakes, creeks, rivers, wetlands, and reservoirs where unmonitored shooting will occur every day for months. GMA only know the whereabouts of a couple of hundred game reserves what about the thousands of other areas they are meant to regulate?

This is a shocking risk to the safety of nearby residents and the unsuspecting public who may visit the areas for bushwalking, kayaking and birdwatching.

Without the knowledge of the locations of all these public waterways, how can authorities possibly know the impact to residents, the public or our native waterbirds whose numbers are at record lows?

The risk is not worth it. Rural Victorians, all Victorians, deserve better. The season must be called off.

Recreational duck shooting is banned in QLD, ACT, NSW and WA and their rural economies are doing better than ours. In Victoria, less than 0.4 per cent of the population shoot native waterbirds.

These statistics are from the GMA licence data.

Kerrie Allen, spokeswoman, Regional Victorians Opposed to Duck Shooting

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