He was a WWII service man.

Not from the area but spent his last six months in Burradoo.

He was sent off with all the respect we could have asked for.

He reached a beautiful 97.

Big thank you to Lady Rose Funerals as well.

I've stated before that John Hewson and I share a deep commitment to addressing global warming.

I am fearful however of John's advocacy for a system based in wind and solar and especially one which uses battery storage.

Solar with batteries uses massive amounts of non-renewable materials.

As Weisbach and colleagues have found these are about 50 times more materials hungry than nuclear power and all this gear comes in cardboard boxes from China powered by coal fired electricity.

If we go down John's prescribed route we can expect to be buried under hundreds of thousands of tonnes of polluting cobalt, vanadium and other materials used in these systems.

From a global warming perspective the flaws in technologies such as solar with battery storage can be sensibly resolved in a proper redesign of our National Energy Market (NEM).

Its new design must have carbon emissions reduction at is heart and technologies which exceed a reducing limit cannot be allowed to supply electricity. It needs to be technology neutral and embrace all low carbon technologies including nuclear energy. 

It must take the country providing the generating system into account because countries with low emissions must be encouraged.

A storage battery made in France for example will be 20 times less carbon emitting than a Chinese one because the French have a low carbon nuclear power grid and China mainly relies on coal.

The  revised NEM must not incorporate a renewable energy target where the damaging impacts of negative subsidised pricing can take place.

All that is required is that the NEM rules limit energy providers to a cap of 50 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour in 2050 for example.

The limit shall include the embodied emissions from off shore manufacturers.

This will properly shift the investment focus from a fixation on renewable energy to that of carbon emissions.

I agree with John's call for politics to be removed from the renewables debate because it is central to their very existence.

Politicians have squibbed the strong policy decisions and have come up with this soft ineffectual system which has not been significantly effective in any country to date.

With October being Mental Health Month, it is a good time to say thank you to all the mental health workers in our southwest area.  They have such a difficult job, but the work they do is so important.

Research shows that 45 per cent of the population will experience mental ill health at some point in their lives, and that the way they are cared for at that time is vital. 

The care they receive can impact on the rest of their lives and on the lives of their families and friends.

So take a bow, all you mental health workers, and know that you are very important and so appreciated.