Our service in Goodwin Road has been plagued with problems for over two years with constant 'drop outs' and download speeds of around 2 mgbts, way below the acceptable standard for ADSL 2 plus services.

Regular Technician visits, replacing filters plus all the routine checks have failed to improve the service and statements have been made to the effect that with the NBN coming (not sure when), that Telstra are not doing any upgrading and little maintenance on the existing circuit.

In our case, the line from from the street pillar to our connection pit has been unserviceable for the past two years and we are apparently connected to the line dedicated to our neighbours phone.

Numerous applications by ourselves and the techo's to have the line repaired have achieved nothing yet the bills still roll in from Telstra for a service we are not getting or at best, seriously below par.

Trying to resolve these issues with Telstra by phone is an absolute nightmare. Changing providers does not seem to be an option as the problem appears to be a 'hardware' one. Which only Telstra can fix.

Tony Blake,

Gunnedah

As a regular visitor to McDonalds, I find the complaints regarding the temporary ad (in Tamworth) for their products a little myopic. The customer has the choice of the food they buy at McDonalds. And to see many young smiling faces gainfully employed by McDonalds, learning many different phases of retail trading.

Good on McDonald and good luck to the hundreds of young people that are getting their first job starting at McDonalds. 

Some of your correspondents should go and have a look at a McDonalds.    

Ken Lloyd, Gunnedah 

With all the subtlety of a train smash, Barnaby Joyce says that anyone who wants to change the date of Australia Day should crawl under a rock.

With typical conservative ignorance and arrogance, he is refusing to think about the muddle which the present Australia Day really is.

January 26th is when everyone is asked to celebrate the foundation of New South Wales in 1788.  As all good monarchists with half a brain are aware, Australia wasn't founded until 1901, on New Year's Day. 

Having Australia Day on January 26th is just a way for the other States and the Territories to make sure that NSW doesn't have a foundation day of its own.

It would be far better to celebrate Australia on the anniversary of when we actually did something for ourselves, something which we did all by ourselves, and which was also significant in world history.

That day is November 2nd, the day in 1942 when Australian soldiers alone took back the village of Kokoda.  No British or Americans had done any of the fighting. 

It was this absolute victory, not the Americans' draw in the Coral Sea, which saved Port Moresby and therefore saved Australia from Japanese domination (at the very least).

The American victory at Guadalcanal confirmed that this settled line could not be turned.

Australian strategies, tactics and methods at Kokoda were so good that the British took formal lessons in them and applied them in the reconquest of Burma more than two years later. Australians alone saved Australia at Kokoda, yet we do nothing to commemorate this. So if we are going to have a celebration called Australia Day, it should be the day on which we alone did something truly important and saved ourselves too.

Grant Agnew, Coopers Plains