Barilaro wrote: "If there is a silver lining to COVID-19 it has to be the way we as a nation have taken stock and are reassessing what sort of Australia we want to be. Do we want to be a nation that grows its own food or one that imports everything from overseas?" He posed some other questions although they were not dissimilar to those from many readers and contacts since the pandemic descended.

For instance, when will a government, any government of ours begin, again, to manufacture locally, create jobs for Australians, restore TAFE to prepare our youth for those jobs with the best technological skills - as Barilaro wrote: "Do we manufacture locally or surrender our sovereignty.

Five days after Barilaro's article, Wagga businessman Peter Brown wrote: "Australia needs to develop, as a matter of some urgency, our own resources for the manufacture and production of medical equipment, medical supplies, medicines and vaccines; I am sure we have the capability and the knowledge but to a large degree we seem to have opted for the cheaper versions produced off-shore".

Since these two articles by Barilaro and Brown appeared and former Wagga mayor Bruce Hedditch - who also wrote in this column last week the necessity to resurrect the great manufacturing companies and industries our federal governments (and public service) created and built - and, to which Brown added: "If that means we pay more for these products, then that is the price we pay for being prepared next time."

Getting back to Barilaro's advocacy that it is time for a water stimulus and "there is no better time than now to introduce it", let's not forget that he has been a member of the state government that allowed the "flawed" (his words) Murray-Darling Basin Plan to be a major part of a total national water management train wreck presided over by all national and state governments in Australia, since the Snowy Scheme, was finished.

Mind you, there was very little balance and/or credible help coming from the ALP, which needs to understand there really is a regional Australia, or from the Greens who allowed its ideology to override common sense when it came to environment flows.

At least Barilaro now appears to be listening to the people, which is more than many of his senior NSW colleagues are, if what he wrote in the DA last month is genuine.

As he wrote: "Because if we don't fix this issue (the MDBP) there will be an uprising. They will rise in the streets of the Riverina with pitch forks, because what we are doing is robbing these people of their livelihoods."

That's exactly why water, and not what has happened in the Murray-Darling region alone, has to be fixed before all those readers agitating for Australia's manufacturing industry to rise again will actually see that happen.

As one of the Nationals' great MPs Kay Hull often said to me and this newspaper, without water there can be no manufacturing industry.

If there is one other thing that needs to be high on the agenda during this period of post-pandemic resurrection, then it is tax reform. And as Michael Brissenden wrote in the SMH recently: "There is a fundamental misunderstanding by government as to what is meant by tax reform. Now, more than ever, we need leadership, consensus and we need action."

"Tax reform requires a rethink of the structural tax mix imposed by the federal government and the states. Those lines of communication built up over the pandemic could be used to tackle the tax elephant in the room".

What reform of the frightful mess that tax has become, as the SMH headlined Blissenden's story means, is: "That true tax reform is needed, but not cuts for the rich".

The Morrison government skites, by reducing company tax further would help the economic recovery. What it does not tell you is that a high percentage of Australian companies either pay little tax or no tax at all; in fact, as a reader, Chris Hinkley, from Glebe, wrote: "This begs the question of how tax reduction will have any real impact".