People born after 1990 probably don't even know what this is but it's basically a micro photograph of the paper pages of a file.

Three and a half months ago I needed to apply for a copy of my Medicare records for legal reasons.

Several months later at my second visit to the local Centrelink office I discovered that Medicare records were not stored digitally as one would expect in 2019 but were on the archaic microfiche system which would consist of thousands, perhaps millions of sheets of a type of clear plastic kept in a filing cabinet.

It's now four visits and four emails and applications sent off to Canberra that I've got under my belt.

The people at Centrelink in Griffith have been polite, sympathetic and professional.

I'm on first name terms with the bloke at the foyer and will probably ask for my next grandson to be named after him.

It's incredible that a government can spend countless millions on political, pre-election advertising using our money when that same money could have been allocated to digitising the Medicare records of our country.

Apart from my wasted time and the wasted time of the Centrelink officials, federal parliamentarians should take the remaining time until the upcoming election to actually do something rather than stand around porkbarrelling.

If only the solution to the Murray-Darling Basin's water was as easy as common sense as Kevin Mack suggests (Letters, April 15). Sadly it isn't that simple.

In introducing the Water Act the Commonwealth Government had to rely on its external affairs power under the constitution and two international agreements relating to the environment to which it was a signatory because the power to legislate over water rests with the states and always has.

Initially John Howard asked the Basin states to refer their powers over water to the Commonwealth as provided under the constitution so that the Act could properly give equal weight to social, economic and environmental matters.

However, the then Victorian Labor Government refused, though to their credit, Queensland and South Australia, as well as NSW agreed.

So the Howard Government had to adopt an indirect approach in order to make some headway. Arguably it did the best it could given the hand it was dealt.

If the above sounds far-fetched bear in mind that that the Commonwealth had to rely on its defence power to introduce the Snowy Scheme following WWII and its External Affairs power to stop construction of the Franklin Dam in the 1980s.

In my opinion a fresh approach to the Basin states to refer their powers over water to the Commonwealth is the safest course to adopt.

Maybe the time is right to ask our candidates for the forthcoming Federal election, including Kevin Mack, for such a commitment.

If successful that could pave the way to amending the Act that could provide the elusive triple bottom line yet withstand any High Court challenge. For if the Act was amended without the states first referring their powers there's a risk it wouldn't survive a High Court challenge.

After all the Hawke Government's Franklin Dam legislation was challenged when three of the seven High Court judges held that the Commonwealth did not have the power.