Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I grieve tonight for the loss to country people of a federal electorate in New South Wales. I think that it is a great shame that the Electoral Commission have moved in the way in which they have to remove the seat of Gwydir from the electoral map. I would like to mention a number of instances that have contributed to the demise of the seat of Gwydir. I will quote from an editorial in the Northern Daily Leader on 3 October. It is headlined: ‘As people leave services decline’. The editorial reads:

There has been plenty said and written about the Australian Electoral Commission’s boundary changes for some federal electorates in NSW, but one important point has largely been overlooked.

When the commission unveiled its plans to abolish the federal seat of Gwydir, which had been in existence since Federation and replace it with a super-sized electorate of Parkes, there was an outcry.

The unhappy response was within reason. Firstly, country people would lose an important voice in parliament with the boundary change resulting in one less country-based MP in NSW.

Secondly, the reworked electorate of Parkes was huge, making it impossible for an elected representative to adequately serve the constituency.

Thankfully, the commission took into account the written and verbal submissions it received and adjusted the boundaries.

While country people have still lost a voice, the new seat of Parkes, which will come into being at next year’s federal election, while not perfect, is at least dramatically reduced in size.

The issue that has been overlooked is the fact that the seat of Gwydir suffered the biggest decline in population of any electorate in NSW. In second place was the electorate of Parkes.

This highlights the bigger problem of people leaving country communities. When this happens another dilemma emerges. Communities begin to lose services. Years ago it started with banks, then doctors and the list goes on.

When this happens, people look to moving to bigger centres and as a result compound the problem.

And it is for these reasons that governments must act. If they are serious about addressing population decline in regional and rural areas they need to generate industry opportunities that create employment and the tributaries a community needs to survive.

It will take real initiative to provide economic sustainability in some communities.

The first step is some leadership from governments.

I think that editorial highlights the dilemma that has been put in place by the removal of a seat, and I congratulate the editor on putting that together.

I want to highlight some of the reasons behind the loss of the seat of Gwydir—and I am pleased to see the member for Parkes in the chamber, because there are all sorts of suggestions about where he may be relocated and pushed to by the backroom people in the National Party.

At a meeting held in Narrabri, which the Australian Electoral Commission did attend, the hypocrisy of the current member for Gwydir came out. He had been running a campaign to save our country seats, and I was in complete agreement with him and made that statement publicly, as did many other members of parliament. In fact, I remember the current member for Parkes saying that the campaign to save the seat of Gwydir was above partisan politics and included Independent members. That was quite correct. The hypocrisy of the member for Gwydir at the Narrabri meeting was quite clear for all to see on the evening news on Prime television. He essentially said to the commission that if you have to take a country seat—even though he had all his supporters there with banners stating ‘save our country seats’—take Calare, another country seat. Suddenly the logic of saving country voices, so that, irrespective of who represented them, they would have representatives in the parliament, disappeared into thin air.

The hypocrisy of the statements by the member for Gwydir was spellbinding, particularly because that particular member—who has been the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the National Party, the party that purports to represent country people—had been in government for 10 years. And here he was presiding over the biggest loss of population of any region in Australia. Tasmania was in front of Gwydir until a few years ago; it has picked up with the property boom in recent years. The loss of population in that area was the greatest of any region in Australia.

I see the member for Parkes is here now. I believe he is being pushed out of the new seat of Parkes into the new seat of Calare, as the former National Farmers Federation boss believes he should be the member for the current seat of Parkes. I am looking forward to that and will be supporting some Independent members in those seats. I note that the member for Calare is in an interesting situation, where he will have to make a choice between his old seat of Calare or the new seat of Macquarie, which is part of his old seat of Calare. I would back the member of Calare wherever he stands, because he actually stands for something. He stands up for the people who elected him—unlike some other people who see it as a convenience to move into a particular area because they have some supposed ownership rights.

I believe we need many more people of an independent nature, particularly as country representatives, in the parliament. Just look at the record over the 10 years that the National Party has been there, supposedly representing country people. It is a tragic day today, with the prospectus for the sale of Telstra being launched. Ninety per cent of country people do not want Telstra sold, and the Nationals agreed to sell it. The Nationals sold out on the US free trade agreement. That is common knowledge now. The Nationals agreed to the sale of Telstra. It was only after the Independent member for Calare and others took a stand, and community revolt took place, that the Prime Minister, to his credit, actually listened to the people. The National Party were strangely silent.

The Fuel Sales Grants Scheme—which was put in place originally because of the disparity in petrol pricing caused by the goods and services tax, because country people were paying a higher prices for fuel—was wiped out. The National Party agreed to a higher price for fuel for country people—a higher tax on fuel for country people than for their city cousins. Inland rail is flavour of the month now. Where was the National Party when Everald Compton was pushing the same scheme over the last 10 years? Now the Nationals are clutching at straws for some piece of infrastructure that they can attach three seats to so that they can try to buy their way into another electoral period, when on the same day, today, they are selling part of Telstra—the most important piece of infrastructure that the nation has.

It has taken 10 years to sort out water issues, and with property rights it has been 10 years since the COAG arrangements were put in place. We have been through all these blueprints, various bilateral agreements with state governments, and we still have this argument where we blame the states when the Commonwealth has handed over billions of dollars. Nothing has been done with property rights. Where are we with renewable energy? Where have The Nationals been on this issue? We had these ridiculous comments by the new Minister for Trade, a National, Mr Warren Truss, who said, ‘If we mandated E10 tomorrow, we would have to import fuel.’ What a ridiculous statement. It says a lot for the new trade minister. It is an absolutely ridiculous statement, when you see that world practice is that you phase in a mandate over a period of years. Obviously you cannot snap your fingers and suddenly have E10 being produced at the rate we would need. Most other countries have taken four to five years to gradually move it in.

I will be right behind Independent candidates at the next federal election, and I would encourage country people to look seriously at the choices they are going to be offered in the electorates that I have spoken about—and others. It is time that country people utilise the political capacity that they have, 30 per cent of the vote, and start to put people into this parliament who actually represent those views in the parliament—not those who represent views in the pub in Dubbo and then vote against them in parliament. (Time expired)