There is no sugarcoating it; the result of the federal election was decisive.
But it also highlights that we are now living in two Australias – the regional Australia and the metro Australia.
The Nationals were on the ground regionally listening to the people and pushing for policies that would deliver for them, and as such, our vote held up well and I congratulate my colleagues.
However, in the Senate, it is the state-wide swing that matters.
Unfortunately for me, as third on the joint Liberal-National ticket, the swing against us in the metro areas looks likely to cost us our regional voice.
As the only NSW Senator based outside of Newcastle-Sydney, I spent the campaign in the regions listening to the feedback on the ground and it was a different message to what I was seeing on the metro nightly news.
In the regions, people are worried about water security.
Aging infrastructure, or a lack of it altogether, is curtailing growth and restricting industry.
We have just seen three years of above-average rainfall, which should have been used to prepare for and mitigate the drought that South Australia and parts of southwest NSW are already experiencing.
Instead of supporting growth and economic sustainability, the Albanese government cut almost $6 billion from the National Water Grid, some of which was diverted to buy more water out of productive use for the environment.
We are about to see more water buybacks as the new government rushes to finalise the basin plan.
Outside the cities, when people spoke about housing, the difficulties were not about space and zoning, it was about key infrastructure and delays in development applications.
The Nationals’ commitment to ensuring a portion of our housing infrastructure fund needed to be quarantined for regional areas was to guarantee they got their fair share.
Everywhere I went, people would point to the projects that had been funded by the Building Better Regions Fund or the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure program.
Labor cut these programs with no future dedicated funding for regional communities whose council’s rate bases are already stretched to the limit.
Another clear area of difference is in the energy sector.
While I read the nuclear policy was a factor for voters, when I was in the regions, that was not what I was hearing.
Instead, I heard concerns from people neighbouring large-scale solar farms questioning the impact on their operations and ability to get insurance.
I heard of timbered areas being cleared for wind turbines while farmers can’t get approval to deal with weeds.
There were also worries about the impact of large transmission lines crisscrossing the country.
While regional people understand climate change (they live it), they also understand the need to have reliable baseload power.
They understand 100 per cent renewables are not 100pc reliable.
I fear this growing disconnect between the city and the country will lead to a further decline in the standard of services delivered for our regional areas
I sincerely hope I am wrong.
ENDS
Published in The Land, Sydney – May 8 2025