THE ABC TV breakfast news headline appeared prophetic: “Clean-up begins in Canberra this morning.” Had Michael McCormack, just minutes after being elected Nationals leader and Deputy PM, already begun a spring cleaning of the Australian Parliament and the Coalition, in particular, so desperately needed? Of course the headline referred to the flooding of Canberra’s northern suburbs the previous day but, in foresight, perhaps it was a pointer to the changes also required to materialise the vast potential to the nation of regional Australia.
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In his first press conference shortly afterwards the new leader gave some clear hints about the direction in which he was heading. With his colleagues around him he made the point, if one needed to be made for political watchers, this Nationals team was not all farmers by half, but represented a broad cross-section of professional men and women from a range of professions and work places.
This indicated, the column suggests, fresh pathways and opportunities from its minority partner as an example for a tired Liberal major shareholder devoid, especially, of the need for development of the great future for regional Australia. McCormack, if he found the time last Monday morning to read The SMH’s page one lead, “The Sydney exodus”, which told the graphic story that since 1971, 716,832 people fled Sydney for regional NSW or north of the border, would have had a wry smile.
Our future is not in cramming more bodies into the high cost infrastructure of burgeoning capital cities; instead it is about a regional alternative, with - as McCormack talked about at the later press conference - the importance of water and communications infrastructure in rural and regional areas.
Also, it is about more dams, especially to provide hydro power and irrigation (a topic McCormack devoted a large slice of his maiden speech to on October 21, 2010), as well as many other issues like health and petrol prices to which might now be added the urgent need to start again on the Murray-Darling Basin plan (even, perhaps, scrapping it altogether).
He called then for “a fair go for regional Australians”, many of whom he said, felt unappreciated and unrecognised. To which could be added transport; upgrading inland airports to international status for trade exports, inland rail (which he tackled on his second day in the job), not forgetting education. The list is endless.
It was a maiden speech the ABC said would be long remembered; his and the one delivered by Senator Bill Heffernan 14 years prior, almost to the day, left those of us who heard and saw them delivered, more than hopeful for the future of regional Australia. Unfortunately, the Coalition partner has been dilatory about regional growth; the ALP, virtually unwilling to recognise it.
There is another side to “the always lively and likeable chap” (McCormack), one shared with the column today by another colleague, The DA’s, Adrian Wintle, who in 2001, marked the 20th anniversary of writing his arts column, Focus on Arts.
“Ado” recalls McCormack, then editor, appearing at his desk with a gift-wrapped bottle of red wine and a handwritten note on a DA “With Compliments” card which, in part, read: “Your employer is indeed grateful for such dedicated service - when you pass Dianthus’ record, you may have champagne!” Dianthus (aka Kath Higgins) contributed a weekly DA arts column for 33 years from the 1940s.