Gabrielle Chan writes for Guardian Australia and previously worked in various capacities for The Australian, ABC Radio, The Daily Telegraph and for numerous local newspapers. Gabrielle has written and edited history books, biographies and even the ubiquitous recipe book! Her latest offering is Rusted Off - why country Australia is fed up.
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In 1996 - the year that Pauline Hanson entered parliament, Gabrielle, the city-born daughter of a Singaporean migrant, moved to a sheep and wheat farm in country NSW leaving behind her life as a reporter in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery.
She began to notice the economic and cultural divide between the city and the country, the differences in political culture and yawning gap between the Federal Parliament and small town life.
Gabrielle has gone hyper-local in her new book Rusted Off , telling the story of Australia as it is today, and looking to her own rural community for answers to the big questions driving voters.
Why are we so fed up with politics? Why are formerly rusted-on country voters deserting major parties in greater numbers than their city cousins? Can ordinary people teach us more about the way forward for government?
Gabrielle swapped interviews with politicians, replacing them with conversations with ordinary people on her main street, and discovers why they think politics is no longer relevant to them.
In the process, Gabrielle draws conclusions about the current state of our rural political representation and the widening gap between city and country asking the question “how we can bridge it?”
Rusted Off takes a fresh look on an old rural narrative, informed by class and culture, belonging and broadband, committees and cake stalls, rural recession and reconciliation.
Gabrielle recounts conversations with her fellow residents, people who have no lobby group in Canberra - and encounters communities that are forsaking the political process to move ahead of government.
Journalist George Megalogenis describes Rusted Off as “The definitive account of life on the other side of city-country divide. Written with a soft heart and a hard head, this is one of the most important books about Australia today.”
Gabrielle Chan will be in conversation with Peter Casey at the Wagga Wagga City Library on Tuesday, November 20 at 5.30pm.
Bookings are essential, visit bit.ly/wwcl_rustedoff or call the library on 6926 9700 for more information. Book sales and signings will be available.
Come and meet the woman who coined a new piece of Aussie vernacular: rusted off.
