Most rural people understand at some level that the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is a city slicker who doesn’t get it. But every now and then he lets slip that not only does he not get it, he doesn’t care.
That happened this week when Member for Kennedy (aka Sam Coupland’s father in law) Bob Katter asked the Prime Minister for a report.
Anthony Albanese gave him a comedy routine.
A joke about Premier Katter. Another about weakening Queensland’s State of Origin team. A story about the Mount Isa rodeo, and another about sitting in the wrong seat in a pub.
Somewhere in all that, the very reasonable request for a report into the viability of a North Queensland state went unanswered.
Apparently, it was not on the Prime Minister’s bingo card.
It would have been if he understood the depth of anger in regional Australia.
If he cared about just how much we are getting screwed.
If he wasn’t an equally guilty party in ripping resources out of the regions to redirect to the cities so the pampered suburbs can have some more “relief” in their already comfortable lives.
It should be obvious to even the demonstrably disengaged Prime Minister that people don’t talk about separating from their states because all is going swimmingly.
People start talking about separating from their state because they are tired of decisions about their lives being made hundreds or thousands of kilometres away, by governments whose priorities are somewhere else, and bureaucrats who don’t get it.
If ya think managing the cost of living is hard in Marrickville, try doing it somewhere without public transport. Where there literally are no options to cut the fuel bill. Where food costs more, seeing a doctor costs more, and the insurance is through the frigging roof because this is where the floods and droughts that you watch on your TV are actually happening.
Try just getting what you need done when almost everything involves a long drive, a long wait, or both. Where you need to take days off to access once a month services that city people seem to think everyone has just down the road, or to travel and stay overnight somewhere to attend a 15 minute appointment.
Try being violently attacked in your home or your business and, with no doctor at the local hospital, being taken by air to a hospital in another state… and then being told you’ll need to pay the helicopter bill, because your insurance won’t cover an interstate transfer.
Then watch the Prime Minister respond to a question about your region’s future with a joke about football.
Albanese’s answer sounded woefully unbriefed. Presented with a question about self-government, he reached for his regional travel anecdotes.
He has been to the rodeo. He has been to the pub.
Lovely. What about the report?
Regional people need and deserve a Prime Minister who understands why they are angry. Who doesn’t laugh off their pain.
Albanese did acknowledge that Far North Queensland deserved its share of resources and infrastructure projects. Easy to say, almost never delivered – including by his government.
But investment decisions do not answer the more fundamental question of whether the structure of government is failing a region.
Nor does explaining how wonderful the Brisbane Olympics will be.
When people are questioning a distant capital’s priorities, selling them the benefits of that capital’s sporting extravaganza is a spectacular failure to read the room.
Here in New England, we recognise the frustration. We feel that pain.
There are many similarities: productive regions, distant governments, and communities tired of feeling under-funded, under-developed and under-valued.
Both New England and North Queensland bring a history that makes dismissing statehood particularly foolish. Our respective calls for self-government, while different in character, are more than a century old, with roots reaching back into colonial arguments over separation.
This is an enduring demand for control over our future. For self determination.
No doubt such a call would likely get far more respect and support from this government if we were a pacific island of a few hundred people bleating about climate change. Or even better, wanting an NRL team.
North Queensland already has an NRL team, but I suppose New England could play that card. Would you care more Prime Minister if we were pitching the Coffs Harbour Colts or something? Would that get your attention? Or would you still deny our reality and make jokes?
These calls for statehood survive because successive governments keep renewing the reasons for it. They keep ripping services out of the country and telling us to make do, while throwing money at the cities. The people asking for change are raising families, running businesses and trying to build communities. They deserve equal support and equal services from their state government, and they aren’t getting it.
They also deserve the respect of a serious answer from their national government today.
The Nicholas Royal Commission, appointed in 1933 and reporting in 1935, found a northern NSW region suitable for self-government as a state. New England went to a referendum on 29 April 1967. The proposal received 45.8 per cent of the formal vote – a highly polarised vote that saw Newcastle vote strongly against it, and all of the northern part of the state vote strongly for it. Debate about Newcastle’s inclusion and whether different boundaries would have delivered victory, has never really stopped.
Next April marks 60 years since that vote. The underlying grievance remains, and if anything, is more intense.
Recent federal decisions have only sharpened it.
For example, Inland Rail has been inexplicably axed at Parkes, incomprehensibly leaving Narrabri and Moree Plains – the number 1 and 2 agricultural shires – abandoned. The cost of connecting them is probably less than what the Albanese Government has spent on the NRL team for Papua New Guinea.
For over a decade, the NSW Government has excused themselves from investing in regional rail infrastructure citing the excuse of Inland Rail. Just as the original decision to axe rail services north of Tamworth (salvaged to Armidale in large part because of local campaigners and UNE) was to rip from the regions and give to the cities, the decision to axe Inland Rail has been linked to spending billions on suburban rail in Sydney and Melbourne instead.
When faced with this kind of epic fail from those who govern us, nobody should be surprised when people start to mutter that they could do better governing themselves.
A new state would face difficult budgets and competing demands. The size of it is beyond most people’s comprehension. That is precisely why a simple report is a reasonable and very conservative request. It’s not a Royal Commission or so much as a parliamentary inquiry – just a little report.
Examine the boundaries, revenue, services and costs. Pros and cons. Give people evidence to scrutinise and facts to inform debate, identify what work would be needed to progress, and so on.
Katter did not ask Albanese to establish a state before afternoon tea.
He asked for a report.
The demand for statehood or independence waxes and wanes with the social and economic pain being felt across a region.
When people feel heard and see progress, the call quietens. When services disappear, opportunities stall and governments laugh, it grows. We understand why Bob Katter is raising statehood for North Queensland, just as Barnaby Joyce is raising statehood for New England, right now. Things are pretty bad.
Of course we want our own state. We’re getting screwed.
After more than a century, the New England’s call for statehood is not far away from clearing its throat and erupting into an almighty roar.
The New England State Flag doesn’t have a lion rampant on it for nothing. The Prime Minister might want to think about that before he dismisses the pain of regional Australia again with another footy joke.
End rant.
Dr RK (Kath) Crosby is the CEO of research and strategy company KORE CSR, former strategist for the Australian Democrats, and holds a PhD in political behaviour. She is also a well known migraine and health advocate, and the Publisher of New England Times and North Coast Times.
All opinion and comment on New England Times Engage is the opinion of the writer and not New England Times.
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