Something has changed in Australia. The voters of Farrer may tell us what, and how much
The major parties look like also-rans in the byelection on 9 May, with One Nation and an independent favoured to fight it out. Is this a minor curiosity, or a political earthquake?
Something has changed in Australia. The voters of Farrer may tell us what, and how much
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On the main strip of Holbrook, Marcia and Chris Wright are having an afternoon beer.
The unassuming town sits almost halfway between Sydney and Melbourne, hundreds of kilometres down or up the Hume Highway.
The quintessential Riverina town – best known for its on-land submarine, which cost $100,000 in the mid-1990s – is one of many in the region where Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is looking for support in the Farrer byelection on 9 May.
Marcia and Chris, who turned 74 and 80 respectively in April, are from the foothills of Woomargama, a 20-minute drive down the road. They have always voted Labor, including at last year’s federal election.
But something has changed in the past 12 months. Marcia says people aren’t joining them at the pub as often for their afternoon schooner – which has cost them $9 each – preferring to stay home and save money.
“It’s just gone up so much; you’re not getting as much as what you used to,” Marcia says, looking at her half-empty glass of beer. It’s also true of her weekly shopping bill.
“It’s just a joke. Country people like to come and have a drink … but people aren’t going out as much as they used to.”
Like others Guardian Australia spoke to in the electorate, the retirees are fed up with the major parties and looking for someone else to represent Farrer.
On paper, Farrer is Coalition heartland – the electorate has always voted for a National or Liberal since it was established in 1949.
But following Sussan Ley’s resignation in February after 25 years as its MP, the rural south-western NSW seat is at the centre of an unorthodox political battle.
The frontrunners are like chalk and cheese. But more importantly, neither is from one of the major parties.
There’s David Farley, a local agribusiness consultant, who is selling One Nation’s message to farmers, small business owners and disaffected Coalition supporters.
The 69-year-old was once a Nationals member but has since changed his allegiance to One Nation because it has more “political courage and political tenacity”.
The limited polling carried out in the seat suggests his main opponent is the independent Michelle Milthorpe – a 47-year-old teacher, backed by the Voices of Farrer and partly funded by Climate 200, who shaved Ley’s lead down to 6.2% at the federal election last May.
Trailing behind are the Coalition’s candidates – local Liberal councillor Raissa Butkowski and the Nationals’ army veteran Brad Robertson.
A host of minor party candidates, including the Greens’ Richard Hendrie, and independents are unlikely to make a dent in the final result.
The field is packed but in a rarity for modern Australian political history, neither of the major parties is expected to win. Labor has decided not to run.
“[The Coalition] haven’t got a voice here any more,” says 66-year-old Deniliquin shop owner Jennifer Pate, who has long voted for either a Nationals or Liberal candidate but now wants to give One Nation a go.
“The farmers and all that don’t stand by them.”
A seat divided
Four hundred metres from where Marcia and Chris are finishing their schooners, Farley is soon to hold a meet-and-greet at the town’s other pub.
It’s 4.30pm, and there’s little activity in the small town. Despite the buzz about the byelection within Canberra’s bubble, there’s not a corflute in sight.
Marcia blames the federal government for the tougher times. The 74-year-old is no fan of the prime minister or Labor’s policies.
“I don’t think it goes down to the man. It’s just their policies,” she says. “This green thing [climate change] … Yeah, we’re not with it. Are they going to put a windfarm here somewhere?”
Marcia and Chris say they’ll be voting for One Nation. The main reason? What Hanson is saying about immigration.
Marcia says she’s seen too much homelessness on the streets of Albury, the nearest major town, and wants Australia to solve the crisis before supporting more immigration.
Further up the main road, and across from where the One Nation event will be held, is Jess Russell, a 32-year-old veterinarian who’s just finished her grocery shopping.
She says she’s backing Milthorpe because she’s “not quite as right wing as everyone else”.
The redevelopment of the nearby struggling Albury hospital is her biggest concern.
Like many other voters Guardian Australia spoke to, Russell wants to see a new hospital built that can support the growing population.
But she is also worried about raising her two young children in polarising times, pointing to the politicisation of women’s health care in the US as an example.
“I just stay away from anything super right leaning, because it’s just not where Australia should be heading,” she says.
As the afternoon turns to early evening, a slow trickle of people enters the Holbrook Hotel’s beer garden. The venue fills with about 40 people by 6.30pm, mostly older couples, One Nation faithful and some younger families.
Farley arrives late, but his confidence in discussing water policy, due in part to his decades working in the industry, quickly commands the audience.
The One Nation candidate is most convincing when he speaks about his own experience. Farley was once the Australian Agricultural Company’s chief executive and spent decades working in agricultural industries, including cotton.
But it’s the One Nation talking points – opposition to immigration, bureaucratic corruption and renewable energy – that get the crowd most enthused.
‘We can’t lose the water’
Before Farley’s bid for a seat his most public work involved being the chair of Speak Up 4 Water – a local advocacy group for water security, concerned about how water buy-backs and climate change could affect the region’s ability to produce food.
Climate change science may be at odds with some of Farley’s potential future colleagues, but water buy-backs are a hot topic for many farmers in the region.
“[Australia is] a land of drought and flooding rains,” Farley tells Guardian Australia. “We’ve weakened our drought resilience. We’ve weakened our flood resilience with the policies we’ve got at the moment. We’ve also weakened our food-growing ability.”
Milthorpe agrees water buy-backs are an issue but is pushing for a royal commission into water management across the Murray-Darling basin to get answers that a government review might not.
“We need to realise that our farmers and productive land are also part of that wetland environment, so separating them completely is just not working,” she says.
“We need a more integrated approach, using lived experience from those who have been doing this for a long time.”
In Albury, the Liberals’ Butkowski says a more urgent response is needed – one a royal commission can’t achieve.
The community lawyer turned councillor says millions spent on non binding royal commission recommendations would be better used improving water catchment infrastructure and demanding greater transparency from the federal water authority.
“The buy-backs are killing our regional communities, and they need to stop,” she says.
Despite hoping to succeed Ley, Butkowski says she’s not “Sussan”.
Butkowski, as a relative unknown in the huge rural electorate, has a lot of catching up to do, in addition to convincing disillusioned Liberal voters.
One of those people is Jennifer from Deniliquin, who is sympathetic to the Liberals but thinks One Nation will better represent Farrer.
Deniliquin, best known as the home of the annual ute muster festival, sits along the Murray River and is surrounded by water-intensive industries such as cotton and dairy.
Jennifer and her husband, Wayne, say they supported Ley because they “didn’t have much choice” as they were traditionally Nationals voters (the Coalition parties generally agree not to run against a sitting member, but this time both parties have fielded a candidate). Now she says “a lot of us will go and try One Nation” because of the water buy-back issues.
“We’re classed as a food bowl here, this whole great area, and we can’t lose the water,” she says. “We lose the water? The town dies. It becomes a ghost town.”
Jennifer says she doesn’t know much about Farley but she likes Hanson’s “bluntness”.
“She speaks her mind, and I like a person who speaks their mind.”
She says she doesn’t know the Nationals candidate, Brad Robertson.
Jennifer believes Milthorpe is a good spokesperson for the region but wouldn’t have the same sway as a member of One Nation.
Growing demographics
For farmers and those relying on irrigators, the water question is about food security.
But for others, like the Greens candidate, Richard Hendrie, it’s just as much about the environment.
Hendrie, a veteran and mental health advocate, is one of the few who believes that without more buy-backs there will be no water, let alone food security, in the region.
“The idea that water has to be treated as a commodity, or something that you make a profit out of, or something that you treat as an investment, has to end,” Hendrie says.
“I’m actually for buy-backs. It’s the cheapest, most direct way of ensuring river health.
“If you don’t have a healthy Murray-Darling Basin, you’re not going to have healthy farms or healthy farming communities.”
In one of Albury’s main streets, Renae Larkin, 27, and Isaac Campbell, 25, are walking their two dogs.
The young couple came to Albury as students from Griffith, also in Farrer, and represent a growing demographic in the region.
Renae says the environment and housing affordability are their main concerns. A One Nation member for Farrer would leave her “mortified”.
“I don’t think it represents my beliefs at all,” she says.
Both suggest they’ll vote for the Greens.
Changing values
One Nation’s rise in the last 12 months has coincided with – or potentially influenced – an increased focus on immigration levels for the Coalition.
Butkowski, herself the daughter of a migrant, won’t provide a figure but says the Liberals support a “firm but fair” cut.
Milthorpe has argued immigration is essential to filling workplace shortages in healthcare and hospitality in the region, pushing for “place-based” regional and rural immigration.
But in recent months, the conversation has turned to the identity of potential migrants.
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