In April 1899, a Pastoral Times editorial told locals that the “Sydney voters are simply blind to their own interests…. This is a question of country against city…it will be for the country to teach them that Sydney lives upon the country and not the country on Sydney”.
The passage of 127 years has not extinguished this sentiment.
The 1899 vote in question concerned whether the then colony of NSW should join a proposed federation.
A year earlier, the voters of NSW rejected a proposal to federate.
The primary opposition to federation was in Sydney.
Federation’s biggest support came from rural areas, particularly those near interstate borders.
Customs and tariff policies throttled agricultural exports near interstate borders. City electorates influenced these policies the most but felt their consequences the least.
Were it not for country people in towns like Deniliquin, Australia might have remained a continent but not a country.
Support for this proposition is not hard to find. In 1901, shortly after Australia united into “one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth”, federation fathers John Quick and Robert Garran reflected that “hostile tariffs and commercial isolation doubtless affected the great cities in an equal degree; but to the dwellers near the border the disadvantages were more direct and more obvious”.
It was people in the Southern Riverina who “were among the most active missionaries in the movement” to make Australia a continent and a country.
What is the relevance of this brief history today? Let me suggest three points.
First, there are rare occasions in our nation’s history when a vote in the Southern Riverina holds national significance. The upcoming Farrer by-election is one such occasion.
This election is the most consequential election since Farrer was created in 1949.
It might be the most consequential election for the Southern Riverina since 1899.
The level of attention this election brings with it is rare—even for a by-election.
It must be channeled toward long-term national attention on local issues such as water management.
Secondly, the fact that an 1899 Pastoral Times editorial still resonates suggests there are no simple solutions to the key problems the region faces.
Were it otherwise, the 1899 editorial would seem far more outdated.
Electors and the elected should understand this to avoid a disjunct between expectations and outcomes.
As Shakespeare notes in Coriolanus, “action is eloquence.” But eloquence is not action.
Third, competition creates attention and punishes complacency.
History is again instructive to illustrate this point.
In The Tyranny of Distance, Geoffrey Blainey discusses how the railways first reached Deniliquin.
In the beginning, it was private businesses that stepped up to build railway lines toward Moama so that farmers could sell their produce to a wider market.
Only then did the NSW Government (worried about losing this produce to other markets) step in and begin building competing lines.
Politicians - both aspiring and incumbent - care more about something when they are forced to through competition.
Australia as a country needs reminding that it owes its existence to country Australia.
Hopefully, the upcoming by-election serves as a rare opportunity to do that.
It must also be appreciated that in this by-election, every vote counts.
