Out in the bush, it’s way past party time

Country people still live in the real world and they stand ready to wallop city-slicker pollies.

What are you hoping to read over the Christmas break? My colleague Troy Bramston annually puts that question to the nation’s pollies, some of whom take the opportunity to show off and others to lie, but never mind that for a moment.

One book this year received several mentions: Bill Shorten has it on his Christmas list; David Littleproud is reading it; so is Joel Fitzgibbon. If that weren’t enough, the Grattan Institute put it on its list of four books Scott Morrison really should read ­before parliament resumes.

The book in question is Rusted Off: Why Country Australia is Fed Up by journalist Gabrielle Chan, who used to work at News Corp and now works at the Guardian Australia. Who says there’s no cross-pollination in the media?

Chan grew up in a multicultural family in Sydney’s Coogee, entering journalism in what she calls “the golden age” — the 1980s, although I seem to remember terrifying subs on The Age backbench in the old building on Spencer Street reminiscing about the 50s. In her 20s she fell in love with a farmer, and married, and since 1996 she has lived on a farm in Harden-Murrumburrah, on the southwest slopes of NSW, a small town with one main street, where the following conversation might happen:

“Have you always lived in Harden?”

“No, I once lived in Murrumburrah.”

It wasn’t easy for Chan to shed her city skin, but this isn’t a city-chick-gone-country book. It’s about politics, in particular the rise of a “neglected class” of voters, most of whom live outside the cities, who are ready to rumble.

When Chan’s kids went to boarding school, she returned to the Canberra press gallery. For some years now, she’s led a dual life: some days she’s reporting on politics; other days she’s walking a cow trail down to the farm shed.

This divide — city, country — has long existed but Chan says something fundamental has changed. We are now a nation divided, with city slickers on one side and country folk — “their concerns sidelined, their opinions downgraded” — on the other.

In the cities, Chan finds “global citizens” who feel comfortable pretty much anywhere in the world. They fuss over the kids’ education and worry about how much sugar they’re eating and ­despair over the idea that Donald Trump may get a second term.

In the country, she finds people who have lost patience with politics, and especially with party politicians. They’re quite sure, ­indeed keen, on the idea that Trump will be re-elected.

“The whole of rural society, top to bottom, is pretty much disappointed, or angry at politics,” Chan writes. They no longer trust government and associated institutions like the media.

“They are the neglected class and they represent a constituency up for grabs.”

In Chan’s telling, country folk — not all of them are farmers; they are shelf-stackers, checkout chicks, truck drivers, and cafe workers — see themselves being driven down to a position near the bottom of society, while those at the top — city slickers, and ­especially politicians — are unrecognisable to them.

She talks to former abattoir worker Ken, who says: “The major parties are there to see how they are going to fight to win the next election. It’s like a business. They are trying to outdo the other one. They aren’t worrying about people out in Australia. They are just looking after themselves.”

In the drapery shop, Lorraine says: “Our politicians basically go from school to university and do law, and go into politics, and they don’t actually live in the real world.” They have lived comfortably for too long. They have forgotten what it’s like “down here for us, trying to make ends meet”.

Chan says country people want jobs, “they want infrastructure, they want the access to education and broadband services that city people have” — high schools that offer two-unit maths, and hospitals where you can get cancer treatment and have a baby — but they “feel they have no sway over government”.

They have no lobby group, and they see the “educated elite on both the Left and the Right looking after themselves”. They want to shake up politics, “because a vote is their only chance.”

Pauline Hanson has made a career out of talking to them; Trump built an unexpected presidency on it.

Their votes are up for grabs, because who represents them?

The Nationals have long been associated with the landed class, and do not properly represent the working class in rural areas. Labor has often done well in the country — it had miners and shearers and others — but is now busy courting the inner city (and regaining ground in the suburbs, where the middle class became Howard battlers, although that’s about to change).

The Liberal Party for a long time couldn’t get west of Balmain, let alone of the dividing range.

Having lost patience with the status quo, “the neglected class are looking to other politicians, people who stand out because they don’t talk or act like politicians, people who speak the language of the (small town) main street”. Hanson, Xenophon, Lambie, McGowan. All these names come to mind. Their ideas are the same as those Chan hears on her main street: lack of trust, and a sense that “clever political advocates have changed the system to suit themselves”.

In Chan’s telling, the crossbench in the Senate and independents in lower houses, state and federal, represent voters who have lost faith in government; and in a two-party system that has flamed out. The major parties may well be waiting for things to return to normal but Chan says that may well be “like waiting for a normal weather pattern on the farm … it has yet to arrive in the 21 years I have lived here”.