Rob Oakeshott sees climate of change

IT was only two years ago that independent Rob Oakeshott took the step that has now cast him as a kingmaker.

IT was only two years ago that independent Rob Oakeshott took the step that has now cast him as a kingmaker.

Six years after quitting the Nationals, Mr Oakeshott switched to federal politics in 2008 after a 12-year career in the NSW parliament.

Mr Oakeshott was elected to the House of Representatives in a by-election for the NSW mid-north coast seat of Lyne, triggered by the resignation of Nationals leader Mark Vaile.

Mr Vaile was well known to Mr Oakeshott, who had worked as a staffer in the Nationals MP's office in the early 1990s. He succeeded Nationals minister Wendy Machin in the state seat of Port Macquarie in 1996. But by the end of that decade, Mr Oakeshott found himself at odds with the Nationals, which he saw as increasingly irrelevant to his electorate. Mr Oakeshott disagreed strongly with the party's decision to back the monarchy during the republic debate.

He had also become increasingly frustrated with the influence of property developers in local Nationals branches, citing the issue as a major reason he quit the party in 2002 to go independent in the NSW Legislative Assembly.

At the time, Mr Oakeshott famously declared there were "too many Bob Jellys in the National Party" -- a reference to the shifty mayor and real estate agent of the same name in the popular ABC television series SeaChange.

Mr Oakeshott, 40, polled 62.4 per cent of the vote in Lyne at the weekend's poll, registering a 21.2 per cent swing towards him from the Nationals.

Eight years after his parting of ways with the Nationals, the father of three is turning his mind to the issues that top his points of negotiation with both major parties.

He has named reviving an emissions trading scheme, ensuring better telecommunications for the bush, and getting a "fair go" for rural and regional Australia as priorities. Progress on climate change policy is "one example of what (independent MPs) may be able to deliver for this country", Mr Oakeshott says.

Of an ETS, he urges the parties to "go back to the Garnaut report and try to get something through based on that".

Additional reporting: AAP