![\"Voice4Indi\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Voice4Indi.jpg?resize=599%2C407\")
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By Ben McGowan<\/a><\/p>\n 29 August 2013<\/p>\n Drive 40 minutes north of Melbourne, cross the Great Dividing Range, and you will drop into the electorate of Indi. Keep driving north and you\u2019ll travel another three hours before you cross the border in NSW.<\/p>\n Indi is an electorate of catchments – the King River, Ovens River, Kiewa River and Mitta Mitta River \u2013 and it provides 38% of the water supply to the Murray Darling Basin. It is, most definitely, a rural electorate. And it is to my biased mind, one of the most interesting seats this election.<\/p>\n On Tuesday No Fibs published a story by Van Badham on how Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, and now Cathy McGowan have breached the rural-urban political divide and put rural politics on the agenda. (Latte-sipping city slicker @VanBadham gives thanks for rural independents and sees a new dawn for values in politics<\/a>).<\/p>\n Those of you who follow rural politics might remember the brilliant Quarterly Essay by Judith Brett following the 2010 election, Fairshare: Country and City in Australia<\/a>. She outlined the \u2018neoliberalisation\u2019 of rural industries, a steady retreat of government funding back into major city centres and the enormous successes of the three rural independents in securing post election funding for their electorates.<\/p>\n Neoliberalism isn\u2019t new and no one is arguing an alternate case (excepting perhaps the Katter Party); rural electorates are left to forge their own path. Tim Fischer aptly described the situation in the same essay, stating that he was \u201cfed up with people saying the government is doing nothing \u2013 it is. But rural communities must respond with courageous leadership and motivation\u201d.<\/p>\n In 2010, communities in the electorates of Kennedy, Lyne and New England supported strong independent campaigns and had come in for pecuniary attention from the new government. It gave those of us sitting in safe, rural seats a look at what we were missing out on and what was possible.<\/p>\n Rural politics is about networks.<\/p>\n In our Victorian state seat of Murray, Ken Jasper won ten straight elections and won all 29 booths in his final election in 2006. His advice to this political novitiate was simple \u2013 in rural politics, remember peoples names.<\/p>\n Cathy McGowan knew all the names, up the valleys and across the catchments and when we called her up she was willing to consider some sort of political action in Indi. The call was put out through the rural networks and we had a meeting.<\/p>\n Discreetly, quietly, we drifted into the Wangaratta Library\u2019s community room for a clandestine meeting. Discreetly because we were on the home turf of the powerful Liberal incumbent, and quietly because we\u2019d come from all parts of the electorate and knew some, but not all, of the other political dilettantes.<\/p>\n Would we do anything about politics in Indi?<\/p>\n Every two weeks we met in the community room to ask the same question. On the third time we decided that we would. We would try and make Indi marginal. But first of all we\u2019d gently check to see whether the rest of Indi was interested.<\/p>\n We took our lead from the Purple Sage Movement run by the Victorian Women\u2019s Trust<\/a> before the 1999 Victorian election and subsequently linked to the downfall of Kennett in his \u2018un-losable\u2019 1999 election. At that time, the Purple Sage Movement was responding to \u201ca widening gap between the rich and the poor, continued high unemployment, reduced standards of community service, increased strain on local communities (especially regional Victoria), the loss of public assets, racism and social tensions, and a serious erosion of our democratic rights and culture\u201d.<\/p>\n In our pretty well uncontested federal electorate we couldn\u2019t help but feel a little bit the same way. So we would follow the purple sage model: gathering around 10 people together to talk about politics around the \u2018kitchen table\u2019.<\/p>\n We created an incorporated body called Voice for Indi<\/a>, set up a webpage, and pushed the project out through the networks.<\/p>\n And people were interested.<\/p>\n 40 people came to explanatory sessions at Wangaratta. Twice. Sessions were full at Wodonga and Benalla, and we even had people turning up in Mansfield.<\/p>\n The 12 of us would go to as many sessions as we could to explain ourselves; the more of us who turned up the more legitimate the project seemed.<\/p>\n Following three months of promotion we had gathered kitchen table conversations from 425 people who participated in 53 conversations across 39 postcodes. Within these \u2018conversations\u2019 there was a plan: what we wanted for our electorate, what we wanted from our representation and what issues we wanted addressed.<\/p>\n![\"QE42\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/QE42.gif?resize=168%2C235\")
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