Blasting Tony Windsor out of New England

04 July 2012

The Nationals have made their first big play for the next federal election. The Torbay Affair is either a masterstroke or a revealing insight into their problems and weaknesses as a regional and rural political party.

Richard Torbay, former Speaker of the NSW Parliament and the Independent member for the NSW state seat of Northern Tablelands for 13 years, has been offered pre-selection by the local Nationals to stand against the Independent federal member for New England, Tony Windsor. He has the support of federal leader Warren Truss.

Torbay is a capable, experienced person. That is not at issue. In fact he was apparently once seen as capable enough by some Labor powerbrokers to replace Nathan Rees as NSW Premier.

At one level the move can be seen as ensuring that the so-called renegade Windsor is consigned to oblivion. The Coalition would be immensely satisfied because Windsor chose to support Labor after the 2010 election. Torbay is very popular and Northern Tablelands, based on the university city of Armidale, overlaps New England. The Nationals have done their local polling, according to Senator Barnaby Joyce, and are more confident that Torbay will beat Windsor than any other possible Nationals candidate, including Joyce himself.

Windsor may fear his erstwhile Independent ally Torbay, but would still be gratified that the Nationals are pulling out all stops to unseat him. Despite the Coalition’s current popularity and its relentless campaign against Windsor they think he still has to be winkled out of his seat by a celebrity opponent.

The Nationals couldn’t produce a likely candidate from within its own ranks, a sign of its organisational and philosophical weakness.

So desperate were the Nationals to attract Torbay to defeat Windsor that the new recruit was able to insist on his own special conditions. He retains the freedom to speak out for his local electorate as he has done as an Independent. The Nationals are still not trusted to do so. Torbay knows this and has campaigned against the Nationals for more than a decade on just this basis. The Nationals at federal and state level are perceived by many country voters as mere junior coalition partners, submerged in and taken for granted by city-based Coalition governments and their pro-market ideologies.

He also implicitly accepts that Windsor’s role in the minority government has directed profitable attention to the electorate. Torbay says that “It’s very important to me that this area does not become very

AUSTRALIA

Blasting Tony Windsor out of New England

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