On a hot and windy day weeks out from the New South Wales (NSW) election, Orange independent MP Philip Donato meets a group of retirees and a guide dog named Rusty.
Standing on the town’s single train platform, the rail action group is pushing for more services between Sydney and the growing regional centre in the state’s central west.
Donato has long supported their calls for better links to the city for healthcare, work and tourism.
Before a press conference, he kindly tells one of the group—also named Phil—to move away from the platform edge.
“Don’t step back Phil. I’m a bit worried about where you’re positioned there,” Donato says.
It’s a brief glimpse of the MP’s easy rapport with his constituents and the hyperlocal issues at the heart of his popularity in the region, where he won 49 percent of the vote in 2019.
Donato is one of three former Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MPs in rural NSW who quit to run as independents in 2022 after denouncing the minor party’s leadership.
The success of community-backed campaigns in the federal election could be repeated in these key rural NSW seats, raising the possibility much of the west could be represented by independents in a minority government.
Dominic O'Sullivan, a political science professor at Charles Sturt University, said these regions, along with marginal Nationals seats such as Tweed and Upper Hunter, were crucial for the coalition to retain power.
“The swing is on across the state against the government, just as it was against the coalition in Victoria,” O'Sullivan told AAP.
“The swing there was against the Liberals, but the Nationals went against that trend. That’s what they need to do in NSW.
“It just depends on how strong those feelings remain of the National Party taking regional support for granted.”
Donato is standing as an independent after his successful 2016 run with the Shooters to end a seven-decade Nationals stronghold.
Further west, the member for Murray Helen Dalton and Barwon MP Roy Butler disrupted Nationals seats as Shooters candidates in 2019, reflecting sentiments the traditional country party had abandoned its grassroots base.
The NSW Nationals’ longest-serving MP Geoff Provest, the incumbent in the marginal north coast seat of Tweed, said the federal and Victorian elections revealed lessons for all major parties.
Communities respond to genuine connection with their MPs, rather than “captain’s calls” from Macquarie Street, Provest said.
“You’ve got to talk to the people and make yourself available, that’s the secret.”
Provest is going to the election after leading his community through complex COVID-19 Queensland border closures and historic floods.
Though many voters are disaster weary and worried about the cost of living, Provest doesn’t sense a shift away from the Nationals.
“But there’s never an easy election, you never take anything for granted, you work and work and work.”
The Baird government’s decisions to amalgamate local councils and briefly ban greyhound racing in 2016 were seen as a major influence in the move away from the Nationals in the west.
Donato is backing the growth of greyhound racing in Orange during a campaign otherwise focused on rural health, roads and education.
The former police prosecutor said support for dog racing was not a cynical attempt to keep Shooters voters on board but part of helping ordinary people.
“I’m for less government, not more red tape,” Donato told AAP.
“The greyhounds got singled out because they were seen as the lower end of the racing fraternity, an easy target, working class battlers.”
For Butler, whose far western electorate includes 150 communities across 356,292 square kilometres, roads are always front of mind.
After travelling 5400km on a recent 10-day trip, his windscreen shattered and his car conked out, leaving him stuck in Sydney for repairs.
Butler said he is rarely home on his family’s cattle property at Mendooran, instead travelling to every corner of the electorate.
“The real challenge is always the people who are not politically engaged and finding a way to touch them,” Butler said.
“The way to find them is on the street, or they might be moving sheep or cattle across the road and I pull up and have a chat.
“There’s a whole cohort that aren’t politically engaged, but they still vote on election day.”
The former correctives and community services worker said health, education and safe drinking and groundwater were pressing issues across Barwon.
Dalton hasn’t been spending much time on her NSW Riverina property at Rankin Springs either, campaigning across a 110,699 square kilometre electorate.
While the cost of living is on the minds of people in the southwest too, often living is the ultimate challenge, leading her to push for the state’s rural health inquiry.
“We die five years earlier than our city counterparts and the further west you go, the poorer our health outcomes. That’s not good enough,” Dalton said.
“We don’t want to be managed or talked down to from Sydney, we’re sick of it. And sick is the operative word.”
Just after midday, the XPT rushes through Orange on its way to Dubbo and local Neil Jones shows Donato photos of graffiti at a skate park.
Jones, who stood as a mayoral candidate for the Greens, said Donato’s success is down to his respect for a range of views in a diverse electorate.
“It’s very important that the popular choice is someone who truly reflects the person on the street,” Jones said.
