Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Australian Politics and Policy
and Gladstone. This significantly boosted the populations of those towns and their
role as regional centres.
From about 1950 Keynesian economics (promoting government’s role in
sponsoring economic growth through government expenditure and lower taxes
to stimulate demand) became the principal ideology in Western nations. 10 In
Australia, public investment in regions wasjustifiedasitstimulatedgrowthand
sought to achieve spatially equitable development. 11 This was not necessarily
viewedasregionalpolicy,butratherasregionaldevelopmentforthebenefitofthe
entire nation. The Ord River irrigation scheme in WA, regulation of production
and protection of commodities, fuel subsidies and cross-subsidisation of transport
and communications infrastructure are examples. Until the mid-1970s, Australian
industry was largely protected through subsidies and state regulation. The
agricultural sector was a particular beneficiary with a range of subsidies and
bounties to protect and support farmers. In addition, many regulatory authorities,
statutory marketing and price support schemes were in place that shielded the
agricultural sector from market fluctuations. Regional towns and communities
were strongly supported by government-funded infrastructure on the principles
of equity rather than market forces. Costly services such as transport networks,
schools, health centres and other facilities were established throughout rural,
regional and remote Australia, boosting communities and primary industry
development. Despite the small and scattered towns and communities, the
investment in rural, regional and remote places was justified by the notions of ‘state
paternalism’ 12 and ‘countrymindedness’, which Lockie describes as the ‘association
of Australianness with rurality and the broad acceptance of the importance of rural
activities for the Australian economy’. 13
As early as 1890, the rural population was lamenting the ‘evil of centralisation
which would seek to advance the capital city … at the expense of the country
districts’. 14 From the 1920s, countrymindedness was manifested politically through
the formation and electoral success of the Country Party, now National Party.
Despite the dominance of the coastal cities since European settlement, the
egalitarian notion of the archetypal, usually male, Australian who ‘had a go and
built the nation’ had considerable electoral cache throughout Australia, with broad
acceptance of ‘agrarian socialist policies’. 15 As a result, voters in rural, regional
and remote areas had a disproportionate advantage at the ballot box in many
jurisdictions. It was only in 2005 that WA finally secured one-vote-one-value
legislation; until then rural votes were worth almost twice the urban vote, 16 much to
10 Tonts and Jones 1997.
11 Haslam McKenzie and Tonts 2005.
12 Tonts and Jones 1997, 173.
13 Lockie 2000, 17.
14 Black, quoted in Davies and Tonts 2007, 211.
15 Lockie 2000, 19.
16 Davies and Tonts 2007.
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