Federal election 2025: Shake-up for traditional bush politics as Coalition in fight for ‘safe’ seats

Lesley Smith feels like every day is Christmas as she unpacks boxes and arranges little treasures.

“Life is just amazing,” she tells AAP from her new country home overlooking autumnal plains at Eugowra in central west NSW.

“It’s so nice to do the things you want to. We just chill out, have a cuppa. It’s very comfortable.”

This is the quiet dream Lesley and Brian Smith had in mind when they moved to the village of 500 to be closer to family in early 2022.

By the end of that year, their buttercup yellow worker’s cottage was gutted by a ferocious flash flood.

They spent the best part of two years living in a temporary pod house, as the shell of their home slumped in the yard behind them.

After a prolonged fight with their insurance company over damage to the roof and foundations, the Smiths finally have a new modular house.

The couple say they wouldn’t have recovered if it wasn’t for federal MP Andrew Gee, who publicised their struggle and pushed for a national inquiry into the insurance industry.

“He was an absolute godsend when the flood came through,” says Mrs Smith, who will appear in a campaign advertisement for Mr Gee.

“He was not only here as a politician to see what he could do but physically here helping ... up to his knees in mud.”

Electoral support for Mr Gee in the small flood-affected villages across the seat of Calare is widespread, with corflutes covering front lawns, windows and small businesses.

A perceived lacklustre political response to the flood prompted him to quit the National Party in December 2022, citing his desire to deal with the disaster free of party constraints.

His move to become an Independent after 11 years as a state and federal Nationals MP was a bitter moment for the party, which has held Calare since 2007.

Party leader David Littleproud has visited several times on the Nationals campaign, dubbed the wombat trail, declaring the seat key to a coalition government.

“This is our pathway to victory,” he told reporters while standing in a Molong paddock in late 2024.

At Mount Panorama, Bathurst’s iconic race track in the heart of the electorate, he promised a $20 billion regional Australia future fund under a re-installed conservative government.

Mr Gee is no doubt popular among many who would otherwise consider supporting the Nationals but his conservative bent - including aligning himself with Queensland’s Bob Katter on various issues - won’t necessarily fly in the evolving regional cities of Orange, Bathurst and Lithgow.

Calare, which is increasingly home to tree-changers, is one of three major battleground regional seats where progressive independents are threatening the status quo.

Kate Hook, a renewable energy advocate and small-scale farmer is again taking on the fight, having won 40 per cent of the two-candidate preferred vote in 2022.

Meanwhile, former radio host Alex Dyson is making a third run in Wannon, Victoria, challenging senior Liberal Dan Tehan, while Caz Heise is standing for a second time in Cowper, northern NSW.

All three are receiving funding from Climate 200, businessman Simon Holmes a Court’s political movement that gave rise to the inner-city teals at the last election.

They are campaigning on local issues with a national lens, including cost of living, renewable energy, public school funding and improved health care.

Cost of living, in particular, has created a new political pathway in regional Australia, where people have lower incomes and want better access to essential services, Charles Sturt University political scientist Dominic O’Sullivan says.

With expectations of a minority government, independents can assure voters they can wield influence and take local voices to Canberra.

“There is a void for a strong independent candidate to fill, someone who can present themselves as genuinely interested in making people’s lives better,” Prof O’Sullivan tells AAP.

“(Rural Australians) don’t want governments to spend recklessly but they do want governments to do a little bit more.

“Those are the sorts of voices the coalition is not going to represent and that people in conservative rural and regional areas don’t have confidence in the ALP to prosecute.”

The coalition is also walking a fine line on nuclear energy, proposing reactors in the marginal seats of Flynn, central Queensland, Hunter, NSW, and in Calare.

While some landholders opposed to wind and solar farms are supportive, several regional communities are already heavily invested in renewables.

Gladstone, the closest major centre to a proposed reactor in Flynn, has been setting itself up as a clean energy hub for years.

“We don’t need or want expensive, radioactive, nuclear energy here,” then-councillor Kahn Goodluck said after the coalition unveiled its plan in 2024.

“Australia’s energy future isn’t radioactive.”

For the Beaton family in Coffs Harbour, in the seat of Cowper, the choice at the ballot box is influenced by one thing: cost of living.

The Nationals visited their motorcycle shop during the campaign, spruiking a promise to cut fuel prices by 25 cents per litre.

Ashley Beaton says people on the north coast generally earn lower incomes and are feeling the pinch from fuel, energy and grocery prices.

“A lot of people have lost faith in the two major parties,” he says.

He considered supporting Ms Heise but was concerned by backing from Climate 200.

Mr Beaton will instead be voting to re-elect National MP Pat Conaghan, a former police officer and solicitor.

“He knows what it’s like to be in the working class and how much cost-of-living affects us,” he says.

His daughter Karissa Beaton puts it simply: “A change is what people want.”