KERANG’S has gone into the political stratosphere with this week’s appointment of Shane Love as Western Australian leader of The Nationals and the WA Opposition.
Born and bred in Kerang, the son of Macorna dairy farmers, Mr Love took his party’s top job on Monday after previous leader Mia Davies announced she would stand down because she did not expect to lead the party to the next election.
Kerang is represented in the Victorian parliament by Peter Walsh, also leader of The Nationals.
Meaning Kerang, as usual, is more than punching above its weight, with two state political leaders.
But WA is a very long-distance call and Mr Love and the besieged Coalition there has bigger fish to fry after getting all but obliterated at the last state election, leaving the Liberals with just two seats and the Nats with four in the 59-seat parliament.
It is a challenge the new leader has been preparing for through the rough and tumble of more than 20 years in local and state government.
He says his party’s top job was never on his radar, even though he was deputy.
“Mia Davies, the leader who stood down, has been a great representative of the Nationals and is much younger than me, I thought I would be long gone and buried before she gave up the game,” Mr Love said.
“It’s also a long way from my childhood in Kerang, and school at St Joseph’s, but I have been following things there closely in the past few months with the floods,” he said.
“I still remember as a child there filling sandbags for another flood at another time, some things never change that much, do they?”
Mr Love’s parents moved from the dairy farm into Kerang, where they took over the school bus service for several years before the family relocated to WA in 1974.
And while his family had moved off the land, the apple clearly did not fall far from the tree.
Mr Love eventually went into farming about two hours north of Perth at Badgingarra, firstly sheep and cropping before making the switch into beef cattle.
“I thought I had done well when mum and dad moved from the dairy farm into Kerang and I dodged doing the hard yards there – and then ended up with my own farm,” he laughed.
“My property was in the Shire of Dandaragan, the sort of place where councillors stayed a long time and when a vacancy arose there was no election, one person nominated and slotted in.
“But in my case, when someone nominated for a vacancy I actually thought I would be able to do a bit more for locals so I nominated as well – and won.
“I did nine years as shire president and then got tapped on the shoulder by the local member, who was planning to retire (Grant Woodhams) and now, here I am,” he said.
If you think Peter Walsh has a big job with an electorate of 12,000 square kilometres and 47,000 electors, spare a thought for Shane Love – his seat of Moore covers 77,600 square kilometres with just 27,000 electors.
But Mr Love says although his electorate has a lot of coastline; it also has “a hell of a lot of farming country attached to it”.
He also knows his new role will be a delicate one, helping reinvent a viable opposition in WA politics and facing up to the inevitable – the Nationals cannot remain the senior party in the Coalition.
“There are no more than 16 of the 59 seats in the parliament that we can seriously contest; like Victoria, the destiny of government is decided in capital city seats,” Mr Love conceded.
“And like Victoria, we have a government not interested in listening to the regional and rural voice and it will be my job to try and make sure that voice gets heard as much as possible.”
Mr Love also took time to reminisce on his formative years in Kerang, a time he recalls with “great fondness” as a “perfect place in which to grow up”.
“I know it was a different time, the 1960s and early ’70s, but Kerang was a fabulous little community – apart from that flood – and I remember riding all over the place and you were as safe and as happy as anyone could be,” he said.
“Yes, it was a great time, and a great town and important part of my life.”
