CountryMinded New England candidate Pete Mailler extended profile

Good political outcomes are driven by political competition, Mr Mailler says.

“If you want your member to work hard for you, they need to know that if they don’t perform, the next election is not guaranteed,” he said.

“Neither side of government is particularly interested in what they can do for these ultra-safe seats. When weighing up where to use its resources, much more likely to throw them at securing a marginal seat than a safe seat.

“The Nationals can’t leverage a position if they hold the seat by more than about five per cent because it’s deemed to be safe.”

The job of CountryMinded is to give people a “progressive, conservative alternative”, and to erode the vote to turn safe seats in to marginal seats

“The reality is Barnaby has really struggled, except when there has been competition,” he said.

“In the 2013 election, the Coalition ripped nearly $100m funding out of the electorate because Tony Windsor didn’t run.

“In the 2016 election, when Tony Windsor did run, there was political competition and a chance Barnaby wouldn’t win - what you know, he starts to get some money he can allocate to things.

“A lot of items I hear being touted were actually scheduled and funded in a previous term of government, Barnaby’s defence is ‘I stopped them taking it away’. If that’s the best we can do, we're in a lot of trouble.”

The people who founded CountryMinded were disenfranchised Nationals voters.

Mr Mailler said the National Party “were” the champions of rural and regional Australians – and his party’s name is tribute to that.

“The name CountryMinded came from a policy that the old Country Party pushed which was about ‘Country Mindedness’,” he said.

“That was about reinforcing the importance of rural and regional Australia to the wealth and prosperity of the whole nation.

“Culturally, [the Nationals] have moved away from their grassroots. They live off a reputation they haven’t really earned for 30 years.

“We are angry because they keep telling us that they’re doing the job for us, they’ve got a great slogan and a great narrative, but when it comes down to it, we’re not going runs on the board.”

Mr Mailler said a stable society relied on a vibrant rural and regional sector, something “this country has lost sight of” in recent years.

“We’re very conscience of the fact that two per cent of the world’s population feeds the other 98 per cent,” he said.

“The regions are declining steadily and we need a more forthright champion.”

Mr Mailler said if elected, CountryMinded had a two-pronged approach to benefit the region, which worked on both a local and national scale.

“The initiatives we are launching in this campaign are things we can deliver without any help,” he said.

“Renewables and the medicinal cannabis industry are great opportunities. We want to champion and foster these industries that are going to create employment opportunities in the region.

“With medical cannabis, we’re talking a multi-billion dollar industry and we could be at the epicentre of that with a political champion willing to push the cause for the region.”

The big ticket items the party would push hard on in Canberra are education, telecommunications, including the NBN, and health.

“What we’re looking to do is create a momentum where this region takes control of its future and we start concentrating on things we can do right now to make a difference here.

“Then we run a second approach to how we will lobby in Canberra.”