A bush budget

MR COSTELLO may have been busy on Budget Night but, seventy kilometres from Parliament House, nobody in Gunning’s Telegraph Hotel was watching the broadcast. The TV wasn’t even on. The half dozen or so drinkers were pretty quiet. One of them was telling the others that it isn’t worth leaving the house unless he’s getting $400 for a day’s work. “Is that including GST, mate?” “Buggered if I know.” The numbers that matter most tonight are the ones on the rain gauge. After rain in late summer it has been a dangerously dry autumn. But in the last twenty four hours, over half an inch has fallen in the area. It’s not enough. It never is. But no one is sorry to see it. One of the men at the bar asks for a beer to get the dust out of his throat. “You mean mud, mate.” They laugh. It’s not a bad bar for banter, especially on a quiet night. It’s possible that the remaining 98 per cent of Gunning’s 530 inhabitants are at home watching Mr Costello. But not likely. The following day, one of the local business people says that he has to hand it to Mr Costello. He gave the entire speech and never mentioned the fact that the budget was in deficit. “I wish I could report to the tax office like that.” It’s not that Gunning is insulated from the broader movements in the Australian, or even world, economy. Far from it. The town had a moment in the national spotlight in week after Easter. The only bank in town has been the National, open on two days a week. The locals will tell newcomers that the problem with having only one bank in town is that, after you’ve held it up two or three times, the staff get to know you. But one bank is better than none. The Gunning branch of the National is one of fifty branches around the country which are marked for closure. Most of them are in communities such as this. On the day of the announcement, the general manager of the council, John Bell, was on the front page of the Canberra Times. The town was written up in the Australian. This is big stuff around here. People were too angry to enjoy their moment of fame. They said that over generations they had taken millions through the doors of that bank. They were right. When wool was a pound a pound, there was a lot of money in this area. The bank had been a long term resident and it was expected to return the loyalty that had been shown to it. People wondered what difference it would really make to the National to employ a couple of staff members for a couple of days a week. It makes a huge difference to the local businesses for whom the nearest bank is now 40km away. A town like this is too small to underwrite a community bank. The local state member, Katrina Hodgkinson, distributed copies of the speech she made in parliament condemning the National. Strong words won’t make a tap of difference. Meanwhile, the National has posted a profit of 2.2 billion dollars for the quarter. It’s not a topic to bring up in the pub if you want a quiet drink. You can now do some of your National Australia Banking at the post office, or, to give it it’s proper name, the Rural Transaction Centre. It’s extra work for the owners. Last week, Mr Howard went to Ganmain in south east NSW to open a new Rural Transaction Centre. The whole town turned out for the visit. An RTC is a federal government initiative which allows you to access government agencies, such as Centrelink, from a rural post office. Ours was opened last year. The federal member, Liberal Alby Schultz, did the honours. Schultz is a popular local member. He says he drives 130,000 km a year. You often see his marked car flitting along the Hume Highway from one function to the next. At the last election, Schultz lost only 3 out of 83 booths in his electorate. Two of those were in the city of Goulburn and the other was Gundaroo, only 30km from Gunning, but that much closer to Canberra and near enough to the national capital for people to regard Gundaroo as as much a suburb of Canberra as the other side of the Gunning shire. The vote in Gundaroo highlights one of the local fears. Canberra is creeping this way. At the opening of the Gunning RTC, the national anthem was played on a portable stereo. The Tampa crisis was making headlines. Mr Schultz began his speech by referring to the determination of the government to defend the integrity of our borders. It was not clear what this had to do with enhanced post office facilities but it went down well. This is despite the fact the only tanks we see in the street here are water tanks being delivered to properties. And that refugees are unlikely to find their way to Gunning. Indeed, immigrants would improve their chances of visas if they were willing to come to a town like this. They’d enrich the town too. But they don’t come. This doesn’t stop people being afraid that they might. So Mr Costello’s budgeting for national security pushes all the right buttons. People don’t mind paying for that kind of insurance. Other kinds of insurance are a different matter. Like many small communities, people are well aware of the increased premiums required to cover even traditional events. This year, we held the inaugural Gunning Country Family Festival. This involved stopping the train that travels from Victoria to Tamworth for the Country Music Festival and bringing both passengers and performers down to the local oval for a concert. It was a great initiative and worked a treat. But, for a while, the sticking point was getting insurance cover. There didn’t appear to be anything in Mr Costello’s budget about addressing the widespread problems with insurance, especially medical and public liability insurance. This town does not have a pharmacy. There is a yellow sign lingering above a bluestone building in the main street which indicates where Mr Catchpole used to run the pharmacy. These days, the newsagent faxes your script to a pharmacy in Goulburn and your medicine comes back on the school bus. The old pharmacy is occupied by a man who makes cement hi-fi speakers for a boutique but far-flung trade. It’s the kind of small, slightly odd, enterprise that can flourish in a quiet place like this. Nevertheless, on the day after the budget, people in Gunning were talking about the increased cost of prescriptions. Gunning shares this with the rest of Australia. The country is very touchy about health cover. It was not the GST which lost Dr Hewson the 1993 election. It was the fear he would undermine Medicare. The cost of medicine, like the cost of petrol, hits home to people in a big way. Even here. • Michael McGirr is a columnist for the Age and the author of Things You Get for Free, published by Picado