Cathy goes to Canberra.
It's a folksy title for a book about politics. But it suits Cathy McGowan, who successfully ran twice for the federal seat of Indi in north-east Victoria, knocking the Liberals out of the seat they had held for 36 years.
McGowan, born into a farm family of 13 children to Irish Catholic parents in the Indigo Valley 20 kilometres south of Wodonga, Victoria, served two terms as an independent in Federal Parliament, flying the flag for community engagement over party politics. That movement is alive and well today; McGowan's successor was Helen Haines, another independent.
"With me and indies, we actually represent our communities," she says. "It's a totally different representation. I listen to the community, they tell me what they think, and then I do it."
While McGowan is a farmer (she raises dorper sheep, has a walnut plantation and a huge vegetable garden on 100 acres), she also has other worldly experience, as a teacher and consultant.
That life experience served her well - she takes credit in playing a major role in the Future Drought Fund Bill legislation passed by the federal government, citing several amendments, which among other things, included strong oversight measures for management of funds distributed by the government.
One of her most glaring observations once she was in Parliament was the lack of attention to major issues, especially regional issues.
In the book, she says, "After spending six years in Parliament, hand on heart, I do not know what the National Party stands for. For the most part, it's just there. It seems to me that too many of its federal MPs are tag-alongs, back-seat occupiers."
Further on in the same passage, she says, "The party has its leadership tussles and its members hold their seats because they distribute money, with schemes like the sports rorts. That's what it seems to be about."
McGowan has equally harsh words for the Liberal party, noting that its candidate for Indi in 2019, Steven Martin, visited 50 towns in 50 days and "had funding announcements for each of those towns when I knew in some instances no formal applications had been lodged."
The point McGowan makes throughout the book is the lack of vision by politicians for regional Australia.
"I think everybody in the regions would look at the lack of regional policy, the lack of government commitment to plan for the regions, the lack of infrastructure in the regions, the impact of climate change in the regions, the lack of energy policy on the regions," she says in our interview this week. "There is no shortage of people understanding that we are poorly done by. It's just, what do we do about it?
"I think the answer is to elect more credible candidates with integrity who will work for the community, and they don't sell their vote to the parties."
There is no shortage of people understanding that we are poorly done by. It's just, what do we do about it? I think the answer is to elect more credible candidates with integrity who will work for the community, and they don't sell their vote to the parties.
Cathy McGowan
McGowan is clear that her rise was due to the powerful local group, Voices For Indi, with more than 1800 volunteers helping get the vote out for her at elections.
But it started from a phone call, from a niece and nephew living in Melbourne. They suggested to her that she would be the perfect candidate to give Indi a real citizens' voice. Among the concerns: poor internet service, lack of public transport, costs of fuel and energy, and difficulty accessing services, education and employment.
McGowan wasn't convinced she was candidate material, but she certainly took to the idea of the community getting organised, and thus the Voices For Indi was born. The group had more than 50 hosts, run "kitchen table conversations" to find out what was on the minds of locals, and the information was melded into a campaign of issues that people cared about.
In the end, she was the candidate, and carried by the depth of those initial group meetings that bound people together.
While she got out of politics, McGowan is far from finished.
"We could be much better than we are," she says of federal politics. "And we will only be much better if people sort of turn up, either local, state or federal politics, if they start speaking up, and then they step up to positions of responsibility, and it's going to take all of us to engage with our political system seriously."
She thinks electing more independents - and more women - is the road to a better government.
"It might not be the next election, it might take two or three elections," she says. "It's a work in progress of community engagement, community participation. The community grows in confidence every time they have a win, so this process is longer than one election. It's a 10 to 15-year project. But there's no hurry.
"We're going to be here for a long time. It's worth doing well. It's worth investing our energy for the outcome."
