The Advocate sat down with CountryMinded candidate Pete Mailler in Scone to talk about some of the issues of concern in the Upper Hunter and his party’s stance on them.

A beef and grain farmer from just outside the top of the electorate at Boggabilla, Mr Mailler said while some people have been quick to call him an “out of towner”, the party shows a very strong connection to the New England.

“I have family from Uralla, family in Inverell and I actually live in the Northern Tablelands electorate as well,” he said.

“I know that’s small comfort to the people of Scone right at the bottom end of the electorate given that the electoratal boundaries changed last year, but we are serious about our connection to the community.”

A disenfranchised Nationals voter, Mr Mailer’s background stems from agricultural politics and three years as the chairman of the national grains representative organisation.

“I spent a lot of time in parliament house dealing with politicians and before that I had an idea about what I thought went on in Canberra and I thought we had a team – we don’t have a team,” he said.

CountryMinded believes marginal seats have the priority in government and warns against a “safe Nationals seat”.

“If you look at where all the big funding and investment and all the infrastructure goes, it goes to the marginal seats,” Mr Mailler said.

“We have seen it all before –  in 2013 there was no contest and $100 million was pulled off the table for electoral sweeteners for New England.

“In 2016 when there was a contest, there was a significant amount of money allocated for projects in the New England by the coalition to try to make sure they won the seat.

“So what is very obvious is that if rural and regional Australia wants to get a better deal, we need to have marginal electorates.”

CountryMinded was founded by disenfranchised Nationals who believed Australia needed more marginal electorates and a progressive, conservative alternative group to vote for.

“The name comes out of making sure that the whole of Australia understood the essential importance of rural and regional Australia to the prosperity of the whole nation,” Mr Mailler said.

Mr Mailler said his party would support a bypass and railway overpass in Scone.

“There is a railway line through the middle of town that crosses the New England highway, it would be far more sensible if we had a major interstate highway that didn’t have a rail crossing,” he said.

“With the amount of traffic going through town a bypass makes sense.

“I think that it’s really important though that we don’t invest in things that are detrimental to small business in the community.

“Scone has a lot of things going on being the Horse Capital of Australia – one of the big things we are focussed on is providing small business with a better ability to compete in the marketplace and we have several strategies for that.”

CountryMinded holds a very strong stance on renewable energy and that agricultural land and water “needs to hold precedence over extractive industries.”

While Mr Mailer acknowledges mining as a legitimate industry, he says it has to operate on a “no harm basis”.

“What that means is if there is a risk to agricultural land or water then you need to modify your strategy for your mine,” he said.

“The way it operates at the moment is that the mining industry works on a different set of standards than everyone else.

“We would like the same set of standards applied and we would like to see that agriculture is given precedence in the competition for resources.”

Mr Mailler said more needs to be done to ensure that the NBN is prioritised all around the region.

“The issues that most people are putting forward are that the margins are tight, everyone’s tired and we are busier than we have ever been before and half the time we can’t get on the internet,” he said.

“Rural and regional Australia’s reliance on high-speed data is getting more and more profound all the time.

“The way that we counter the geographic isolation we live in is through connectivity to the internet.”

Governments generally make decisions on the internet based on per capita decisions, Mr Mailler says.

“In terms of what rural and regional Australia contributes to gross national income, on a per capita basis we are leading the pack,” he said.

“That’s where we need to be and where we need to start positioning our conversations about how we access money for regional Australia.”

Do you have a local issue that you would you like to see candidates discuss in the lead up to the New England by-election? Send it to caitlin.reid@fairfaxmedia.com.au