Roughly two thirds of voters in those 39  seats in the House of Representatives defined as “rural” by the Australian Electoral Commission gave their first preference vote to right of centre parties in the 2025 federal election. Others gave their vote to independents and smaller entities. The minority gave their vote to left of centre parties and organisations.

Of those 39 seats, the ALP gained just 10. The Coalition 25. The remaining 4 were won by Helen Haines in Indi, Bob Katter in Kennedy, Rebekha Sharkie in Mayo and Andrew Gee in Calare.

For the media to claim – as was done in the 2022 election when almost 600,000 more people voted for the Coalition than they did for the ALP – that the whole country turned away from the right of centre parties is simply incorrect. In the bush, left of centre is on the nose.

Drilling down further, of the 25 rural seats won by the Coalition, 8 were won by the Nationals, 7 were won by the hybrid Liberal National Party (most of whose members will choose to sit in the National Party Party Room) and 10 by the Liberals.

A further 10 out of 25 “provincial” seats were won by the Coalition.

Out of a probable 42 seats won by the Coalition in the 2025 election, 35 are non metropolitan – or 83 per cent. Against that, including such major centres as Newcastle, the ALP won 25 non metropolitan seats out of a probable total of 94 seats – or 26 per cent only of ALP seats are non metropolitan.

It should be noted also that all the National Party lower house members and all Liberal National Party lower house members who sit in the National Party Party Room held their seats. Contrary to much media reporting suggesting that the National Party has gone backwards, some National Party members obtained swings in their favour, such as Anne Webster in Mallee (1.57 per cent FP, 0.83 per cent TPP) and Sam Birrell in Nicholls (23 per cent FP, 65.17 per cent TPP). The former Leader of the National Party, Barnaby Joyce, running in the seat of New England, obtained a swing in his favour of 1.81 per cent FP and 2.26 per cent TPP. Where there were negative swings, they were generally minor. To paraphrase Mark Twain – “the report of the death of the National Party was an exaggeration”.

So, this is the problem for the voters in the bush. A problem seen previously in the last state election in Victoria. No matter how many votes are cast and no matter how many seats are won in rural areas in favour of a particular side of politics it will not matter a fig if the majority of voters in the city and provincial electorates cast their votes in favour of the opposite side of politics. The views and concerns of the majority of rural voters will be cast aside and ignored.

This is most obvious in the roll-out of the ‘energy transition’. Decisions are made by politicians in order to make themselves popular with their city constituents but where the impact of those decisions is felt most keenly by rural voters. Rural voters are carrying the burden of an energy transition which is designed to satisfy the demands of city voters.

ALP and Green politicians revel in the opportunity to punish rural voters for the political choices which they have made. This is not limited to the transmission lines ploughing through rural land and areas of high environmental value or the renewable energy projects dividing rural communities and making good agricultural land into a wasteland peopled only by the Fly In Fly Out employees of renewable energy companies and agribusiness.

No, the vengeance being wreaked upon rural voters goes way beyond that. It includes reducing health, education, aged care, transport, banking, telecommunications, roads and a myriad of other services. Employment regulations designed to push workers into unions and to make employing rural workers an expensive luxury fewer and fewer farmers can afford. Biosecurity levies aimed at reducing farm profitability more than at protecting Australia’s biosecurity. Environmental measures designed to hamstring farmers in a mass of regulation. At the top, banning some farming practices and activities entirely for no clear reason other than ideology.

What are the majority of rural voters to do? Sadly, within the constraints of the current constitutional model, there is little which they can do. They can lobby, they can protest, they can send truck convoys to Canberra, they can advertise and try to make their case known to a wider public and they can keep voting for politicians whom they believe will argue for them in government. However, based on past experience, these strategies are unlikely to change anything.

Perhaps it is time for some more radical measures? These could include applying the same sorts of protest measures used by green activists against logging to blocking renewable energy projects; and ceasing supplying food and produce to the cities for a week.

On the constitutional front, working towards the creation of new states focused on rural areas could be a viable way forward. The Riverina State movement in New South Wales is an example of that type of approach.

There has to be change. City and provincial populations cannot expect to continue to throw the burden of their predilections onto rural people without taking into account the views of those rural people. If the current situation continues, inevitably, there will be a consequences. One such consequence could well be city voters discovering, far too late, that they have so squeezed the life out of rural communities that there is no longer food on their own tables.

Never has the phrase “Don’t bite the hand which feeds you” been more pertinent.