So there I was last week listening to the radio and on came Rob Oakeshott with the most intriguing news.
According to the Port Macquarie-based Independent: “I come from an area of Australia where people look at each other in the eye and tell the truth.”
I’ve got to see this place! I thought to myself. So I booked a ticket in search of this magical land that was apparently so unlike the rest of Australia.
Things started well. When I landed on the Mid-North Coast of NSW the sun was shining.
Tony at the Thrifty car rental desk told me he’d given me a free upgrade and parked the vehicle right outside the airport door, facing in the direction of town. It was true.
Being a flawed member of the population of the rest of Australia, I had some trouble working out how to open the boot.
Along came a chap in an Avis uniform who looked me right in the eye and said I looked like I needed help. (He couldn’t work it out either, but at least he tried).
First stop was the Milkbar Townbeach, where the staff members ask you how your day is going as if they actually care.
When the guy next to me dropped $2 and it rolled under the counter one of the waitresses dived to retrieve it for him instead of doing what waitresses in lesser places do and leave it until he’s left the shop.
Just half an hour on the ground in Port Macquarie and it was starting to look as if Oakeshott was on to something.
I needed to get the bottom of it, so I started asking people if there was something different about their home town.
It turns out it has one big flaw. Life is so good in Port Macquarie there’s no where good enough to go for a holiday!
And there’s love. Lots of love.
The day I was there young couples literally frolicked around every rocky outcrop of the town beaches.
So is it the home of eye-looking and truth-telling? Why did people keep laughing when I asked them this question?
After a lovely walk along the coastline to Flagstaff Hill I got chatting to Colin Mellors, who was sitting outside the Marine Rescue Kiosk doing the crossword.
Approximately 100 Port Macquarians give up their time to man the entirely volunteer service, which has the task of saving people who have got themselves in trouble off the coast.
Colin, who’s retired, moved to Port Macquarie two years ago, which makes him well qualified to discuss the town’s unique attributes.
“If you want my honest answer,” he said, somewhat redundantly, “I don’t think it’s different to anywhere else in Australia.”
What!
“You have honest people, and you have dishonest people.”
Either Colin wasn’t telling the truth about telling the truth, which would mean not everyone in Port Macquarie tells the truth. Or he was telling the truth, and not everyone in Port Macquarie tells the truth.
It was time to seek clarification from Oakeshott so I popped by his office, where it turned out he was in Canberra.
Confused I decided to consult Twitter, where by co-incidence at that very moment there was a stream from the Media 140 conference, where Oakeshott just happened to be making a speech (because there’s nothing more down home and in-touch than addressing a room full of Tweeting journalists in Canberra).
According to the Tweet stream Oakeshott said the only media outlet who’d asked to spend time with him on the ground in his electorate since he decided to help Julia Gillard form Government was Al Jazeera.
“Every other media outlet is commenting from either Sydney or Canberra about pitchforks in the electorate of Lyne and how the mood on the ground is terrible,” he said.
Fair cop?
Well given just 13.49 per cent of the voters in Lyne gave the ALP their first preference, and Oakeshott had to cancel a town meeting organised to explain himself after threats were made to the local paper, the pitchfork theory may not be so far fetched.
But it probably would be better if someone actually asked the good people of Lyne.
Maybe when Oakeshott does walk the streets (he didn’t say whether or not he’d granted Al Jazeera’s request) people aren’t giving him that hard a time – they are a pretty friendly bunch.
But I had trouble finding anyone who thought Oakeshott hadn’t done himself a huge amount of damage.
Comments included things such as:
“There’s a lot of people who feel deceived.”
“I didn’t vote for Rob Oakeshott for him to give his vote to Julia Gillard.”
“The election will be much closer next time.”
“The guy from the Nationals is very astute.”
“Nobody wanted him to go that way (to back Gillard) – it was not the vibe in the town”
“He’ll have to work very hard over the next few years looking after his electorate.”
And:
“It’s generally left people wondering who he is, what does he stand for and where is he going.”
So no actual pitchforks, but as Colin pointed out: “He was a very liked person here but only his most ardent supporters still back him now.”
In fact no-one I spoke to thought Oakeshott had done the right thing in backing Gillard.
My Port Macquarie reverie was starting to wane when I flicked on the car radio and heard Julia Gillard getting herself a bit tied up with the word “word” after Tony Abbott announced the Opposition would not agree to “pair” the Speaker.
“The Government entered into discussions with the Opposition and with Mr Rob Oakeshott, representing the independents, in good faith. We gave our word. Our intention has always been to honour our word,” said Gillard.
“I would have thought it was a reasonable expectation that the Leader of the Opposition would also honour his word. He has now said to me, and effectively to the Australian people, that his word is worth absolutely nothing.”
Hoping to salvage something of the idea I was in a place where people’s “word” meant something I stumbled across a swarm of little girls in pig-tails and performance make-up – surely here I would find honesty.
And in a way I did.
Chatting to Robert I put to him Oakeshott’s theory.
“When Rob Oakeshott said people here look you in the eye and tell you the truth he was bullshitting.”
That was it. I’d heard enough.
A bit forlorn I wandered down to the dock and was consoled by the sight of two dolphins – not something you usually get to see just steps from a town’s CBD.
Yes, Port Macquarie is a beautiful place. But it turns out its people are just like the rest of us.
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