Kevin Andrews, Rosedale, horse racing agrarian socialism and blame it all on Jeff Kennett ...

(Above: hits and memories of Kevin Andrews, including a spin as a lycra clad lout, the bane of Miranda the Devine's life).

Here's a goody, and we owe it all to The Punch's endearing ongoing attempt to offer Federal Liberal party hacks and has-beens a platform for their insights:

We need a renewed sense of subsidiarity in the Australian polity.

Thank you Kevin Andrews, and come on down with Outside forces killing our country towns, in which you manage to outdo Barnaby Joyce in an ineffectual concern for rural dwellers.

In attempting to decode what Andrews is saying, we must first of all revert to wiki, and trust that the democratic process of information gathering brings us closer to Andrews' insight:

Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority having its origin in Catholic Social Teaching. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level. (here)

Now to polity:

Polity (Greek: Πολιτεία or Πολίτευμα transliterated as Politeía or Políteuma) is a form of government Aristotle developed in his search for a government that could be most easily incorporated and used by the largest amount of people groups, or states. Polity is a political system that combines ideals from an oligarchy, "government by the few" (Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary), with ideals from a democracy, "government by the people, especially: rule of the majority" (Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary). (Definition of Polity: From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophical Quest by T.Z. Lavine, pg. 76) Today polity is used as a general term referring to a political organization or a specific form of a political organization (Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary). It can be used to describe a loosely organized society such as a tribe or community, but can mean any political group including a government or empire, corporation or academy. Polity is used in the phrase ecclesiastical polity as a synonym for church government. (here).

Hmm, am I right in thinking that Andrews was simply saying there should be more local authority in local politics? With a Catholic theological overtone in choice of words?

Carry on:

Not all decisions taken at the central level are the optimal. More often than not, local communities know what is best for them. Sometimes they are wrong, but they also know that they suffer the consequences of their choice.

There are issues that require central approaches – but the case should always be made out. Otherwise, let local communities flourish. The experience of local people running hospitals, schools and nursing homes enriches these institutions and the communities they serve. We need more of it.

What, with a wave of a hand, let local communities flourish? As if the people currently in rural hospitals, schools and nursing homes are all people shipped in on a daily basis from foreign climes to impose a harsh regime of deprivation? As opposed to locals operating on a budget? A budget dictated by the harsh realities of the economic and social circumstances of the locality? Or imposed by the Federal government jerking the strings of state governments, when the state government can't manage to jerk its own strings? As NSW state Labor does so well. Jerk, that is.

Perhaps as a cynic, you might, as always, detect the whiff of agrarian socialism and self-interest in the musings of the member for the division of Menzies.

Funnily enough, Andrews, like many others, voted with his feet, by leaving his rural home - wiki tells us he was born in Sale in Victoria - to head to the University of Melbourne, and a career as a barrister, before heading off to federal politics and Canberra. Part of the brain drain that has reduced Gippsland to its current parlous state no doubt.

About the only bête noire that Andrews can produce for the current state of things in rural Victoria is Geoff Kennett, and racing authorities, who ruined the local race meet:

... in the late sixties, the racing authorities decided that there were too many clubs. In the new era of the tote, turnover was everything. A century of local commitment came to naught.

Some years later, the Kennett government decided there were too many municipalities in Victoria. The Rosedale Council was absorbed into the regional Wellington Shire and the headquarters moved to Sale.

Subsequently the banks moved out, leaving locals little choice but travel half an hour to the next town until a local community bank was opened.

But why did the banks move out? Could it be that locals stopped using the branches, or provided too small a base for operations, as shoppers preferred to do their banking while heading off to the big supermarkets in the nearest town, thanks to the motor car. Could it be that the motor car and cheap petrol helped kill some small towns lacking in the wherewithal of other industries or a capacity for tourism? That withered on the vine as bigger towns cast a rain shadow over their appeal? To rural dwellers ...

Well I guess we shouldn't be looking to Andrews for much in the way of economic insight:

Rural communities are often subject to changing economic circumstances.

Knock me down with a feather. Really? What else can you add in the way of banality?

Most towns survive and move on. Some don’t.

Never mind.

Every now and again, rural people revolt, voting against governments they believe have lost touch of their aspirations and concerns.

Now he's telling us rural folk are revolting?

Now here's the funniest bit, coming from a politician who was once part of a federal government which spent an enormous amount of energy on centralising such areas as education and health (remember Tony Abbott and John Howard cavorting about in front of a hospital in Tasmania?)

It's all the fault of the "omnipotent bureaucrats in Spring street" and the rural folk suffer mightily at their hands:

Each year, hundreds of rural and regional towns throughout Australia experience the impact of decisions taken in capital cities. There is no community impact assessment, no informed consideration for how the decision will impact on the community concerned.

Can I just rephrase that a bit?

Every year millions of Australians experience the impact of decisions taken in Canberra. There is no community impact assessment, no informed consideration for how the decision will impact on the millions concerned.

The rest of Andrews' column reminds the reader why he was such a dreary federal minister, and how he managed to take stands against stem cell research and the use of RU-486, and how he can take the credit for WorkChoices.

Yep, it's not a case, in the matter of Andrews v. Kennett, as to he who is without sin might throw the first stone, as to who might throw the first boulder. I keed, I keed, Kennett was an active politician who shook up Victoria, and who started many of the initiatives on which the current Labor government continues to trade. Andrews helped drag the Howard government into the mud.

There's more, much more in Andrews' column, but it's mainly about nostalgia for Gippsland, and a nostalgia for Rosedale, and a memorial for Strzelecki and big homesteads and station hands, and hotels and commons schools and a Mechanic's Institute hall and banks and churches and a railway, and how Rosedale - which never had more than a population of a thousand - now has a population of one thousand five hundred.

Say what? You mean it's added a third to its population over recent years? What a sad decline and fall. Followed by this non-sequitur:

As I surveyed the manner in which the town had adapted in the past, I was struck by the way that outside forces continue to affect rural towns.

What's that?

No country town is an island, entire of itself; every country town is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Australia is the less ... any country town's death diminishes me, because I am involved in human kind, and therefore never send to know for whom the prattling politician tolls, he tolls for thee?

Andrews then gets into the way Rosedale was big in racing, once upon a time, and even had a Melbourne Cup winner bred on Nambrok station, and the way the local traders recently passed around the hat to put up a statue of the horse in full flight.

It's as shameless a bit of knee jerking pandering rural romanticism as anybody could muster, and about as interesting as me describing my recent peregrinations around South Gippsland, which took in many Devondale farms and the grand town of Mirboo North on the top of the Grand Ridge Road. Top of the ridge in the Strzeleckis.

We did our bit for the local economy, as did a horde of visiting bikies, and then moved along.

In the process, I suspect we learned more about regional Victoria and the dynamics of regional economies than a year of columns by Kevin Andrews.

One wag immediately asked why the Liberal party didn't do something about it, when in power, thereby missing the point - anything the Federal Liberal party could do, except abdicate all power in favour of regional rule, would be just another federal intervention in local affairs - while another wag suggested that the recent increase by a third in Rosedale's population was just Kevin's tacit way of pointing out that Liberal governments aren't good for the country.

In other words, and as usual, the real comedy and the nuggets are to be found in the comments section. Suggesting that if The Punch wants a punching bag patsy to generate a bit of heat, pro and con, there's none better than the likes of Bronwyn Bishop or Kevin Andrews.

Or you could be out mowing the lawn in century heat and doing yourself the world of good by staring down all those climate change delusionists.

Meantime, since Gippsland is all the go, and while I much preferred the views offered by Hazelwood power station and its cooling pond, and Loy Yang power station, and the brown smog hovering in the air, as a fine example of what coal can do for the atmosphere, here's a gaggle of snaps from Mirboo north. Naturally they have a giant beer glass, and many quaint poignant murals (and no one seems to know how or why Mirboo North got its name).

More here, and never let it be said that Tamworth born and bred people have less soul than out of towner Barnaby Joyce or fellow lick spittle fellow travelling Canberra lackey Kevin Andrews: