A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], “Decentralisation — or how to alienate both city and country,” The Australian Financial Review, October 30, 1970, p. 3. Reprinted in Economics Made Easy (Adelaide: Brolga Books, 1982), pp. 31-33, as “Decentralisation.”

Mavis is getting very concerned about what she calls “my image.” “You must make it glow a bit, dear,” she is always chiding. “It’s no good always writing about wool and shipping and tariffs and dull things like that, you must use more imagination and vision. You may be right about the matters you discuss, but believe me, you are awfully dull. Let’s look around for something nicer.”

So it was with some excitement that we realised that the subject of “decentralisation” had so far escaped our attention. The more we looked at it, the more attractive it became. And when Mavis realised that we could tie it in with “pollution” (the subject of the year) she fairly purred with satisfaction.

Then, to top the lot, we realised that Fred would probably approve because he knows that some farmers will want to leave their farms and sell out to their neighbour to make the two farms into a unit that is more economic.

We knew that Fred would not like any of his fellow-farmers to be forced to live in Sydney or Melbourne and so add to the inevitable physical pollution and moral degradation which he associates with city living.

So Mavis and I worked up a really stirring speech about decentralisation. It was liberally larded with fine flowing phrases about “rural heritage” and “yeoman stock” and that kind of thing. We then confidently trotted it around to Fred to admire.

I wish we hadn’t. Fred didn’t even read it all. He just waded through enough to find that it was about decentralisation, then he stopped and said, “No, please, not another speech about decentralisation — I just can’t bear it. I have been listening to such speeches for 50 years, yet a greater percentage than ever of our people live in capital cities.”

Fred’s attitude saddened me and infuriated Mavis, so I took the problem along to Eccles who regarded my manuscript with distaste, and then proceeded to tell what he would do if, by some miracle, he was ever elected to Parliament.

He said it was no good trying to do anything about decentralisation until the whole community, as a whole, realises it has a problem worth parting with good money to solve. Up till now that has not been so. All that people have wished to expend on decentralisation has been eloquence.

Now, and only now, were people coming to realise that it was perhaps worthwhile for those who lived in cities to actually pay good money to keep other people from joining them there, and so add to their problems of transport, pollution and moral decay that always seems to accompany lemming-like city living.

Eccles says that, if we are at this stage, and he hopes we are, then the way to tackle the problem is not to make pious speeches about setting up industries in country towns all over my electorate, but to concentrate on one large town, and force-feed it with resources, to get it big enough so that industry will want to go there.

This sounds politically attractive until you realise that it will mean that city people will have to go without things, such as another university, to enable a university to be built in the chosen country centre.

But far worse, it is going to mean that I will have to make a deliberate choice to concentrate on one country centre and to leave the next one alone.

Only country people know the bitter rivalry that exists between country towns. And as I would only have perhaps one town being helped and about 20 neglected, then I realise I would be losing votes in a steady stream.

It’s a bit like choosing the Belle of the Ball. I used to embark on this exercise with enthusiasm as I thought it would give me a respectable excuse for intimate examination of the candidates, and not even Mavis could complain. But I have learnt from bitter experience, that the one to whom you award the prize is probably not old enough to vote, but those who don’t get prizes have hundreds of fond relatives who will hate you forever.

There are no votes in this business!

Well, “decentralisation” is looking a bit like that. I will have to think of another good throbbing subject.