Wind beneath her wings: Pilot, politician and still pushing for Farrer electorate

Resilient is a word Sussan Ley is reluctant to use these days. Either about herself or the people she represents.

That came about after a group of country women recently told her to “stop calling us resilient just because we deal with a lot of things …”

Still, the long-standing Member for Farrer and her vast rural electorate know a thing or two about weathering tough times.

A migrant to Australia at 13, a farmer’s wife and shearer’s cook, a pilot, a mum of three young children who would begin studying for three finance degrees at the age of 30 and work her way up the ranks of the tax office at Albury, her path to politics has been nothing if not varied.

“One of my friends once said, ‘You drop your life and then you look for the pieces – and you’ve done that a few times,'” Sussan says.

Then again, those 10 years of part-time study were partially “connected to the fact farming is tough and you need more than one income”.

“I experienced what a lot of the women I talk to every day are doing right here and right now,” Sussan says.

Today the 63-year-old, who has held the seat of Farrer for an incredible 24 years, insists she’s as fresh and fighting fit for the upcoming federal election (due before 17 May) as she was in 2001.

The current Deputy Opposition Leader says each year, each season and each parliament brings new challenges, both as the local member and now the Liberals’ most senior female.

“It’s what keeps me here because there’s always something to fight for,” she says.

“When I started, could I have imagined I’d be here in 24 years? Probably not, but then I’ve never really looked ahead and planned my entire life.”

Born in Nigeria to British parents before the family moved to the United Arab Emirates when she was a baby, Sussan’s childhood reads almost like the paperback novels she so adored where she first fell in love with the idea of flying.

Of exploits into the desert with her father – “an incredible person”, who also happened to be a British spy – and learning to ride Arab horses, of the sights, sounds and smells of that exotic world.

“I remember jumping into the Land Rover with my dad when I got home from school and he would do his ’rounds’,” Sussan says.

“We’d hurtle through sandy tracks and turn up at odd places and talk to people. I remember Dad (a full Arabic speaker) standing, gesticulating wildly and talking at the top of his voice in Arabic and somebody talking back to him.

“People always made a huge fuss of me … they’d come up with sweets or a can of Coke; I wasn’t allowed them at home but if I was out with my dad, I was allowed to accept them out of politeness.”

Everything changed when Sussan and her older brother were sent to boarding school in the UK.

She was 10.

“It was necessary because there weren’t the secondary schools where we lived but as a small girl going to boarding school on the other side of the world, it was a big deal,” Sussan says.

“It was a big deal for this little girl.”

There was no email, or Face Time, just letters.

And there are still clear memories of rushing in after breakfast to the room where everyone’s letters from home would be spread out on the table.

“I’d always look for a letter but I didn’t always get one,” Sussan says.

Boarding school itself was “a bit sink or swim” for the girl who didn’t look or sound like the other children.

“I wasn’t one of the popular kids, or one of the pretty children,” Sussan says. “What I learnt to be was the funny kid, the kid everyone laughed at.

“I always say if you laugh at yourself, you never run out of material.”

Those disarmingly raw snapshots from her childhood afford a deeper insight into the woman – and politician – Sussan would become.

“I think it made me tough, but tough in a good way,” she says.

“I think it taught me self-reliance, it taught me that there isn’t anyone else you can rely on, you only really have yourself.”

Self-reliance is something Sussan quickly came to recognise and respect in the constituents of the 126,590-square kilometre electorate of Farrer, which stretches along the Murray River from Albury to the South Australian border, taking in Corowa, Deniliquin and Balranald and the western parts of the Riverina, including Griffith, Leeton, Narrandera and Hay.

She is unashamedly passionate and protective – “my son is a fifth-generation farmer and I’m very proud of that” – of her farming background.

“My own experience on the farm taught me a lot; having lived through the highs and lows of life on the land, I’ve seen how best to support the farmers that I represent,” she says.

“I’ve walked many miles in their shoes and when I talk to them I know … and they see in me that I understand.”

For six years during the Millennium Drought, when Farrer incorporated the Western Division, Sussan saw “farmers on their knees experiencing awful, awful situations”.

While issues have come and gone over the years, Sussan maintains “the one constant has been the challenges my electorate faces as the home of irrigated agriculture”.

“If you look at the irrigation-dependent communities on the Murray and Murrumbidgee, if you look at the whole rice industry and cotton industry in Australia, if you look at the Southern Murray Darling Basin, it is the electorate of Farrer,” she says.

“Increasingly irrigated agriculture underpins the wealth of the communities I represent and that’s been under threat from time to time and it’s under threat now.”

Sussan describes herself as a champion for the role that agriculture and value-adding to it – “so not just growing it and shipping it offshore” – has in Australia.

Underpinning it all, she says, is irrigation that feeds the nation and “anyone who steps away from that, I think misunderstands how important our water-dependent communities are …”

Sussan lists health, communications and the Murray Darling Basin as the top three issues for Farrer (and not necessarily in that order).

It still rankles that Labor “changed the rules and basically tore up the balanced Murray Darling Basin Plan”. “Nobody loved it, which was good … but everyone could live with it.”

She worries farmers are going to be incredibly disadvantaged, along with their communities.

She’d like to see every candidate running for Farrer asked, “How are you going to support those regional and rural communities?”

At the end of the day, she says you can’t have strong local communities if you don’t have a strong national community and strong national balance sheet “to fund the requests that people make”.

“We meet with regional groups all the time and they talk about all sorts of things they’d like to see,” Sussan says.

“But remember where the wealth creation comes from: it comes from people who value add, who manufacture, who drive trucks all night, who work 15 hours in their small businesses and at the moment don’t pay themselves; it comes from people who work bloody hard!”

And there are other questions that need to be asked.

“Things like, ‘Do you want corporate agriculture to buy the water that’s remaining and grow high value horticultural crops like almonds with absentee managers?’

“Or do you want family farms with children going to school, with mums and dads at the kiosk on footy days, a football team with a future, the grounds covered with sponsorship from local businesses that have their heart and soul in the towns and in the regions?

“If you don’t love that, that’s fine, but if you love that like I do, then that’s a reason to get up and something to fight for!”

It was in flying, surprisingly, that Sussan says she found “the focus and discipline” that has also helped hone her skills as a politician.

Fascinated with small planes from a young age, her imagination took flight from the time she could read, as she devoured stories of dog fights and the Red Baron.

“I just loved the descriptions of the flying, the aeroplane and the engine,” she says.

“Some people like flying because it’s like Jonathan Livingstone Seagull – they want to be away with the birds – but I don’t like gliding; I don’t like aerobatics.”

Sussan laughingly concedes some people have struggled to reconcile her impulsive nature with the steely discipline she found as a pilot.

“Flying taught me a great approach to problem solving … because when something doesn’t go to plan, you have to be prepared for that.”

With a current commercial pilot’s licence, Sussan still tries to fly her small plane to get out to the electorate but it’s not always possible and there’s still a lot of driving, a lot of kilometres (around 80,000) a year.

When she lands “in a Rex plane” at Albury airport, there is a great sense that “I’ve come home to my people”.

An ideal night at home?

“Well, that’s infrequent, ” she says.

“I’ve got children and grandchildren so I’m very fortunate. If they’re visiting, I’ll cook a roast and remember my time as a shearer’s cook, which probably taught me more about cooking than any book or program!”

People often stop her in the East Albury IGA to chat about an issue important to them – “and I love that”.

“When people say to me, ‘I’m sorry to talk work’, I always tell them, ‘It isn’t work … this is who I am.'”

That first year Sussan ran as the fresh-faced Liberal Party candidate, she says no-one thought she could win.

From then to now, she concedes “I’m a completely different politician and, in many respects, people might say a different person”.

Back then, as she drove up and down the Murray River with her caravan, Sussan was charmed by the communities and people she met.

“But they also activated me,” she says. “Activated me to say to myself, I can do something to represent these people and do it in a way that makes a difference.

“That’s what motivated me then and that’s what motivates me now.”