Michael McCormack has been re-elected as the Member for Riverina and admits the coming term will be a challenging one. Photo: Jarryd Rowley.
Michael McCormack has been re-elected as the Member for Riverina, increasing his share of first-preference votes despite the electorate having the second-most candidates in the country.
He praised the efforts of his volunteers while warning he faced a challenging three years ahead in Parliament with far fewer Coalition colleagues.
The former deputy prime minister’s re-election was one of the only shining lights for the Coalition, with Labor recording a landslide majority win, overturning several Liberal seats.
“I’d firstly like to say that it was a very pleasing personal result on Saturday,” he said.
“Certainly, I want to thank the voters, my family, my staff and the hard-working volunteers who stood out on pre-polls for two weeks on the hard cement, in the heat, in the cold, and braved it out because they believed in something, they believed in someone, and they believed that the National Party, rightly, is the party of choice.
“We had a lot of interest and competitiveness in this election, the second-highest number of candidates in Australia, 13 candidates. To the other 12 candidates, I say thank you for taking part in the democratic process. Certainly was a hard-fought and most interesting campaign at times.
“To the people of the Riverina, you have my pledge that I will continue to work hard for you. Of course, it’s difficult, because whilst looking at the local results and being very pleased with those, the fact that nationally, it has been quite a wipeout is something that the Coalition will now take stock of.”
The Coalition was criticised during the campaign for doing a preference deal with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party, which performed strongly in the Riverina. The right-wing minor party candidate Mark Craig received 9.7 per cent of the vote and directed his supporters to number the Nationals MP ahead of rival candidates Labor’s Mark Jefferson and independent Jenny Rolfe on their ballot paper.
Mr McCormack was asked whether his success was helped by One Nation.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “I mean, One Nation were lucky enough to get the number one on the ballot paper … [but] we didn’t see much from the actual One Nation candidate.”
The former Nationals leader also highlighted his party’s success in retaining all of its seats and said a tough road lay ahead for him in a Parliament dominated by Labor.
“It will be difficult. There’s no question,” he said. “I mean, you sit on a very reduced Coalition team in the House of Representatives. You don’t have as many seats, and you have Labor with the ability to just ram legislation through the House of Representatives.
“I’ll be advocating certainly, hopefully, there will be regional funding. I mean, all I can do is basically this, cross my fingers and hope, because in the last budget, it was all taken away.
“I think the Liberals need to do a lot of soul searching, and we’ve been in a Coalition for decades, since the Liberal Party from back in the ’40s, we’ve been a very close Coalition.
“We’ll reflect on the performance, we’ll have a look at our policies, we’ll have a look at the people leading the parties, and we’ll make sure that when we do come back, we come back better and stronger. There’s still some very, very good people left in the Liberal Party. We need to regroup, restructure, and look at all our policies.”
Mr McCormack said despite difficult odds, he would continue to advocate for the Riverina.
“Trust me, I won’t ever be sitting on my hands,” he said.
“We’re not just people who put a name on our shirt and turn up for six weeks of a campaign, bag the incumbent to pretend as though we care. That’s not what I do. It’s not what I’ve ever done. It’s not what other National Party members do. I’m back at work. Jacket on, tie on, entrenched in this local community.”
