AN INDEPENDENT MIND

'Right is wrong on the other side of the Pyrenees.'

— Voltaire

Democracy is a strange beast and Australia came face to face with its idiosyncrasies immediately following the federal election on 21 August 2010. Having cast their ballots, voters no doubt expected to endure endless television coverage of the results, coverage that would likely culminate in a concession speech from the leader of the losing party followed by a victory speech by the new prime minister. Instead, the term 'hung parliament' was on the lips of every commentator.

While 'hung parliament' implies a negative situation, the more accurate term, 'minority government', is a legal and permissible situation for a democracy. A number of countries around the world function with minority governments on a semi-permanent basis. Australia was not accustomed to such a situation. Many have forgotten that Labor Prime Minister John Curtin successfully steered his minority government through the vagaries of the Pacific War against Japan (1941-45) with the support of two Independents.

However, during the course of our interview on 14 May 2013 former New South Wales premier Nick Greiner described the result of the 2010 federal election as 'an accident of democracy'. No doubt, many Australians would agree with him, while others may believe that it is a valid outcome in a functional democracy. In all likelihood your view is determined, to a large extent, by your political persuasion. For instance, if Tony Abbott had gained the support of the Independents his supporters would have endorsed the legitimacy of a Coalition minority government. Simultaneously, Julia Gillard and her supporters would have railed against it.

During the evening of 21 August 2010 the Canberra Press Gallery was scrambling to find the contact details of six members of parliament who were at that time not aligned with either of the two major parties: Adam Bandt, Andrew Wilkie, Tony Crook, Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor. These politicians, it appeared, might hold the balance of power.

Adam Bandt, as a member of the Australian Greens, came to an agreement with Labor in the first week following the election. The Australian Greens signed a deal with the leader of the Labor Party and incumbent Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, which ensured they would not block supply or support a vote of 'no confidence' against the government. In return Labor would establish a climate change committee and consider a price on carbon, review the political donation rules and enable a major parliamentary debate on the war in Afghanistan.

Andrew Wilkie, previously a member of the Australian Greens and now an Independent, was newly elected to the Tasmanian seat of Denison. He also came to an early agreement with Labor. Wilkie's focus was on poker machine reform with particular reference to the universal introduction of 'pre-commitment' smart card technology to limit betting.

Kalgoorlie's Tony Crook, a member of the Western Australian National Party, which had run independently of the Coalition, had to wait seventeen days before claiming victory in his seat of O'Connor. Crook supported the policy of mining royalties for regions and opposed Labor's Mineral Resource Rent Tax. He eventually declared his support for Tony Abbott's led Coalition on confidence and supply but declared his intention to sit on the crossbenches and vote on each piece of legislation separately, on its merits.

Once Crook had declared his hand, this left Bob Katter, the Independent member for Kennedy in far-north Queensland; Rob Oakeshott, the Independent member for Lyne on the mid-north coast of New South Wales; and Tony Windsor, who had held the federal seat of New England, also in New South Wales, as an Independent since 2001.

For the seventeen days that the three Independents deliberated over which party to support to form government, the media spotlight was all-pervasive. The Independents took transparency to a whole new level, allowing the ABC's Four Corners, led by reporter Sarah Ferguson, unreserved access during the negotiations. Such transparency of the political process at this level was unprecedented. The three undecided Independents were accessing information and harnessing political expertise as a group and the media tended to treat them as a voting bloc, but Windsor, Oakeshott and Katter did not discuss their preferences with each other during this time.

Bob Katter had been a member of the Queensland Nationals and he had a reputation for plain speaking. He was often referred to as a 'maverick' and is rarely seen without his trademark Akubra hat. This was one of the few times in his long political career that Katter had tangible power and he told me that he felt the responsibility of the situation.

While Katter was a familiar face to many Australians, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor were not so well known nationally. Rob Oakeshott had been a NSW National and his electorate on the mid-north coast was as he claimed in our interview more coastal, like 'Manly' than outback, like 'Bourke'. Since becoming an Independent and making the move to the federal sphere Oakeshott was considered to be a man of integrity but some federal political commentators claimed that maybe he was just a little politically naive — more an idealist than a realist.

Windsor was not well known in the federal sphere but he was an extremely popular and well respected local member for nearly two decades. He has never sat in the NSW or the federal parliament as anything other than an Independent. Windsor had an appealing rural way about him which was reinforced by his authentic, no nonsense manner of speaking. Now these three apparently conservative Independents appeared to hold the nation's future in their hands, and yet many Australians were not clear what exactly these three politicians stood for.

A former member of the National Party, Tony Windsor had found himself in a similar situation once before, in 1991, as a newly elected Independent member for Tamworth in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. After winning the seat in a controversial and hard-fought battle with National Party candidate David Briggs, Windsor found himself thrust into the media spotlight at a State level when the election delivered a hung parliament.

Windsor had never previously set foot in the New South Wales parliament, appropriately known as the 'Bear Pit', when he had to decide who would govern. His decision then to support Nick Greiner's Coalition minority government earned him the undeserved tag of 'aligned Independent', a tag he disputed for the rest of his political career.

This time, however, it seemed the apparatchiks who functioned within the two-party system would not pin him down so easily. In fact, the conservative side of politics and conservative media outlets were reporting that, given the three Independents' disenchantment with the Coalition, one or more of them may well side with the Labor Party.

In his electorate a large majority not only knew who he was but voted for him. In fact, his electoral successes at a State level from 1991 to 2000 and then at a federal level from 2001 to 2013 were occasionally record breaking. For instance, in the 1995 State election, Windsor won the seat of Tamworth with an historic 82 per cent of the primary vote. This made Tamworth the safest seat in New South Wales electoral history. Just under a decade later, the 2004 federal election saw him with a 12 per cent gain and he was re-elected to the federal seat of New England with a majority of over 57 per cent of the primary votes. With preferences, this increased to 71 per cent.

Political commentators had difficulty appreciating that Windsor's main political allegiance was to rural Australia. To them this made him appear to be a man of apparent contradictions. On the one hand, he was a farmer who loved the land and had great respect and admiration for the communities who supported agriculture. And yet, on the other hand, for Windsor, the impetus to become a political voice related to the management of the economy and the environment. Windsor believed that agriculture had the most to gain through research and policy initiatives that helped us understand the impact of changes in our climate. This put Windsor at odds with the National Party and occasionally saw his thinking more aligned with policies adopted by their historic rivals, the Australian Greens.

For more than twenty years political commentators had viewed Windsor as a conservative, they had failed to note that he abhorred unfettered market competition. Windsor would often speak of the Sydney 'feed lot' mentality which required an economy of scale to function. In the rural sector, the idea of 'economies of scale' is flawed when it comes to major infrastructure programs due to the relatively low population base. His opposition to the sale of Telstra was a mainstay of his policy position as was his absolute belief in the validity of the Labor Party's plan for a National Broadband Network (NBN).

On 7 September 2010, after seventeen days of meetings, negotiations, policy costings, agreements and media coverage, the three Independents Windsor, Katter and Oakeshott called a press conference for that afternoon to announce their decision. Over lunch, Oakeshott, Katter and Windsor shared their thinking about their decision for the first time.

After lunch, Katter called an early press conference in his office to announce he would be supporting the Coalition. He would not support Labor's Emissions Trading Scheme and Mining Tax. The split was now straight down the line with 74 seats each.

The rest is history, as they say, with two former National Party members, now Independents, choosing to support Julia Gillard and a minority Labor government, a government which, thanks to their continued support, lasted a full three-year term.

The agreements of Oakeshott and Windsor with Labor were rural focused but substantially different in terms of overarching principles. In short, Rob Oakeshott pursued an agreement which included several targeted local infrastructure projects, a stronger governance framework for regional policy making and a referendum on recognition of Indigenous Australians in the Constitution. Tony Windsor made an agreement which focused on tax reform, the formation of a Climate Change Committee, transitional assistance to the domestic ethanol industry as well as funding for local infrastructure projects.

Over the course of the three years Labor governed with Windsor's and Oakeshott's support, many Australians came to know and like Tony Windsor as a trustworthy and considered politician who said what he meant and meant what he said. Windsor's decision to back Labor inspired strong, even vicious, attacks by conservative voters, including his own constituents. For some, Windsor, a man who had represented rural interests for more than twenty years, had sold out. For others, he epitomised the politician every electorate aspired to have as their representative — an honest broker.

How could one man inspire such differing views? To find out, it is necessary to understand Tony Windsor the man, as well as Tony Windsor the Independent politician.

ORIGINS

'Although it will be very hard for you to let me go, you will be proud of me. I want this above all things.'

— Tom Windsor to his mother, Alma

Tony Windsor is famous for his advocacy on behalf of his regional electorate and, indeed, regional Australia generally. However, his father, Tom, was born in the inner-Sydney suburb of Redfern, moving to nearby Newtown as a child, and later spending several years in Bondi. Instead, it was Tony Windsor's paternal great-grandfather, Eli Windsor, who started the Windsor connection to the land.

Eli, in the company of his older brother, Thomas, migrated to Australia from England when he was just seventeen. Together they leased land between Gerringong and Kiama on the New South Wales south coast. According to his obituary Eli was 'celebrated throughout the district as a mighty axeman'. In 1861, he married Lucy Dunn, the daughter of a Sydney brewer, in the Gerringong Methodist Church.

Tired of the low prices offered for local farm produce, Eli moved to Singleton, a town on the banks of the Hunter River in New South Wales and the north-west railway terminus at the time. There he helped build many of the roads, bridges and fences in the district, eventually purchasing land along the Gundy Road in Scone.

Tony Windsor's grandfather, Frederick Windsor, was born in Scone in 1876, the fourth of Eli and Lucy's eleven children. Frederick grew up on the family farm and became a skilled horseman. At twenty-three, he and his younger brother Eli joined the 1st Australian Horse and fought in the Boer War in South Africa. Although Eli was invalided home in July 1900, Frederick didn't leave South Africa until the war ended in 1902.

On his return, Frederick remained in Sydney, where, six years later, he married Geraldine Alma Curties, who was known as Alma. Despite being Protestant, Frederick married Alma, a devout Catholic, in St Kiernan's Roman Catholic Church on the condition their children be brought up as Protestants — an extremely controversial arrangement at the time. The year they were married, Alma gave birth to a son, Tom, in the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern, not far from Leichhardt, where Alma had been born and raised by her parents, Richard and Esther Curties.

The following year, Eli and Lucy retired to Sydney but Eli, aged 70, was involved in a very serious accident soon after. After spending several months in hospital they moved to Quirindi, which is located on the Liverpool Plains of north-west NSW. Eli was the patriarch of a large family home in town where some of his children continued to live with him and his wife throughout their lives. Eli also purchased land on the western outskirts of Quirindi, where a number of his sons raised livestock which they sold in a butcher shop they ran in town. Frederick and a few of the older brothers remained in the city but the 'Quirindi Windsors' were always a family focus for the ever growing family of nieces, nephews and grandchildren.

When the First World War was declared in 1914, Frederick, Alma and Tom were living at Portsmouth, a house located next door to the Royal Hotel on Bondi Road. Frederick, a public servant, was thirty-nine years old when he joined the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). He embarked on the Australian troopship the Uganda on 27 November 1915, allocating two-thirds of his six bob a day, which was the pay rate for a soldier, to his family at home.

Frederick served in Egypt and later France, until he was hospitalised with 'bronchitis and debility' in Rouen, France, in 1917. At the time of his enlistment, Frederick's lungs had been healthy and there is no mention in his war service record that he was exposed to gas. However, it is generally accepted that gas was used as a weapon on the Western Front, and by the middle of 1917 Frederick's debility was sufficiently severe for him to be transported home as an invalid.

A few years after Frederick's return home, his marriage to Alma broke down, although a divorce was out of the question, due to Alma's Catholicism. Tom was in his early teens when his father left and went to live in Melbourne.

After Frederick's departure, Tom and Alma moved in with Alma's mother in Sydney, but they were regular visitors to the Quirindi Windsors, where the extended family of uncles, aunts and cousins provided Tom with a sense of family as well as a connection to rural life. Despite Frederick's absence, Alma remained true to her word and ensured Tom was brought up within the Church of England.

The Quirindi Windsors and Alma never spoke ill of Frederick to Tom. He recalled many years later that thoughts of his father 'have been kept evergreen' because he 'never once heard anyone say anything against' him. Frederick was sadly missed by his son and his extended family. Despite Frederick's absence it was made abundantly clear to Tom that he was much loved by both parents. Tom adored his mother, Alma, and it is a testament to her that she never used his love to malign Frederick.

From the age of twenty-two Tom Windsor lived with his Quirindi family, working on their land and in their butcher shop. He was close to the family and felt a sense of responsibility to them, which led to him delaying enlisting in the Second World War until 1940. However, when he wrote to his 'Darling Mother' to say he had enlisted in the AIF (like his father before him), he said: 'Although it will be very hard for you to let me go, you will be proud of me. I want this above all things.'