Recently, an arborist operating in my town in remote north-western Australia put out a public statement. He found it necessary, given the number of queries he had received, to explain his reasons for cutting down native vegetation.
It sounds like the start of a joke, but what this contractor’s earnest explanation illustrates is how in tune regional voters can be with their environs.
Those questioning the work wanted to know why certain trees had been taken out.
They demanded to know who had commissioned the lopping and how it could be justified when the trees were potentially habitat, highly aesthetic and of value in cooling the streetscape.
These weren’t conventional green activists. They were boilermakers and pensioners, agricultural workers and builders.
They are part of an undercurrent in regional Australia that is often overlooked by demographers: regionally based, socially conservative and environmentally minded.
Sometimes I’ve heard this group dismissed as “green-necks”. The allusion is that they live on the land but hold views that are unaligned with an inclusive, modern society. Preppers perhaps – and prejudiced in believing that the bush should be the domain of the few.
This caricature could not be further from reality.
If you live in the regions, this is a group that is immediately recognisable. They are people who undertake solo weeding missions and commit to citizen science programs. They take it upon themselves to regulate local fisheries, shaming those who break bag limits. They encapsulate the concept of local knowledge when it comes to biology – I know one resident who has kept data on birds in his area for over 30 years.
Where the conservative element shines through is in the values one comes across regularly in the regions: localism and a scepticism of government policy. In essence, this group wants to conserve their environment, support their local communities, and holds doubts that top-heavy governments will be able to support them in doing so.
With the federal election fast approaching and the Western Australian poll recently in the rearview, all the acronyms for voting blocs have been wheeled out. Following recent Victorian byelections, pundits have been wondering how yuppies (young urban professionals) are going to swing. Dinks (double income, no kids) are going to be a force, with baby boomers outnumbered by the younger generations for the second time in federal voting booths.
Given the level of apathy shown towards those with environmental awareness in the regions, I think it’s time an acronym was coined to unify this fragmented group.
I propose “curves”: conservative, uncommitted, rural voters with environmental sympathies.
The key word here is uncommitted, because curves are presented with a dilemma as to who to vote for. Although traditionally backing conservative candidates, the rapidly changing landscape has raised inevitable questions about the security of their homes and livelihoods. As Tim Winton wrote in Guardian Australia last month, parts of the regions have been forecast to become so hot as to be uninhabitable.
My electorate is one of these areas, and polling suggests that a great many people are concerned with the status quo and want to see changes to policy. And yet, even pollsters are dismissing the curves and their concerns by perpetuating the tropes that regional people are backward and uneducated.
For example, take Griffith University’s Climate Action Survey report for 2023, published last September.
The report is an interesting one, in that it specifically identifies conservative and progressive respondents. It highlights that conservatives are more likely to be rurally based and, generally, have received “only a school-level education”. These stand opposed to “progressives”, who it says are “better educated” and more likely to be based in cities.
Maybe this is just semantics, but what precedent does it set when you separate two groups in such a way? In saying “better” and “only” the researchers meant that one group was more likely to have studied at a tertiary institution than the other. But the sloppy wording can also be read into the insidious green-neck paradigm: ignorant, regional conservatives in opposition to smart, wealthy urbanites.
More importantly, it dilutes the key point. Although conservatives were found to be more sceptical about the effects of a heating planet, the survey found that roughly three-quarters of the members of all samples were categorised as “believers” in anthropogenically-driven climate change. The majority of regionally based people are truly concerned about wild fluctuations of weather, of heatwaves and biodiversity loss, of disruptions to their lives, just like their urban counterparts. What’s more, they want to do something about it.
Among this group the curves sit. They’re hesitant. There are two ways they could swing in upcoming elections – to be pushed into apathy, or for a political force to invite them into the tent. To whom will they commit their vote? Probably not to a party that does not even recognise them, however high the environment sits as a priority.
Political leaders – or those seeking power – need to make an effort to better explain how, as individuals and in their local community, curves can successfully seek change through political will; to outline how they can have an effect at state and federal levels, as much as they are able to influence their local communities.
And it can be done. Over the summer, back down south for a stint, I had a ticket to a Landcare network meeting which had sold out.
The attenders were a cross section of the population of the regional area, but there was a distinctly conservative element running through it. All present shared the same concerns: they wanted to address the changes they were seeing in their collective, surrounding environment.
In this case, the curves were literally sitting at the table. They had not been dismissed; they had been embraced. As political parties prepare for their upcoming elections, they should take note.
Nick Rodway is a writer based in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
