“We talked a lot today about the bypass, technological disruptions coming in, how to activate main streets like Bowra St when you have absentee landlords, and how best to support businesses so that they can go on to employ the community,” she said.

“We also talked about the problems to do with poor internet connectivity in the area and how local businesses are constrained against competing with online businesses because of that poor connectivity.

“And we talked about a lack of support for tourism, too.”

In terms of real policy, Ms Aitchison said her party is already leading from opposition after the Government recently took up one of its long-term policies regarding storing money for subcontractors in trusts, which Labor devised after the Collins Inquiry in 2012 (into construction industry insolvency).

She also said Labor would bring more of a focus on very small businesses – ones with 0-4 employees.

“We submitted an FOI on the government’s payroll tax incentives, and we discovered they had 80 per cent going towards captains of industry,” she said.

And further opportunities for skills training so that small business operators can develop world-class businesses is high on Labor’s cards.

“Some of these boutiques here on your main streets – they should be exporting and have the ability to showcase regional-made products, but they’re held back because we don’t have a coherent strategy from the Government about supporting local businesses,” she said.

She said in order to properly support local economies, a large-picture approach was necessary; by supporting youth, people with mental illness, and the vulnerable, for instance, it enables those people to spend in their local communities.

“When people are living on the poverty line, or far below it, they don’t have the money for discretionary spending,” she said.

“We’re striving for a better income for everybody, because then you’ve got people with money in the community who can buy your products.

“We were talking to people today who said they felt obligated to financially support the Youth Centre, because the Government has pulled out that funding from under them. The Government shouldn’t be relying on small businesses to prop up their failed investment in social services.”

Ms Aitchison said a Labor Government would further advance its policies on decentralisation and local  procurement.

“Every dollar that goes into a local community from outside that community goes around seven times. We need to make sure there’s more dollars going into local communities, and what better way than to make sure that government departments are contracting local businesses and using local products,” she said.

When pointed out the general skepticism in our local community about a Labor Government delivering on its policies for regional Australia post-election, Ms Aitchison replied that the proof is in the pudding.

She said Labor had an eight-year track record of fighting the Government on behalf of local industries like fishing and greyhounds.

Ms Aitchison’s advice to the Nambucca if it’s dissatisfied with the way things are is to make the seat of Oxley marginal again.

She said the 10 per cent margin that the State Nationals have here is not necessarily a barrier to change.

“Last election I won my seat with an 18.5 per cent swing by getting out there and talking to the community and saying we’re not going to accept this,” she said.

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