The storms have returned, the frosts have left and the ladies have returned to their ritual pre dawn constitutional. I can hear them chatting as they walk down St George’s Terrace past my house. Monday night as I drove down from Roma, the sky was strafed with lightning and the news was that there had been hail at Mitchell. I peered at the bitumen for the telling sign of big bouncing rain drops. The kangaroos are on the wheat crops making the 400 km trip to Roma and back a more diligent operation. You do not want to have one sitting on your bonnet or peering instantaneously through, while pressed against, the side window before cart-wheeling into the scrub.

I love the drive, the alternating between silence, Radio National, then music, Jeff Buckley, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Radiohead. I love being home, footy shorts and thongs as opposed to suit and tie in Canberra. Most importantly I get to drop my kids off at school and pick them up, rather than interview lobbyists. I am sitting at my desk in my office and the sunlight is dancing on the water in the river; all is beautiful. 

However, and there always seems to be that “however”, this week we cracked $200 billion in gross debt. In one week we borrowed an extra $3,200 million. Canberra, as I have always said, you are the canary in the coal mine for public debt and this is not good news for you. This money has to be repaid. It has been lent to us by real people who really want it back. Craig Thomson appears to be in more strife than the early settlers, dragging bits and pieces of the tattered credibility of the party with him. Manufacturing has had the fear of God placed on them with the imminent closure of sections of our steel producing capacity. There appears to be an interesting concept of what two speeds are in a two speed economy; flat out and stopped dead.

In this nation we have to break down the inhibition of populating our regional areas where our export wealth is produced. It is vital to invest where we make our money if we wish to pay our debts back. We have to invest where the coal is, where the iron ore is, the wheat, cotton, cattle, and alumina. We must not define the prosperity of this nation to a wealthy unpopulated mining and agricultural interior and trade exposed manufacturing and service crescent moon where all the attention shines on only a small part of our potential. We have to make sure that we inspire the opportunity to move to and invest where the money is. This also requires a cultural epiphany that your life does not end if you end up in St George or any other of the growing regional towns.

Roma to the north is currently building a multi million dollar airport and the unemployment rate is below 2%. In Roma if you do not have a job it is because you do not want one. The St George district produced in excess of $ 750 million in agricultural income this year, not bad for about 5,000 people. On weekends in St George sport ranges from tennis to polocrosse to league, union and cricket. People can water ski, go to restaurants and coffee shops. St George and other towns may not have the same level of services as an urban capital, but if there is a greater future for your family then the nation has to do everything it can to provide policy for this opportunity to be taken.

It is the fear of being remote that is the curse that causes the inhibition of the development of new areas in Australia. This is an inhibition that we better get over as fly- in fly -out work forces is not the future but more the child who refuses to leave home. We have to be brave enough to move to the new region, stay there and grow. It would be peculiar if Australia was commuting from London because of the undying love for the “old country”.

A new office is being opened in St George, south-west Queensland tomorrow by Tony Abbott and Warren Truss. There will be a dinner this evening for over 200, with guests from Sydney, Brisbane and Perth attending. The fact they are there is a small but additional example that the economy is changing. Australia can adapt; correction, must adapt.