IF YOU were looking for a success story when it came to decentralisation policy, you need look no further than the Buller clan.
Stuart is a fourth-generation rice farmer and his family has held “Craigee Lee” at Murrami since 1926, which is currently in the hands of a second cousin.
His wife Debbie Buller turned up in the area later, during the 1970s, when her parents Margaret and Neil Donaldson relocated to the Leeton region, because her father was the head of the Rice Growers Cooperative, later to become SunRice.
Her father farmed also, at “Boree Plains” and “Rockdale”, but his career was based in rice growers’ marketing and corporate support structure.
Mrs Buller was raised in the Leeton area and attended Leeton High School, where she achieved an education she remains proud of to this day.
Those formative years had such an impact on her she would later become a high school teacher herself, working at Finley and Leeton High Schools, Yanco Agricultural High School and later a stint in the TAFE system.
“I still get calls today for casual shifts,” she said.
“And I’m 61, the schools just can’t attract staff anymore.” And therein lies the crunch, says Mrs Buller.
Once, when the government was doing its best to populate inland NSW, it spent money on services, such as schools and hospitals and irrigation systems.
“There was good investment in regional areas,” she said.
But by the time her children were ready for high school things had markedly changed.
Her eldest daughter Danielle was a bright student – eventually scoring 98 from a possible 100 in her secondary school leaving certificate – but the state of Leeton High School by then posed Debbie and Stuart a difficult decision: Public or private school?
Because Mrs Buller was teaching in the public sector locally, the decision to send their children to private schools was a tough one, after all public schools had offered both her and her husband exemplary educations.
“But the investment had dropped off and the opportunity for a quality education was no longer there,” she said.
“I had all the choices, but by the time Danielle came along, those choices were limited.
“It was a heartbreaking decision to send her into the private education system, and then of course once you’ve sent one . . . ”
Mrs Buller has three children, Danielle, 33, who works for Monsanto in Melbourne, Simon, 31, who works the family farm alongside his parents and Stephanie, 28, a marketing manager with Agfarm.
All three children were born in Leeton Hospital.
But Simon and daughter-in-law Emma’s children were born in Griffith Hospital.
And that grates a raw nerve for Mrs Buller.
“All three of my children were born in Leeton Hospital and now my daughter-in-law can’t have her children there because it’s not possible.
“That’s a degradation of service,” she said.
In fact degaradation of services is a common theme in the region as Mrs Buller lives her life as a witness to what once was, and what is now possible in the region.
“They’re even stripping Griffith Hospital now,” she said. “Essential services are disappearing. It’s a creeping degradation, it doesn’t get more basic than being able to have a baby at a hospital now, does it?”
“It’s really sad, you’ve been here, this is a powerhouse of agriculture, we can grow anything with water and we’re really good at what we do.
“We’ve been asked to become more efficient, and we have, now the three of us can handle the farm where we once would have had to employ people.
“But as a result of meeting these efficiency gains we’re losing services.”
“Keeping people in the regions is not rocket science, give them incentive to stay and stay they will,” she said.
“You need sensible long-term investment and incentive, that’s why my family came here.”
She said obviously water was a major issue in the area.
“There have been these major water efficiency drives, we’ve directed water back to the environment, we’ve done everything we can to deliver back on the investment (in water infratsructure).
“There has been rice, now cotton, and now come walnuts and almonds,” she said.
“We’re spending stupid amounts of money to buy in enough water, water we have delivered back to the government.
“We pay for water allocations and we once regularly received 120 per cent of our water allocation.
“Now we barely average 60pc of the water allocation we still have to pay (100pc) for, whether it’s there or not and then we pay extra to buy in more.
“But you know where we’re buying it from?
“We’re buying it from water traders, which include the ACT government and the NSW Department of Environment and Heritage, who never would have had the water to sell if it had not been for our efficiency gains.”
Mrs Buller said one only needed to impartially consider the greater Griffith region to witness what policies that encouraged decentralisation could achieve.
“We’re doing well now because of the people here, not because of government policy, just imagine what we could do without a foot on our neck? Imagine what we could do for NSW”.