ON Tuesday when the retiring Member for New England, Tony Windsor, predicted Barnaby Joyce should win this seat in at the September 7 election; his proviso was unless a ‘magic candidate’ jumped out of the bushes.
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The candidate he had in mind was Rob Taber, who Mr Windsor has endorsed as the one who fits the bill just nicely for New England.
“I’m pleased he put his hand up. Now I have someone to vote for and I didn’t have before,” Mr Windsor said.
“The polling is suggesting that there is about 60 per cent of the electorate who are undecided and he’s passionate about the area. I wish him well, but in the end it will be up to the people of the electorate”
Mr Taber only decided to run last week, so his campaign is so far behind the eight ball it is not funny, but as he said, he does provide the alternative.
“New England’s got a great future, it’s so diverse in what it is. We’re probably one of the luckiest electorates in Australia when you look at the location and the facilities we’ve got in New England. It’s a whole lot of things,” Mr Taber said.
“We’re such a unique area in the way we’ve had Independents involved in firstly Tamworth and then New England and then the Northern Tablelands and people are really used to that Indepen-dent movement.
“That’s pretty well why I put my hand up, to say let’s to keep the dream alive and give people that choice.
“I’ve been involved with politics for most of my life.
“We started an organ-isation in Armidale called the Armidale Independent Forum about 25 years ago…that particular group was mainly set up to mainly support independents into politics. We’ve really been fighting to get the independent movement running since then…We believe the party system has lost its way, it has done for a long time.”
Mr Taber is an Inverell born Armidale busin-essman whose father was a share farmer between Lone Star and Yetman after World War II before moving to Armidale during the early 1960s.
He has been a successful businessman for 39 years and believes he could successfully navigate the present party system.
“At the end of the day you would have to take every situation on its merits and that would be the great thing about being an Independent; you really don’t have to support either side,” he said.
“You can make your decisions based on the information you had and the feeling from the electorate…It’s not what I want, and I really believe that is the true way of a democracy.
“I think Tony Windsor proved that this is such an open electorate that people could see that by supporting Tony at the last election they had a choice and that’s what our campaign is.
“We’re saying let’s give people a choice, let’s not say we’re either Labor or Liberal, let’s be down the middle.”