From farmer to politician

In the next in our series of reads about people whose name or face you might know ANITA KIRKBRIGHT reveals a few secrets about a familiar politician.

It’s been said you are not a local until you’ve been in Geraldton for 50 years.

True or not, Member for Geraldton Ian Blayney could hardly be called a blow-in.

He’s among the fifth generation of the clan to live in the Geraldton area since their forefather David Blayney sailed to Australia from Wales in 1858.

The former grain and sheep farmer has travelled as far as Machu Picchu in Peru and paid a visit or two to Canberra, but when he was a boy living at Eradu, 50km east of Geraldton, the place he always wanted to visit was Port Hedland.

“When I was a kid growing up, a lot of the development of Port Hedland was done from Geraldton so it seemed everyone went there. It was just somewhere I always wanted to go, ” he said.

“My first trip there was when I became an MP, we did a familiarisation thing. It looked all right, so I took the family there for holiday.

“Industrial tourism, it’s all the rage.”

Though Mr Blayney has been known to “get about” on a horse, cars are what get his engine revving.

His mother had lost a loved one in an accident and fearfully denied her son a motorbike, so he drove a Mini Moke on the farm.

He fondly recalls the first car he bought after he got his driver’s licence, a 1969 Peugeot 404.

“It was parked right down the back at Young’s caryard,” he said.

“It was $499 and my dad beat Gerry Pepper down to $400.

“We spent plenty more on it after that. It was a great car; took it over East, drove it all over and back then traded it for a V8 Holden Ute.

“They gave me $900 for the trade in.”

These days, he drives a Ford Ranger and dreams of parking a rare and restored 1970s Leyland Force 7V or an SLR 5000 Torana in his garage.

Having spent much of his childhood as a “bus kid” and living out of town, he didn’t play much sport.

Instead, he occupied himself outdoors, tinkered with machinery, dreamed of becoming a pilot or a car salesman and read a lot of books.

Many years later, in 2008, Mr Blayney quoted poet Robert Frost, country singer John Williamson and The Longest Decade author George Megalogenis in his maiden speech to the Legislative Assembly.

A Fremantle Dockers fan, he chose to attend the Eagles vs Swans match in May 1996 for his first date with Barbara, the Perth primary school teacher he met at a wedding a month earlier. Two months later the couple were engaged and they married the following January and were the proud parents of twins by the end of the year.

Mrs Blayney recalls being won over by her beau’s kindness.

“He had this dog that fell off the back of the ute and he spent $1000 to get it fixed up,” she said.

“He was just very kind to animals. He’s a kind, caring person.”

Mr Blayney said the vet needed to order a special surgical plate for the dog, which wouldn’t arrive for days.

“In my farming life I’d waited for spare parts for everything, but I’d never actually waited for spare parts for a dog, ” he said.

The move from grain and sheep farmer to politician was gradual, developing from “an armchair interest in politics”.

A former army reservist and grain councillor for the WA Farmers Federation, Mr Blayney ousted former Member Shane Hill from office in 2008.

Now in his second term, Mr Blayney says he isn’t one for speaking in public “off the cuff”, or at length as some politicians do, and he has had to adapt to being in public office.

“It’s quite intimidating when you go into a room; I was a farmer, I wasn’t a town person, I’d moved in a slightly different circle so I found it quite difficult that first year, ” he said.

Mr Blayney said there was quite a difference between holding a country seat and a city seat.

“It’s very rare in the country that people will be straight out rude to you, whereas in the city, I’m told, that’s quite common,” he said.

“When I was elected an old hand, Bruce Donaldson, said to me, ‘you’ve got one of the best seats in the State’… I think he’s right. The people are very reasonable; they accept you, welcome you, but leave you alone unless they’ve got a problem.

“But you know what they say in politics, ‘the only person you believe is the one that looks you in the eye and says they didn’t vote for you’.”

And what will he do if he loses the next election?

Mr Blayney’s sanguine reply: “I’ve told Barb we’re moving to Port Hedland to live in a caravan.”