Even then, their interest is limited to whistlestop tours to marginal seats where they spend only enough time to make a string of promises before leaving.

The days have long gone when the former Country Party, now the Nationals, wielded power beyond their parliamentary representation and dished up subsidies and tax breaks for industries like Email, later Electrolux, Canobolas Wool Tops and Philippe Rives in Orange.

All now gone from here.

This is because elections are won and lost not in the relatively few rural seats but in the suburban areas.

The country has also become a victim of economic rationalism, missing out on many things city people take for granted.

Government services, including the downgrading of hospitals, have been withdrawn in the smaller towns, there's a chronic shortage of doctors and banks have closed.

This is because only a quarter of people in NSW live outside Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong and in the smaller centres younger people have to move because there’s no jobs for them at home.

The tide is against regional development while the agenda is being controlled by city people where all the big money is being spent on things like freeways and railways.

It’s time for governments to put decentralisation back on the agenda, especially when looking at population growth.

Latest figures by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show NSW in 2013-14 had a resident population of 7.52 million, an increase of 109,100 people for the year.

Of these, Sydney accounted for 84,200 of them, a population increase of 1,619 people a week.

In the same time, Orange had the largest growth in country NSW with numbers up by 480 people in the year to 40,869. Bathurst had an increase of 310 people and Dubbo 250.

But they’re pretty insignificant figures compared with Sydney’s 1,619 people a week, which is increasing the load on essential services, putting a bigger strain on public transport, causing more traffic jams and adding to pollution problems.

And our city cousins are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars more for homes they could buy for a quarter the price in Orange or Dubbo, and taking several hours to get to work when they could do it in 10 minutes in Orange or Bathurst.

Successive governments have made it harder for people to survive in smaller country towns by closing and squeezing public services like rail, health, roads and education.

And successive governments have also failed to provide the necessary incentives for decentralisation on a large scale.

With a federal election on the way, and a state by-election for Orange, country people have the opportunity to ask who is going to put the bush on the agenda with more capital funding for things like roads, better services and encouragement for industry and business.

Funds towards Charles Sturt University’s planned medical school would have been a good start, although the government saw otherwise.

All county people want is a fair go.

A fair contribution given back to us to help our communities grow.