While the battle for New England between The Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce and former independent MP Tony Windsor has demanded their attention, and the last-minute nomination of Rob Oakeshott in neighbouring Cowper has required campaigning back-up, in many regional seats where coalition candidates are expected to win, the presence of Labor, Greens, and even team Xenophon candidates has been no cause for panic.

It’s a game about numbers and perceptions. The same weight of numbers which sees sparse regional electorates grow larger with every electoral redistribution, means there are more seats and more votes to be won in Australia’s burgeoning urban areas. Here the size of electorates, like the size of blocks in new subdivisions, grow ever smaller as people pile in. And the perception is that urban and regional voters have little in common.

It is in areas such as south western Sydney, in and around Campbelltown, which has been earmarked as Sydney’s next growth area, that both side are pitching solutions to urban problems which have been the making of successive governments of both persuasions.

This week Mr Turnbull and Labor’s Anthony Albanese have been championing the concept of the 30-minute city. This is the very civilised idea that residents of south-western Sydney, or any metropolis should be able to work, shop and enjoy recreational opportunities within 30 minutes of home.

But why haven’t we heard a word about the 10-minute town? Sadly, concepts like Evo Cities have had no traction in the debate about how to solve urban Sydney’s problems.

Few candidates in this election have spoken seriously or at length about how regional Australia could be part of the solution to the problem of choking toll roads and infrastructure like hospitals buckling under the sheer weight of numbers in Western Sydney.

West of the Great Divide, in the electorates of Calare, Parkes and Riverina, there are small cities and prosperous towns which could provide just about everything struggling commuters and despairing first home buyers may never find in Sydney, but it is not the story campaigning politicians want to tell or urban voters want to hear.

Nationals candidate for Calare Andrew Gee has floated lower personal and company tax rates in regional areas as one way to encourage business to create jobs in regional towns. That and high-speed internet across regional areas could be two of many planks to a regional growth strategy that could reinvigorate the bush. 

But ideas as bold and expensive and difficult  to sell as the former will never cut through in an election campaign fought largely in the cities where housing costs and unemployment demand almost instant solutions. If the Nationals hold their seats their challenge in government must be to forge a much stronger link between the destiny of the bush and the city. They will need to make the future of regional Australia integral to the solution to the problems of metropolitan Australia.