PM's shock visit not good enough

Just this weekend, the city has staged its first Rainbow Festival, there has been cricket grand finals right across Orange, our football codes are back in the swing of pre-season competitions and on Saturday night Stockman's Ridge Wines hosted the Torie Finnane Foundation Ball.

Then on Sunday, Mount Canobolas will be crawling with runners for the 2024 Great Volcanic Mountain Challenge - there's a well-worn Dante's Peak-Pierce Brosnan line in there somewhere, but those references were for my old sport reporting days.

The netball's back, too (surely Orange wins yet another regional league crown) and, of course, Easter is looming large and everyone will be looking forward to the long weekend.

And ... FOOD Week is just around the corner.

Simply, it's terrific to see the town as vibrant and buzzing as it is at the moment. I spoke with a number of people during the week who had come to Orange to stay and finding a room was tough.

The city's tourism sector is seemingly thriving and it's doing so on the back of an diverse events boom.

PM flashes through region

It was a surprise this week to have Prime Minister Anthony Albanese make a flying visit through Cabonne, landing in Eugowra on Friday to quickly tour some homes hit by the floods in November 2022.

Mr Albanese promised he'd return to the region while on the floor in parliament at the end of last year, and so that was the motive behind his trip.

And that, really, was all it was - a box ticking exercise for the PM.

Many in Eugowra were stunned to see the PM. Few knew he'd be arriving. He also did little to acknowledge our reporters who had made the trip across to Eugowra in the hope of asking Mr Albanese directly about some of the issues impacting Orange and the wider Central West.

Our series on the Great Western Highway - The Great Divide - demands attention from Canberra, as does the growing concern our farmers are facing in the wake of the crippling price gouging from supermarket giants.

We have farmers and orchardists turning away from the industry in Orange at an alarming rate.

Just last week Calare MP Andrew Gee stood in the foyer of the Hotel Canobolas and called on the major parties to back a bill he and Bob Katter were proposing to help those farmers. They even has people dressed as pigs.

Mr Gee was there on Friday, and so was Mr Albanese. But no questions answered in regards to that issue. Also, no pigs in sight.

It's great to have the interest of the PM - the people of Eugowra deserve it. It has been a horrid 18 months for those in that village.

But it's not good enough to have the leader of the country in our backyard and then pretend the issues we face in regional NSW aren't there.