With the 2025 federal election date expected to be announced any moment, we reached out to some of the major players looking to represent the Mid North Coast in Parliament to find out what they will focus on if voted in.

Pat Conaghan of the Nationals is the current member for Cowper. This year his most likely challenger is Independent Caz Heise. Cowper has been held by the Nationals and its predecessor, the Country Party, since 1972.

Conaghan and Heise faced off in the 2022 election, where the Nationals managed to hold on despite a significant 9.6 per cent swing against them. The swing made it the most marginal seat of the election, with Conaghan winning by just over 2 per cent.

The division of Cowper consists of:

• Bellingen Shire Council

• Kempsey Shire Council

• Nambucca Valley Council

• part of the Coffs Harbour City Council, and

• part of the Port Macquarie-Hastings Council.

Who is Pat Conaghan?

Elected to the House of Representatives for Cowper in 2019, Pat Conaghan was re-elected in 2022.

The Mid North Coaster reached out to ask what have been some highlights during his time as Member for Cowper. Pat Conaghan told us:

• Helping to fund the Watson Street housing project for women over 55 in Bellingen, which recently housed 23 women in need of safe accommodation.

• Helping to deliver Emmaus in Port Macquarie, the Southern Hemisphere’s first gold standard Dementia Care Village.

• Securing the funding for the Coffs Harbour Bypass.

• Funding crucial recovery projects after our natural disasters, like the Crescent Head Evacuation Centre, Kempsey Saleyard Upgrades and Nambucca Seawall construction.

• Becoming the Assistant Shadow Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence and helping to create strategies to tackle this scourge on our society.

What are Pat Conaghan’s priorities?

“In short, I’d like to bring some common sense back to Canberra and put our real regional needs in the spotlight,” Mr Conaghan told the Mid North Coaster.

Specifically, his top three priorities if voted in are (in his own words):

• Get our local economy back on track – from putting downward pressure on inflation to providing small business supports and removing red tape and government overreach.

• Work collaboratively with all levels of government to provide our communities with the Infrastructure we really need – we need to stop government waste at all levels.

• Get our “care” industries back on track – from childcare to aged care, health care to the NDIS and Veteran supports; access and affordability of these crucial services must be at the front of any candidate’s plans.

Who is Caz Heise?

Caz Heise’s candidacy is the result of community group, Voices4Cowper, and the desire for leaders who can represent the community instead of the major parties.

Voices4Cowper emerged in 2019, and following a series of conversations with community members in the area, the group released their Kitchen Table Conversation Report in 2021, setting out the big issues that need to be addressed in the area.

Caz Heise was preselected and endorsed as the Independent candidate for Cowper ahead of the 2022 election, and again in July last year (2024) for the upcoming election.

What are Caz Heise’s priorities?

We asked Ms Heise what her top three priorities would be if elected as the Member for Cowper. She said:

• Fixing our local health system with better funding for hospitals, aged-care, and mental health services.

• Tackling the housing crisis by increasing affordable housing and supporting local apprenticeships.

• Ensuring reliable, fast internet and eliminating mobile black-spots across the region.

Heise told the Mid North Coaster she would bring “a fresh focus to healthcare, housing, and improving mobile phone reception, and fight for real climate action and to protect the places we love.”

“You’ll see someone who listens to the community and delivers on local priorities…being independent means I’m accountable to the community — not party politics, factions or corporate donors,” Ms Heise said.