Interview with Garry Nehl

I was the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives and that was from 1996 to 2001.

I didn’t stand for re election the 2001 election I had been the federal member for 17 years and I thought that was enough

I was 68

I really wanted to quit politics at the 1998 elections but Tim Fisher really put pressure on me and persuaded me to stand again, when I decided to quit politics I was 65 and I was 68 when I actually did it.

Yeah there’s Gareth Evans, when he moved from being a minister to being a back bencher and moved from being in government to opposition and moved to House of Reps and not the Senate coined the disease name Relevance Deprivation Syndrome. It certainly applies and it applies not only to politicians but people in all sorts of life and I suppose within that first year I was subject a little bit to relevance deprivation syndrome because your going from doing a very exciting job and a moderately powerful one to being nobody and so I think everybody feels it a little bit

Well we made a decision to go overseas we went for about 8 or 9 weeks to Scotland which made a physical break as well as the break from doing the job and that was very useful and we did that early 2002 but you’ve got to work at it because having been in that sort of situation of travel all the time because you have to if you’re a member of the Federal Parliament the demands on your time to travel all over Australia are enormous so you’ve got to make a conscious effort

The other thing though is that I decided that I should no longer be involved in party politics. To the extent that a new member does not need the former member looking over his shoulder and you have to be prepared to give up and get out and I have not been to a national party, party meeting locally, ever since. I’ve been to some of the state conferences in NSW and I was appointed chairman of the Research Centre which I did for 2 years. But that’s been my only contact, and like I said if you’ve got a new member the last thing that a fella needs is to have someone looking over his shoulder

Had been doing other things I mentioned the research centre, I was also on the board of the National Marine Science Centre which was one of my babies that I created. But quite frankly I got terribly irritated by the infighting between the 2 universities Southern Cross and New England who share the centre so I finally left that once it was well and truly up and running. At the moment I’m heavily involved in aged care, I’m on the board of the Royal Freemasons Institution which currently has 22 aged care facilities throughout NSW and the ACT and that involves a monthly trip to Sydney for board meetings but also I’m very active, we’ve got a new hostel in the process of development at Raleigh, the sea end of the Bellingen Valley and so I ‘m pretty heavily involved with that.

Not enough time to relax in fact I can feel the little lament but I don’t have enough time to read and I've got dozens and dozens of books which I want to read and I just don’t get around to doing it but that will happen. My philosophy can be summed up very simply, you’ve got to wear out not rust out. And so you’ve got to keep busy

The best part is your able to help so many people and you do, it's not just the big things like the National Marine Science Centre or my Pacific Highway campaign which has been very successful, but it’s the individual people that you're able to help directly. The worst thing, I don’t know,

You have no privacy, in fact when I was first elected after 6 months I said to my wife we don’t have any friends anymore, no one rings up and says let's have a BBQ or just pops round because we’re never here. We’re always away. I know one friend was very upset because she wanted to ask us over for dinner and I reasonably in my mind said please talk to my secretary because I could not make an appointment to do anything because the central diary was kept in the office in Coffs Harbour and unless you knew exactly what you were doing on any particular day, you couldn’t accept anything.

Yes, in fact I don’t know any body of any political persuasion which isn’t there in Federal Parliament to do their best for Australia and the people of Australia they may be wrong and misguided and they may think that I am wrong, but they’re there to do their best.

I think it may, although speaking personally and I know for many, many others, you certainly don’t go in it for the money because I ended up with I think debts on my business accounts when I left of about $39000, so you don’t go in it for the money. The fabled superannuation scheme was no where near as good as we thought it was. But people go in because they want to achieve something, they want to do something for Australia.

Well particularly in the state areas but fortunately that really doesn’t happen in the federal government, there’s no opportunity for corruption because it's all at arms length. But the reason people are there is to do good things for Australia.

That’s my pleasure.