One arrives in an Annah Stretton jacket,
cut fine for a woman two decades her senior —
shoulders padded with borrowed authority,
stitched in satin certainty
that the crowd will mistake tailoring for substance.
Another smiles wide:
the farmer’s daughter who “made it,”
no longer milking, no longer driving the tractor.
Her parents must have swelled with pride—
one of fourteen finally escaped the cowshed,
traded gumboots for governance.
The story plays well in headlines,
less so in policy.
And then another:
plain-spoken, more dirt under the nails,
more weather in the voice,
someone who looks like the room itself—
though even that earthiness feels
ill-prepared for what’s coming.
The questions rise:
What about homelessness?
Annah Stretton Jacket tilts her chin,
speaks of rising numbers of the mentally ill,
as if struggle were delusion,
as if lost jobs, failed businesses,
pandemic wreckage,
were nothing more than phantom voices in the street.
What about mandates, passes,
the division of neighbour from neighbour?
Law Degree nods sagely,
dispenses paragraphs so empty
they rattle like tin buckets in a dry well.
What about our water,
the 1080 drops,
the rivers we fish from and drink from?
More words, less meaning—
platitudes floating like dead leaves
on the surface of a poisoned stream.
Three faces for a regions’ future:
one draped in borrowed elegance,
one basking in the glow of escape from farm chores,
one nearer the soil yet still fumbling in the dark.
None holding what the people came to hear—
answers,
truth,
or even the weight of listening.
