Heffernan confirms retirement plans

“Unless there’s a double dissolution that’s it for me; I’ll be finishing up on June 30 next year,” he said.

“I made up my mind at the last pre-selection that I’d be 74 when I finished my term this time around and I thought back then ‘I think I’ve done enough’.

“If I was to ask for another term, I’d be 80 when that stint finished.

“I’m not too sure what the pearly gates are telling me but I think I’ll take some time off, when I do eventually reach retirement, to spend time with my family and the grandkids.”

Senator Heffernan runs a sheep and grain farm at Junee in NSW and has been daringly outspoken and colourful, during his 20-years in the Senate; especially on agriculture.

Speculation suggests his former political staffer and long-serving Liberal rural executive representative and disability advocate Hollie Hughes is the leading candidate to win pre-selection.

But two current farmers - NSW Farmers grains committee chairman Dan Cooper and WoolProducers Australia senior vice president Ed Storey - have also been linked to the upcoming vacancy.

Senator Heffernan said he believed rural Australia needed to be better and more strongly represented and “I’ll be doing my best in that regard”.

He said the difficulty with any political party - including the National Party - was that “authenticity is slowly but surely dissolving because of professionalism in politics”.

Whether it is unions on Labor’s side of politics, or Liberal party factions, an ever-increasing number of political professionals are entering parliament “rather than people from the paddock”, he said.

“There’s nothing wrong with that – you need people from all walks of life – but maintaining authentic values and being authentic is becoming increasingly more difficult given the professionalism of politics,” he said.

Senator Heffernan said many people left school to earn a degree and then worked for a politician, to try and become a politician.

But he said “when it gets to the business ends of things” some members of parliament, who represent certain portfolios, only make decisions based on the “bureaucratic brief”.

“More than likely, the bureaucrat who wrote the brief has never even been in a paddock,” he said.

“But when you’ve been there, seen it and done it, you can certainly tell when someone is pulling your leg; especially at Senate estimates.

“Australia has been well served over many years by people serving rural Australia and the greatest strength for some of them was that they knew what they didn’t know and so they took advice.

“And so, the sign of a good leader is knowing what you don’t know, taking advice on that and being able to delegate authority.”

While Chairing the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee, Senator Heffernan has attacked key policy areas concerning Australian farming including most recently raising concerns about down-stream market competition impacts on growers, during the blocked takeover of GrainCorp by Archer Daniels Midland.

He’s likely to be remembered for many other reasons; including bringing a pipe bomb into federal parliament to raise concerns about diminished security standards; standing up to support child abuse victims; a deep passion for developing northern Australia and water policy; and often colourful language coupled with a wicked sense of humour.

The veteran-Senator was also known as John Howard’s right hand man at the height of his political career and has been a chief organiser and fundraiser within Liberal ranks.

But Senator Heffernan said he’d like to be remembered as someone who was “having a go” in Canberra; especially for farmers and regional NSW and Australia.

“I never had a price and was never persuaded by a political donation,” he said.

“If you don’t tell lies, you don’t need to have a good memory and I’ve always abided by that rule.

“And the fact is, the most important qualification in public life is not to have a price and unfortunately plenty of people fail that test.”

Senator Hefferan said one of the most “profound” policy issues he influenced during his career was preventing the privatisation and sale of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme to foreign investors in 2006, which was about to be driven by “commerciality”.

“If it was more profitable to generate power there was going to be no need for irrigation water etc.,” he said of the mooted plans for the Scheme’s sale, which was aborted after public backlash.

“(former Liberal Senator) Nick Minchin still hasn’t forgiven me for that - but John Howard to his credit saw the sense in things, so we didn’t sell it off.”