While the next election due sometime in the new year has not yet been called, a number of Federal politicians are signalling their pending retirement, including the Goulburn Valley’s own Damian Drum.
Over the past six years, the region has benefited well from his representation in parliament, getting a number of significant projects funded and on the move. Projects like the Maude Street Mall, the Murray-Darling Medical Schools Network in the Goulburn Valley, the Echuca-Moama bridge, and federal allocation towards the Shepparton bypass and lots more.
But beyond that, Drummie, as he’s known, has been active in the community on any number of issues that affect the people. He advocated for the benefit of regional farmers on water issues, he fulfilled a campaign promise to get the necessary help for GV Connect’s new building, he campaigned for greater assistance for local manufacturing when it mattered most.
With COVID raging across the country, Damian was one of the first politicians to get behind SPC in mandating vaccinations for employees, in a process that since been morphed into a national acceptance and rollout.
Drummie is more than just a politician however. Well-liked and approachable, he listened to his constituents, a local tradie from Congupna to begin with, then a national identity as a football player and coach to taking up state politics before winning the Federal seat of Murray that changed its name to Nicholls.
No matter how you see Federal politics playing out, Drummie has consistently remained grounded in regional issues in one of the state’s largest electoral districts while at the same time standing up for the national platform of his party filling the role of party Whip.
As Damian said, “The record speaks for itself, in the last five and half years the Goulburn Valley has never had more projects, more infrastructure, more policies being pushed around than ever before.”
But it is the lesser-known things that Drum has worked on that he feels are his more important accomplishments, chiefly, the Murray Darling Medical Schools Network, an initiative of the Federal government that he pushed taking the resources of Melbourne University, Latrobe University and GV Health to combine those resources that will see 30 regionally trained doctors coming out of the network year on year into the future.
As the limelight fades, Damian wants to take a break however, as he has shown, he wants to stay busy but has no idea what options lay ahead for him. After 30 years in the spotlight, his ambitions are to retire to the footlights.
His views of Australia and where we are placed are based in reality. We are ‘the Lucky Country’ and many of our problems are first world problems that impact on our efforts to move forward.
Nicholls has done well with Damian Drum campaigning for us and his departure will be noticed.
