Western Victoria MP Jaala Pulford reflects on 16 years in parliament

Drought and fire made their impact on Ms Pulford, as did her father's stubborness in carrying buckets of bath water to parched plants - lessons which stood her in stead for her time as the state's agriculture minister years later.

After 16 years as the member for Western Victoria and holding multiple roles in government ministries, Ms Pulford will retire at the forthcoming election.

She spoke to Caleb Cluff.

What is your immediate feeling on thinking about retiring?

It's a really nice feeling. I've had, I think, a really amazing 16 years and eight in the ministry. The last couple of years have been characterised by pandemic response, which in my portfolios has allowed us to do really interesting things we've never done before, connecting big programs and innovative local government. Some very exciting things in medical research, among others. I feel like it's time to go, I've got no regrets. I'm excited about what's next.

That three years of COVID - what was it like as a parliamentarian, that three years of uncertainty? There were quite often drastic attacks on the integrity of Parliament, from people not necessarily well-informed, but also overall? How did that look from inside Parliament?

So 16 years represents a third of my life, which doesn't really bear too much contemplation. Particularly through that very intense 2020 and 2021 period, we asked people to change the way they work, change the way they went to school, change the way they spent time with other people: extraordinary things to ask of the Victorian community.

It was incredibly intense. Everyone we would speak to every day was in a really stressful situation. Overwhelmingly my sense is the community understands we all collectively had to do what we did, but that didn't make it any easier to accept.

Whenever you'd be talking to anyone or dealing with anyone, not only did they have a level of anxiety - 'what's going on with our personal finances?' - but they also had a level of anxiety about maybe their older parents, or how their kids were going at school. What about their friend recovering from breast cancer treatment who can't leave the house because it's too scary? What's striking to me is we can often fall into the trap of thinking of people by category, and everyone had all these different dimensions to their lives banging into each other.

It was unbelievably intense but professionally, looking back through the rear vision mirror, it was an intensely rewarding period of time to be in public life. I think a lot of the time, people are quite happy to have nothing ever to do with their political leaders. We found ourselves in a situation where that relationship was rewritten for a period of time, where we were very present in people's lives, but also turning up with grants for this or support for that, it just made everything starker.

What it was like to grow up in the goldfields, in Muckleford in the 1970s?

My parents had grown up in Melbourne, and made a conscious decision, having visited some friends in about 1975, to move to the country. I have a sister four years younger than me and a brother six years younger. Not terribly long after my brother was born, a couple of years maybe, we moved into Castlemaine. That was really different. Like you could go to the shops, get on your bike, seen friends. In Muckleford I remember evacuating when there was bushfire; I remember drought, which must have been '82-'83. Dad's attempts to try and keep a couple of plants in the garden alive with bathwater.

When I was 18 I skipped out of town on the first train, as lots of people growing up in the country do. They tend to gravitate back later in life.

You've always been a union member; you've been a member of the Labor Party for a long period of time. What drew you to Labor politics?

I really liked Labor politics. I was 16 when I joined the Labor Party. I was really into politics, interested in the way it affected all our all our lives. In 1990 there was a federal election. It was the latter part of the Hawke-Keating government years. That was an extraordinary government full of highly capable people. Actually the thing that really lit my fire was Janine Haines, who was the first female leader of a national political party, the Australian Democrats. I wasn't much into their politics, but I thought she was so fabulous - the hair, the glasses, that fresh way of speaking.

I remember watching the federal elections, thinking, 'This is so exciting and interesting!' This unbelievable woman mixing it all up with these very senior, important men. I thought it was excellent.

Did you have a mentor in the party? Someone you spoke to or looked up to?

The first person that comes to mind is Greg Sword. Greg Sword was a state president of the party and National President of the party, and he was the national secretary of the union that I worked at for 12 years. A wonderful leader, absolutely instrumental in the creation of industry superannuation. A leader of big ideas, modernising organisations, played a big role in the Labor Party internally through that period, when we were in opposition and the Kennett government was so dominant in Victorian politics.

What are you most proud of? What do you feel you brought to Victoria and to Ballarat?

I think in terms of Ballarat, I'm really proud of some of those big, transforming projects. The station and the Gov Hub: I'm really proud of them. They were really hard (work). If we have to be a big, modern city, we need things like that. In all our other regional cities, we helped them to catalyse private sector activity with a big government-supported project or two. For instance, Shepparton Arts Museum is another example, the exciting Performing Arts Centre in the Latrobe Valley, things I think cause regional centres to have a different view of themselves, to encourage them to be big, and to think big.

I think the work that I am most proud of, and remember - I was going to say fondly but I'm not sure it's exactly the right word - was in my four (years as Agriculture Minister). We had the dairy price crisis, and drought twice. We came up with all sorts of innovative, creative ways to support people; but also just turning up and standing there in the sheds in the dead of winter, talking to dairy farmers to help them to talk through and understand the problem; to hear from them about what we can be doing to help and to be useful.

In more recent times, without a shadow of a doubt, the agreement we have entered into with the federal government and Moderna is really significant. Similarly the partnership we've now entered into with BioNTech - I think they are transformative for our state.

One of the other things is where we've been able to modernise things. So small business, digital adaptation, a billion dollars on ICT infrastructure rolled out over the next couple of years; the sheep tagging we did which was at the time described as the biggest reform in agriculture in a long time.

When you were speaking with Chris Meddows Taylor at the UNESCO funding announcement, there was genuine affection between yourself and Christopher. Clearly he was very thrilled to have you there. Do you feel, at the end of your time in parliament, affection for you across western Victoria?

I have a bit, particularly in the last week. I must say I have been completely overwhelmed and humbled and somewhat shocked by the reaction I have received to my announcement. It's been quite extraordinary; it's really, beautiful. I think a lot of the time, hopping into politicians is the cheapest sport getting around, right?

I do it all the time.

People are very quick to hate politicians - 'they're all the same' - but they always feel differently about the ones they know, they've met and the ones that they work with, I think. Today, we're in Wycheproof and we've just been in Charlton, and before that Donald. Quiet little visits to check how they're going with flood recovery and hearing about some of their plans for future flood mitigation. There's a sense of goodbye in some of the conversations, because (they are people) I've been running into on and off for years that I might not see again this side of the election.

Those central goldfields councils and the people who've worked on the World Heritage listing, that feels to me like my original work family, that crowd - some in the electorate, some just outside, some I worked with as a Regional Development Minister, like these people are my people. You captured it beautifully in your article I thought, because I hadn't felt at all sentimental, I was feeling really good about the decision.Then when I was standing there with that lot, I thought, 'Oh, I just want to give you a hug' and in fact did give them all a hug as I was leaving. Just great people doing good things.

That's the most important thing, isn't it? Is that you feel as though at the end of it all, good things were done?

Oh yes. We've done loads of good things, loads. It's been really nice to work with people in pursuit of their of their goals. Sometimes it's been about overcoming a deficit, fixing a problem, or sometimes it's just been about seeing an opportunity and saying, 'Right, let's do something good here while we can.'

I've been fly-in, fly-out for 16 years. I'm looking forward to spending a whole lot more time pottering around in my hometown.

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