Media Release

With Ian Causley’s death the last Country Party soldier has left the battlefield.
Wal Murray and Ian Causley were the last of the Mohicans.
Causley was cutting cane as a 19 year old up in Innisfail, NQ.
As a generational Clarence River farming family they were powerful and famous, but had an appealing humility. He lived in a humble fibro house on the banks of the Clarence.

When the Causley’s of this world lost the battle of deregulation in the wool industry, the price dropped 60%. In Causley’s own industry – sugar, outside of the cooperative mills, the price went down 20%. In dairying there was a straight 30% loss of income under deregulation.
Our forebears fought the fight for arbitration for the farmers through the Country Party. Causley was a soldier of the last generation of Super Giants.

The modern industry leaders are grovelling sycophants for the free-marketing conservative politicians.
In one notorious incident Causley took the president of the Canegrowers Council by the belt and collar and threw him out of his office into the hallway. My only regret upon hearing the story was that he hadn’t bashed his head before throwing him out.
He was so respected by his peers that he was elected Chairman of the NSW Sugar Mills - an organisation in charge of companies that turned over hundreds of millions of dollars. Upon leaving federal parliament he was again returned as Chairman of the Sugar Mills.

One of the greatest tragedies for rural Australia was Causley being defeated for the National Party leadership in Canberra. From then on it has been a slow decline into oblivion.
Causley was the best NSW Ag Minister in recent memory and one of the best Lands Ministers ever. The only sugar mills to have survived deregulation successfully are the NSW mills; all of the Qld mills, once farmer owned, are now all foreign owned. I attribute the success of NSW to Causley and the men around him. The Country Party was founded to deliver statutory marketing in the wheat, dairy, banana and sugar cane industries of northern NSW.

I think the description of the great Country Party Prime Minister, John McEwen fits Ian Causley to a tee. Distinguished political journalist Paul Kelly wrote; “‘He was gaunt, gigantic. An old fashioned Australian who embodied the older virtue - courage, vision and a pitiless determination… The ghost of an older age before vacuous lucidity became the test for television politicians.[1]”
Causley was a giant in every sense of the word. - Bob Katter, Member for Kennedy.

-ENDS-

[1] Paul Kelly, ‘Black Jack: Is he Godfather of the banana republic?’, Weekend Australia, 26 -27 July 1986.