General News
8 April, 2025
After 17 years in Canberra, Coulton bids farewell to politics
First elected to the House of Representatives at the 2007 Federal Election, Member for Parkes Mark Coulton has decided it’s time to leave politics and Canberra behind.
While in Canberra for this year’s federal budget, I, reporter Sophia McCaughan sat down with Mr Coulton for an exclusive interview, where he reflected on his time in politics.
Mr Coulton has been re-elected into the division of Parkes in 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2019.
He served as the Minister for Regional Health, Regional Communications and Local Government from February 2020 until July 2021.
During his time in parliament, Mr Coulton has held the positions of Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, the National Party’s Chief Whip and Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for a number of ministerial profiles including Water and Conservation as well as Regional Development.
When he was first elected, Mr Coulton was in an opposition government and said he witnessed a lot of funding being stripped from regional communities.
“My first experience in government was basically changing everything Howard put in place, so the regional telecommunications fund that was going to fund the phone towers, they (Labor) just took it,” he explained.
“I was coming in off the back of Kevin Rudd winning the election.”
Mr Coulton said that support for regional and rural communities depends on who is in government at that time.
“It ebbs and flows depending on who is in government, and my first experience here was following the [John] Howard era,” he said.
Mr Coulton has served on numerous parliamentary committees and was formerly the Chair of the Standing Committee on Publications; a member of the House of Representatives’ Standing Committees on Indigenous Affairs, Appropriations and Administration; Selection Committee and the Joint Committee on the Broadcasting of Parliamentary Proceedings.
Prior to his election to the House of Representatives, Mr Coulton was the Mayor of Gwydir Shire Council from 2004 until 2007.
He has an extensive agricultural background, having spent 30 years as a farmer and grazier. Up until 2006, Mr Coulton and his wife owned and operated a mixed farming system growing cereal crops and running beef cattle.
Mr Coulton represented the largest federal electorate in NSW, and in his time saw his electorate grow to cover 49 per cent of the state — an area of 393,413 square kilometres.
“It (the size of the electorate) makes it a bigger job when your city colleagues can rollerskate around their electorate in a couple of hours,” he indicated.
Mr Coulton said the main thing he has learned to understand in his near two-decade political career is that time is sometimes wasted in Canberra, and that some politicians are in it for the wrong reasons.
“If there is one thing I am frustrated about, it’s that there is a lot of time wasted here (in Canberra). Some people take advantage of the fact that the general population doesn’t really understand our political system,” he said.
“You spend a whole lot of time on that sort of crap where rather the focus should be on the ones that really matter, and that is probably a bit of a disappointment.”
He said the one thing that needs to be improved following his time in parliament is the Parkes constituents' understanding of federal politics.
“A lot of people don’t really understand what my job is, and apart from me being here, there are so many people working behind the scenes. There are eight people working in three different locations across the electorate,” he said.
In his final statement as the Federal Member for Parkes, Mr Coulton thanked his family, friends, staff and colleagues for their unwavering trust and support.
“I will be forever grateful for the people of the Parkes Electorate and the support they have shown me over the past 17 years,” he said.
“I said in my first speech that I have a deep and unshakeable belief in inland Australia, and I still believe that to this day.”
