Two years ago Craig Gallpen and his partner, Rachael Napier, were enjoying their life, milking 500 cows with 10 or 11 staff. Now they employ one person, with 200 cows. Their wage bill has dropped from $450,000 to $50,000.

“Those people spend their money in town and so do we,” Napier says. “All that money is gone now.”

Their single biggest issue is water – this year they have zero allocation – and as a result their feed bills have doubled. Gallpen rejects outright the argument from government MPs that the only thing that can help the river system is rain.

Play Video 7:48 Farrer's fury: in rural NSW, voters' anger over water is at boiling point – video

“The more I learn about the Murray-Darling basin plan, the more I think it’s flawed, but I don’t really know. I’m just a simple dairy farmer.”

Gallpen says while southern New South Wales farmers have given up their water, others are harvesting floodplains in the basin. He thinks water management has been overrun by politics and “maybe we haven’t kicked up enough fuss in this area”.

“I’ve been a Liberal-National voter all my life,” he says. “My family is the same. I will probably vote for [the independent] Kevin Mack to see whether we can have some change.

“[Otherwise] we will be out of the industry, we can’t keep doing this.”

Australian politics live podcast Gabrielle Chan speaks to furious voters in Farrer Sorry your browser does not support audio - but you can download here and listen https://audio.guim.co.uk/2019/04/18-48890-APL_EL2.mp3 00:00:00 00:23:28

The couple live in the seat of Farrer, which runs for 126,000 sq km on the NSW side of the Victorian border. It takes in the state seat of Murray and a portion of Barwon, two seats that fell to the Shooters Fishers and Farmers in the recent state election.

If there is one theme that runs through the political conversations, it is uncertainty. People are angry and worried about their future, and that may decide the future of the sitting Liberal MP, Sussan Ley. Water is the key issue driving her challenger, Mack, the mayor of Albury and a former policeman. Even on a margin of more than 20%, Liberals are beginning to worry. Betting agencies have already priced Mack for the win.

Central to all the election issues – whether it’s the basin plan, drought policy, mental health services, housing or political integrity – is a loss of faith in government.

This idea connects metropolitan centres such as Albury with the small towns in the rural parts of the electorate. Farrer voters see government as the foundation on which to build their ambitions, whether it is a job, a business or just a decent safety net.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Craig Gallpen and Rachael Napier believe the Murray-Darling basin plan is flawed. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

They describe government decisions which, far from protecting citizens’ ambitions, have left them feeling more exposed to risk. Decision-making processes are incomprehensible and voters believe other citizens and companies with greater political connections have reaped the benefits.

In a cottage tucked under the Hume Highway, accountant Emily Lightfoot spends her days doing other people’s finances but her overriding concern as a single mother is her rental accommodation. Yet asked to name her most important issue, Lightfoot nominates a “functional, well-run government with integrity” and cites cases such as the $443m grant to a little-known Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

“[The system] is not being managed for the ordinary people, it’s being managed for the big corporate interests and the private interests and financial interests of politicians and this is something that’s got to change,” Lightfoot says.

She supports independents and minor parties and acknowledges while “we need a majority party in the lower house, we don’t need to give them a blank cheque”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Retired mechanic Mark Seaton says he will ‘probably’ vote for independent Kevin Mack. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

In the main street of Albury, retired mechanic and long-time Liberal voter Mark Seaton is having a latte with a mate. He grew up in Bonegilla, near the postwar migrant centre. He thinks immigration levels are too high, even though he says regional migrants are “having a go”.

Even though it doesn’t affect him directly, Seaton nominates water as the biggest issue in the area given “the wife’s family is from the land” and will “probably” vote for Mack.

A feeling of siege

Once you travel out of Albury, towns revolve primarily around agriculture and voters describe different but interrelated issues of groundwater, surface or irrigation water.

Personal interactions with government, big irrigation and agricultural companies have often shattered voter faith in governance. There is almost a feeling of siege, that government is actively trying to shut down the region.

Lester Wheatley is a real estate agent in Deniliquin who has a hobby farm. He sees river banks so inundated that established trees are letting go, tipping trunks into the water. He puts it down to bad management.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Deniliquin real estate agent Lester Wheatley believes the federal and state governments are actively trying to shut down Riverina communities to save water. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Wheatley believes the federal and state governments are actively trying to shut down Riverina communities to save water. Certainly, the Vertessy report into fish kills recommended structural adjustments in the lower Darling and strategic water buybacks with compensation.

“Governments are withdrawing services, discouraging development because of population predictions, we see that reverberating in community with businesses that might want to relocate or expand,” Wheatley says. “Wrap all that together and yes, I firmly believe that is the agenda on the basis of carrying out the plan. Someone has to lose.”

Wheatley will vote for Mack, and believes the Liberals have lost the seat.

Gabrielle Coupland farms sheep and irrigated crops between Finley and Deniliquin and joined the National party about a year ago. She will be handing out how-to-vote cards for Ley.

In spite of the tough season, she feels the area has a lot of opportunity. She says that, like most farmers, her days are filled with feeding and harvesting, which is physically and mentally draining.

“But that doesn’t mean I give up, I won’t be a victim, we will try to seize every opportunity I see in these challenging times.”

She takes issue with water action groups that tell people they are victims and push for independents who cannot change things.

“The only way we won’t have buybacks is with a majority Coalition government,” she says. “No one likes the plan, it’s what we’ve got and we need to make the best of it.”

Farmer Greg Sandford lost a large amount of ground water and tried to take the state government to court. He says the whole electorate talks water nonstop, in the hairdresser, in the pub, on the footy sidelines. He knows of two people lost to suicide over water, and says it’s not good enough just to throw out a bit of mental health funding.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Farmer Greg Sandford says the whole electorate of Farrer talks about water nonstop. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

“I was here one night and there were four of us at the bar and I was the only one not on antidepressants,” he says. “A lot of people really struggle and they can’t see a way forward. I think people will change our federal member more as a sign of hope, that something will change because at the moment, we’re not getting anywhere.”

Sandford doesn’t think politicians “care less” about the people in his region because there are not enough votes in the country.

“If the government’s idea is to close this area down, go back to dry land farming and take all the water off us, we just need them to come out and tell us and we will stop wasting our time. At the moment we don’t know what’s going on.”

‘A recipe for disaster’

Harold Clapham is the director of Charlie Carp, an innovative business that clears European carp from the rivers and turns it into fertiliser. While Clapham recognises the community frustration, he doesn’t think electing an independent would fix the issues.

“At a critical time where the second half of the plan is to be implemented we will have someone in Canberra that has no knowledge of the history of it and the doors to open to get something changed,” he says.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t see the flaws in the government. He explains the river communities want to be part of the environmental water solution, just as they are there to fight fires and floods.

Until the plan, water bureaucrats were based in towns like Deniliquin, living and working with the communities they were administering.

“To believe you can utilise the water going past the door without using the community knowledge is a recipe for disaster.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Harold Clapham in his Charlie Carp factory. He believes the Coalition should have used the fish kills as a catalyst to get every state minister in one room to find solutions for the river system. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

He believes the Coalition government should have used the fish kills as a catalyst to get every state minister in one room to find solutions for the river system, particularly in Menindee and the lower Darling.

The fundamental flaw is the structure of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, he says, in that it combines a regulator and manager of the river system – a finding identified by the Productivity Commission’s report this year.

“It’s like banks and Apra are the one organisation, it’s like the judges and judiciary are the police force, so there is no separation of the most basic requirement in a democracy to get your process heard and regulated properly,” he says.

It is this conflict that drives much of the suspicion about the management of the river system and thus the distrust of major parties, pushing voters towards minor parties and independents.

In the Deniliquin saleyards, Greg “Lumpy” White describes the frustration of trying to grow a little lucerne to sell with very little water.

He is competing with interstate growers less than 60km away, who have bigger allocations and deeper pockets. He is hoping for an independent in Farrer and a hung parliament.

“People say to me, why would you vote for one? I say, well it can’t get any worse.”