Nagambie man receives King’s Birthday honours

He joined the Nagambie Rowing Club when he was about 13 years old.

“I got involved in the club 60 years ago now. We had a tin shed in those days,” he said.

“We’re fortunate that we are a country town that has a strong community rowing club community.”

The club has grown since Mr McNamara first joined and has enjoyed plenty of success at an elite level.

Nagambie rowing exports have become a feature on the world stage, including Mr McNamara’s own son Michael, who was awarded a Victorian Institute of Sport scholarship and was part of the Australian rowing team at the world championships.

When the course was upgraded to Olympic standard in 1998, Nagambie hosted the Australian titles, alongside national events including dragon boat racing and the APS Head Of The River, which attracts one of the largest crowds of any sporting event in regional Victoria, helping the town prosper financially.

Mr McNamara has been president of Rowing Victoria and Rowing Australia for a record nine years.

Upon returning from university in Melbourne, Mr McNamara joined the Apex Club in Nagambie, which unknowingly paved the way for his 18-year-long career in politics.

“I was in my early 20s and the club had only been going a year or two. I really enjoyed the projects we got involved with … a whole range of voluntary community activities,” he said.

“I remember after a few years there was a council election and I really didn’t think I was going to get elected to the council but thought ‘why not?’ I ended up getting elected at the age of 23.

“Every town in the electorate had an Apex club. So, there was a core base there and a lot of those people moving on after 10 years had a career of their own … so it gave you a bit of a network.

“Three or four years later I was the mayor of the local council and I suppose that was the start of the political track. I was approached by the National Party.”

After some convincing, Mr McNamara relented. Six years later he was elected as National Party leader.

“I wouldn’t say any of it was planned ... fortunately or unfortunately, I was in the right spot at the right time,” he said.

With an eye for strategic planning, Mr McNamara views his greatest achievement in government as bringing filtered drinking water, of a quality equal to Melbourne, to all Victorian country towns through reforms in regional water management.

“The thing I probably got a huge amount of satisfaction from was the agriculture and resources portfolio’s responsibility for water,” he said.

“One of the first questions I asked the department was ‘what is the quality of the country drinking water?’ At the time we just pumped the water out of the lake and distributed it through the township.

“I thought we were an outlier in Nagambie. You would leave a glass of water on the windowsill and there would be 3cm of sediment at the bottom of the glass by morning.

“The assessment was that 50 per cent of country towns had water below the drinking water standard of the World Health Organization.”

In 1996, Mr McNamara set the goal of acquiring filtration systems for every country town at an estimated cost of $2.5 billion.

“We thought we could achieve efficiency saving if we amalgamated the water boards,” he said.

“At the time there was 365 water boards, one for each town, basically. By the end, we finished with nine.

“It was funded by $1.2 billion from treasury and the amalgamation of water boards which allowed for greater efficiency.”

By the end of the project, water treatment plants had been installed in more than 300 country towns and every town was sewered.

“You look at country water now and every community has water the same quality. That is the single biggest legacy that I take pride in,” Mr McNamara said.

“The whole standard of advice that these water boards get is multiple times what it was before and the communities get the benefit of that.

“It’s been a really good system, everyone in country Victoria has got the benefit out of it.”

Mr McNamara has seen plenty of changes in politics during his life and remains an advocate for making decisions not for votes, but for the good of the country.

“We are here to try and make the right decision for the community. We never took polling, now its made on every decision,” he said.

“You should never make a decision just on politics … but then again, we only lasted two terms.”

Mr McNamara’s service to the community has continued past his political career. Following the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, the largest civilian loss of life in Australia’s history, he was asked by then-Premier John Brumby to head up the bushfire appeals.

“What was overwhelming was the generosity of Australians,” he said.

“We had over $400 million donated by Australians to assist the bushfire victims and families of the deceased and we worked as a committee for a number of years, all in a voluntary capacity, to distribute the money.

“Through that whole process, you realise the contribution of the firefighter and everybody else that made a contribution towards the recovery.”

Although Mr McNamara did not know about his nomination in advance, he is grateful for the recognition.

“I’m still trying to suss out who nominated me. I have a suspicion and I will certainly be thanking them,” he said.

He said his first thoughts upon receiving the honour were for all the people he had worked with along the way, from his political career through to the bushfire appeals.

“There are a number of people I need to thank that I have worked with over the years,” Mr McNamara said.

“I’ve had the privilege of working with some really outstandingly talented people.

“While this award has come to me, it is also a recognition of all the people you work with. If you didn’t have the people who are helping you achieve that, you wouldn’t have the outcomes at all.”

With four children and seven grandchildren, Mr McNamara describes his family as “quite the clan” and a credit to his wife, Meryl.

“There’s no way I could have done this without Meryl’s support. She’s been the rock. She probably deserves the award more than me,” Mr McNamara said.

“She did the maths a few years ago and over 18 years in parliament I had averaged one night home.

“We tried to do as much as we could together, but often that wasn’t possible.”

Now back at home in Nagambie, the McNamaras plan to celebrate the achievement with friends and family.