A COSTLY Gold Coast apartment purchase and the downfall of Indi as Liberal Party heartland headlined federal politics in our part of the world over the last decade.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
At a state level there was drama with police-related leaks involving Wodonga's MP Bill Tilley and a change in Albury with Greg Aplin exiting politics after 16 years.
Member for Farrer Sussan Ley endured a topsy-turvy decade.
Ms Ley voluntarily repaid $5232 after a Finance Department probe found she had breached rules by using a publicly-funded car to travel from her Gold Coast hotel to the apartment.
Her exile from the ministry ended when Scott Morrison succeeded Malcolm Turnbull to become Prime Minister in August 2018.
With the former's election victory in May last year, Ms Ley returned to the cabinet as Environment Minister.
The yo-yoing of Ms Ley contrasted markedly with the trajectory of her Liberal Party parliamentary colleague Sophie Mirabella at the outset of the decade.
Like Ms Ley, Mrs Mirabella entered the 2013 election as a shadow minister, but instead of being on the government front bench, the member for Indi was jettisoned by voters.
The lawyer from Wangaratta became the only incumbent Liberal MP to lose their seat when Indigo Valley agricultural consultant Cathy McGowan triumphed as an independent in 2013.
Aided by an apricot-hued Voices for Indi squad, Ms McGowan won on preferences and thanked in parliament the "makers of all things orange: all of you: for your courage, your belief and conviction that we could do it".
Proving her victory was not a one-off, Ms McGowan again defeated Mrs Mirabella in the 2016 election.
But after the shortest term as Indi MP since 1937, Ms McGowan called stumps and Wangaratta health professional Helen Haines was designated the Voices for Indi candidate for 2019.
She surprised herself to become the first consecutive independent MP in a seat when she beat Liberal candidate Steve Martin who was backed by nearly $120 million in government promises.
An independent tilt at the seat of Farrer last year by Albury mayor Kevin Mack bombed after he campaigned heavily on mismanagement of the Murray-Darling Basin.
However, a water-driven bid to dislodge an incumbent Coalition member was more successful at last March's NSW election.
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party member Helen Dalton won the seat of Murray from Nationals incumbent Austin Evans after anger over water handling.
In the seat of Albury in the same election, veterinarian Justin Clancy smashed his rivals to maintain the Liberal Party's stranglehold on the district.
He replaced Greg Aplin who had started the decade as a shadow minister before 2011 incoming Premier Barry O'Farrell dropped him from his ministry.
Despite another poll win in 2015 and different premiers, Mr Aplin never became a minister.
His Wodonga Liberal counterpart Bill Tilley also endured a setback when it came to elevation.
In 2011, Mr Tilley was parliamentary secretary for police, but he resigned after an investigation by the Office of Police Integrity which found he acted inappropriately.
Mr Tilley was unhappy with then police commissioner Simon Overland and encouraged the top cop's deputy Sir Ken Jones to withdraw a resignation letter.
He also leaked to the Sunday Herald Sun an email that Sir Ken had sent to his wife about a meeting with the Premier's chief of staff.
Mr Tilley has remained a backbencher since and spent most of the decade in Opposition after Wangaratta-raised Labor leader Daniel Andrews became Victorian Premier in 2014.
That same election saw the creation of two new North East seats with Ovens Valley and Euroa replacing Murray Valley and Benalla.
National Tim McCurdy won a second term in 2014 after having replaced Ken Jasper in 2010.
By the end of the decade though his past as a real estate agent prompted police action.
He has declared his innocence and described the case as "a distraction that I've got to deal with".
Veterinarian Bill Sykes began the decade as the Nationals member for Benalla and ended it as campaign manager for former Wodonga mayor Mark Byatt's failed shot at Indi in the 2019 poll.
His old seat morphed significantly when it became Euroa with his replacement Steph Ryan's seat not containing the Alpine Shire and stretching from Benalla southwards.
The most meteoric politic rise on the Border has been that of now Liberal Democrat Victorian Upper House MP Tim Quilty.
He went from minor party candidate at the 2016 federal election, to Wodonga councillor later that year and then state MP in 2018 after preferences fell his way.
Joining him with an office in Wodonga's High Street last year was federal Upper House MP and Nationals deputy leader Senator Bridget McKenzie.
She opted to move from Bendigo, saying she had an affinity to the North East.