Mr Littleproud inspected the progress of the new office with New England MP Barnaby Joyce, and was more than pleased with how it was progressing.

“We’re ahead of schedule, and hoping to having it open in April instead of June,” he said.

This week, the organisation revealed it had received almost 300 applications for the up to 50 jobs on offer, with more than a third of those from Australians in capital cities.

“It’s just proven that this leap of faith in regional and rural Australia that Barnaby Joyce undertook when he was the Agriculture Minister was the right one and it works,” Mr Littleproud said.

Mr Joyce faced heavy resistance throughout his campaign for the relocation.

“I can’t help but say to the cynics, come up and have a look,” Mr Joyce said.

“I was talking to a scientist today who’s moved from Geneva [in Switzerland] to work in Australia because of Armidale, not despite of, but because of Armidale.

“Not only that, their families are coming with them, and this is good for the economic basis of Armidale.”

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Mr Littleproud also met with a number of local farmers, to get a boots on the ground assessment of the drought, and to hear how the government’s assistance packages are being received.

“Obviously, drought is at the forefront of everyone's thoughts here, you’ve been doing it very tough,” he said.

“In fact, we’ve just put on a farm liaison officer here in Tamworth, and her role will be to facilitate between government agencies of all levels to make sure those programs are being rolled out.

“She’ll be sitting at farmers’ tables to hear first hand whether these programs are actually working, and to be a conduit back to Canberra. We don’t want Canberra solutions, we want local solutions.”

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