Three independent lower house Federal MPs look like holding balance of power in Australia for a while.

Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter are presenting a list of seven demands to Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott.

Mr Katter explained his motives: “All I’m interested in are the people back home. I’ll be voting for them . . . .”

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He means rural people, like those inhabiting his king-size electorate of Kennedy . . . mainly bush, plus a few towns like Charters Towers, Cloncurry, Innisfail, Mount Isa and Tully.

The question, of course is, what are his back-home people’s real interests?

Rural districts probably do have a few special needs — including a good, fast, publicly-owned, Internet service, plus decentralisation that is more than just a slogan . . . .

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Otherwise, rural people need pretty much what everybody needs:

* everybody needs to live in a country generous in assistance to underdeveloped and disaster-stricken overseas communities – something rarely mentioned during the election campaign.

* everybody needs to live in a country where unborn babies are not aborted.

* everybody needs an environment free of pornography, which implies Internet filtering at service-provider level.

* everybody needs to live in a country that has no casinos.

* everybody needs to live in a country where traditional marriage is respected — and children, with rare exceptions, live together with both their mother and father.

* everybody needs to live in a country whose culture is based on the Catholic Faith.

* everybody needs to live in a country where childcare is the mother’s role – her husband working to support the family financially.

* everybody needs to live in a country whose soldiers are not fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq – whose defence force exists to defend its shores, but not to impose its brand of democracy on others.

* everybody needs to live in a country where unauthorised, boat-smuggled, asylum-seekers are processed offshore.