Over 50 people turned up to the Politics in the Pub event, and put a wide range of questions to Mr Dastyari; from manufacturing, jobs, refugees on Manus Island and Australia Post, to the proposed Queensland coal mine Adani and media diversity in Australia.

“It is an opportunity for a free flying discussion, with people mostly talking about the issues of the week, I wanted to keep it as informal as possible.

“I am hosting these events all around the state -I say it in jest but I am going for NSW’s biggest pub crawl.

“If you go to a pub in a regional community and make yourself available for a few hours on a Saturday, people will come and have a chat and express an opinion. 

“Not everyone is going to agree, and not everyone agreed today, but it is all good, and I think it went really well,” Mr Dastyari said.

Mr Dastyari said that he was hosting these pub events to try and break away from the Sydney bubble and to try and find out what people all over the state are talking about.

“When you are a Sydney politician like I am, charged with the responsibility of a whole state, it is very easy to get caught in the Sydney-Canberra bubble, which is all consuming, but I am trying to drag myself out of it and spend Saturdays in different towns as much as I can,” he said.

“What these events allow me to do is road test what people think about certain ideas, I think it was interesting that giving a banking license to Australia Post came up as a question, along with media diversity and some of the questions around tax, but it is a great opportunity for me to see what issues are really important to people.

“As I continue these politics in the pub events it will be interesting to see if the same questions are raised with me all over the state or only in certain pockets.” 

Mark Hughes, the local Australian Worker’s Union representative for the Mid North Coast said he was happy with the turnout.

“I think we are very happy with the turnout and I think people really appreciate when high profile politicians come to town and take the concerns of the people back to Canberra,” Mr Hughes said.

“It wasn’t a surprise to me to hear questions surrounding jobs and growth in the area along with environmental questions and people trying to gauge what the flow on will be here,” he said.

As part of the trip Dastyari visited Wauchope on Saturday as well.