Farmers are shooting their sheep and shops are shutting their doors as the effects of climate change and the skyrocketing price of water combine to make life on the land even harder.

Water is harder to come by - because of the increasingly longer and hotter summers, longer periods of drought - and because the water market itself is now a $2 billion industry in which the price of a million litres has grown by 5900 per cent in 20 years.

But communities that depend on agriculture to sustain them are seeing none of the money and locals seem resigned to having their concerns go unaddressed.

Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce - the former deputy prime minister seeking reelection for the seat of New England - is caught up in yet another scandal that has nothing to do with them.

Two years ago, amid talk of his marriage breakdown and an affair with his staffer, and following the dual citizenship imbroglio, Joyce increased his share of the vote in the New England byelection.

Karen Davis owns Tamworth coffee shop Teamo and makes Joyce's morning flat whites (full cream, no sugar). She says the publicity - regardless of whether its good or bad - means "he is in our face all the time".

"You could put Shaun the Sheep in a Nationals jacket and they would still be voted in," says her colleague.

The stranglehold has frustrated some, including former Nationals voter and farmer Norm Deaches.

"We need some independent policemen there," he says.

Inverell cattle farmer Glenn Morris has taken to his horse to try and draw attention to climate change. He is spending five days riding around the electorate wearing a Driza-Bone coat emblazoned with the words "Climate Action Now".

"Plants are at tipping point for survival, we are at real risk of losing our vegetation," he says.

Business is hurting too. Two years ago Teamo coffee shop had six staff members. Now it has two and a part-timer.

Across the road Ashley Hawken runs Capitol Music Tamworth: "There are a lot of ukulele clubs around here. Almost every town has one. A lot of ladies in particular who are into the ukulele thing might have come and bought a new $300 or $400 uke," he says. "Now they come and buy a packet of strings."

But if locals are frustrated with their MP, it's not showing up in the polling or at the bookie's office. Joyce is an almost unbeatable favourite to retain the seat - which he holds by a margin of 16.4 per cent - on May 18.

But he's not taking anything for granted.'

"I'm campaigning like I'm on 1 per cent," Joyce said when The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age caught up with him in Tamworth on Friday.

In the second week of the campaign Joyce should have been spruiking the Nationals message of putting rural communities first and talking up the benefits of being a partner in a Coalition government.

Instead he faced questions about his role in an $80 million water purchase made when he was agriculture and water minister in 2017.

The water was bought under the Murray Darling Basin Plan from two Queensland properties owned by Eastern Australia Agriculture.

A parent company, Eastern Australia Irrigation, was domiciled in a known tax haven, the Cayman Islands. Energy Minister Angus Taylor co-founded the parent company and directed it until he was elected to Parliament in 2013, but denies benefiting from the transaction.

Eastern Australia Agriculture made a $52 million profit on the water purchase, and transferred much of it to the Caymans. Critics say the water was bought for as much as double the market price and has little environmental value.

The complexities of the water market are such that the news - in a week of public and school holidays - might have dropped off the agenda.

But Joyce agreed to an interview on Monday night with ABC Radio National host Patricia Karvelas.

The interview lasted nearly half an hour as Joyce admitted he signed off on the deal without questioning key details because, he said, it was "not my job".

Joyce grew angrier throughout the interview and said criticism of the deal was "horse crap".

Speaking to the Herald and the Age, Joyce acknowledged his performance in the interview possibly poured oil on the fire.

"I was incredibly angry at the assertion that was made that I used my piggy bank to pay money to my mates," he said. "That is a statement of corruption and it is absolutely utterly bull."

He concedes his manner in the interview was "over the top" but maintains his motivation was correct.

"I had to knock it on the head straight away," he said.

Joyce has come through worse before - he had to fight a byelection in late 2017 when the High Court held he was a dual New Zealand citizen. Joyce was returned with an increased margin.

New England doesn't seem to be for turning.

And it would be a huge change if it did.

Joyce holds the seat with a more than comfortable margin of 16.4 per cent. Only 10 Coalition-held seats have larger margins.

In neighbouring Cowper the story is similar but its cast is very different.

There, high-profile former independent MP Rob Oakeshott seeking to make a comeback.

The seat is held by the Nationals by a margin of 12.6 per cent but the long-serving member Luke Hartsuyker is retiring and Oakeshott sees his moment.

"The government is cooked," he says.

"People forget the fact that in a dry continent, water matters, and it is essential to everything we do. There is a clear sense that it hasn't been treated with the respect it deserves by policymakers and they will be punished at the ballot box," he says.

"It's not a conservative area but it has been owned by the conservative party."

Cowper is one of the seats people will be watching on election night. It's unlikely the same attention will be paid to New England which lacks a strong contender to take on Joyce.

Still, those running against him are not shy about playing the man rather than the issues facing the electorate.

"Scandal is his shadow," says Clive Palmer's United Australia Party candidate Cindy Duncan of Joyce.

Adam Blakester is crowdfunding his campaign and positioning himself as economically centrist but environmentally focused. It's a play voters in city electorates such as Warringah and Wentworth are by now familiar with.

"[Joyce] has to have honestly one of the worst rap sheets of any parliamentarian since federation," Blakester says.

Both candidates are speaking at the Tenterfield School of the Arts, the same hall in which Henry Parkes gave his address calling for an Australian federation.

Two dozen locals have showed up for the first candidates' forum of the campaign in the tiny town just south of the Queensland border.

About 80 per cent of questions from the floor are about climate change.

Joyce is the only one of eight candidates who does not show up, but it doesn't appear to bother locals.

"I would bet my house that Barnaby will be re-elected," one voter says.

- SMH/The Age