Bridget McKenzie had a career-building win yesterday – just months into the job as rural health minister.

She assembled very important people from umpteen universities on the banks of the Murray where they praised the budget-announced Murray Darling Medical School Network. This can’t have pleased existing medical school heads and it certainly can’t  have been the prefered result for La Trobe and Charles Sturt universities, which long-wanted a med school of their own. And yet all were there, making-nice. In the process Minister McKenzie delivered enough of a regional med school to keep her National Party colleagues happy without the big cost to state and commonwealth budgets more med schools involve.