Vale the Nationals
The future of the National Party in Australia is under a cloud following the defection of Victorian Senator Julian McGauran to the Liberals.
Most analysts seem to think the party is in terminal decline. The evidence certainly supports that.
Three-cornered contests after a sitting member retires are invariably won by the Liberal Party.
The question has to be asked: What does the National Party stand for?
I joined the Nationals in 1984 because I believed they were socially conservative and economically interventionist. I’m not a rationalist who believes ureservedly in the free market. For country communities to progress they need government intervention and investment that generates economic activity.
The Federal Nationals have sold out on those principles and they have suffered the electoral consequences.
The Victorian Nationals were travelling the same road under Pat McNamara, but Peter Ryan has at least asserted himself and arrested the decline.
I met WA Nationals leader Brendon Grylls during the week and he’s charting a similar course, albeit from a weaker base and in the context of a damaging electoral redistribution.
I think the Nationals will always have a natural tendency to support the Liberals in Government, but in order to exert any real influence they have to forego the ministerial perks and operate from the cross benches.
There may even be times, especially at state level, when they have to make deals with Labor, as Karlene Maywald has done in South Australia.
There are many independent rural MPs throughout Australia now holding seats that would otherwise be safe for the National Party if it were more parochial about representing the bush.
If the Nationals disappeared or amalgamated with the Liberals I have no doubt that a new country-based party would emerge.
I think that will happen anyway, either with the Nationals or without them. All it needs is a charismatic rational leader to make it happen.
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