Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes
What a difference a weeks makes in politics. The political landscape of Australia has been turned on it’s head since the defeat of John Howards Liberal / National Coalition last Saturday.
The Landslide victory of Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party, and the subsequent change in Liberal Party leadership reflects back to us a team of political leaders who are a far more realistic reflection of modern Australia than the home spun 1950’s vision that Howard / Vaile represented.
The really tragic thing for the National Party is that Mark Vaile understood this when he quit leadership and called for generational change - but the Party itself doesn’t and hence is destined for oblivion.
Liberal Leader John Howard, Nationals Leader Mark Vailes and Treasurer Peter Costello’s all represented what was once middle class Australia and now they are gone. These three all represented the traditional middle class family of a husband as bread winner with the wife as the stay home care giver to their children and in doing so sacrificing her own career options.
Australians have overwhelmingly elected Kevin Rudd to lead the nation. Rudd is our first Prime Minister in modern Australia born after world war II.
He has a modern marriage. For starters his wife Therese Rein retains her own name. Whilst married the couple have shared the raising of the children whilst Kevin pursued 1stly a diplomatic then a political career. Rather than stay at home Therese has build a global company from scratch that today has a turn over of $170 million dollars a year.
Julia Gillard is Australia’s first female deputy PM and now the second most powerful person in Australia. In her late 40’s she is unmarried, has no children and before politics was a successful lawyer.
In just seven days look at the change of leadership in the “conservative” Liberal party founded by Robert Menzies and having governed the country in true Menzies style for the last 12 years.
From seemingly no where Dr Brendan Nelson is now the leader. The 3 times married, motorbike riding, former earring wearing GP who until the early 1990’s was a member of the Labor party.
Julie Bishop for the 1st time in Liberal Party history is the female deputy leader. Like her opposite number Bishop is single and enjoyed a successful career in law before becoming a politician.
In the last 12 months Federally the Labor and Liberal parties have elected leads who are a much more accurate reflection of who we are as a nation in 2007. But not the Nationals. Their slide in the last two decades from 22 seats in 1988 to just 10 should be telling them this. Mark Vaile said as much when he called for generational change in the Party leadership.
The party will against all calls for change and renewal elect party stalwart Warren Truss as it’s leader tomorrow. Opting for his “experience” and the status quo over the opportunity for rebirth and renewal of the party.
Independent candidate Cate Molloy who polled really well in Truss’s seat of Wide Bay summed Truss’s 17 year reign as local member when she said in summing up the election result and Truss holding the seat despite a near 4% swing to Labor:
“Lets hope Wide Bay is not further punished for not electing a Labor member. Let’s also hope Warren Truss ends the neglect and contempt for his electorate which has seen its northern end (Maryborough where Truss lives) deteriorate to, if not the poorest, certainly one of the poorest (which it is) in Australia with high unemployment, high poverty, acute housing affordability, crumbling killer roads and poor health care.”
It has to be remembered that Truss has been the Minister for Agriculture from 1999 to 2006 and the minister for Trade from 2006 until now. He has done an appauling job in that time of looking after the interests of the 7.5 million rural and regional Australians he and the National party are ment to represent. How can the party then elect Truss as their leader to bring about renewal and rebirth of the parties flagging fortunes?
As a constituent of Wide Bay, I’d suggest that as the new leader of the National Party Mr Truss might like to take an “iron lung” with him to Canberra, just to see if that might help him.
At least the QLD Nationals have seen some sense in putting Senator Barnaby Joyce up for nomination as the Nationals Leader in the upper house over Senator Ron Boswell. Boswell as one of John Howards “yes men” is just too on the nose even for the QLD National’s executive.
That’s a start in the right direction, but all of that is undone by the dogged clinging to the neo conservative politics that the election of Truss as Party Leader represents.
My prediction is that if the party faithful against the mainstream flow of modern day life in Australia stick with the neo conservative politics of Truss that the National Party will continue to dwindle and die.
As the numbers of people who yearn for the Australia of the 1950’s fade into obsurity with the passing of time, so too unfortunatley will The National Party who at one time in history could claim to have really been the only Party of Rural and Regional Australians.
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Truss has a very poor track record and if he is elected leader of the Nationals they may very well follow the Democrats into oblivion.
G’day Anita,
Your comparison of the precarious position of the National Party to that which the Democrats found themselves in a few years ago is very intuitive.
Appointing Truss as leader and hence more of the same old tied policies is a very ominous sign for the party and the 7.5million people who live in Rural and Regional Australia and look to the Nationals to represent their interests federally
Cheers,
Steve Truman. - Agmates http://www.agmates.com
The fact is we should take the time to reflect and analise the structure of what is rural Australia now after an unfettered 11 year rule by the Nationals. Take the livestock sector, all livestock producers are compulsorily bound by statute to give up our private property rights and hand them to a series of unelected “civil assemblies†that is MLA Limited and the Peak Councils. The structure is designed to oppress the family farm and private ownership in favour of “corporatism†in the political sense. This structure, the monopoly, the personnel, the ideology and the oppression contained therein is the brainchild of the National Party, to mind our private affairs and business on the inference that we cannot. It is regulation in its most oppressive form; it is hated by all and was forced upon all of us, by these people who can’t believe that we don’t love them.
Even down to the way it is financed, through a Tax on the farmer’s animal in addition to income tax. There is a twist to the finance; they have a built in mechanism where by they can allocate embarrassing amounts of Tax funds to large corporate producers under the guise of R&D and/or marketing at the expense of the family farmer; this apparently helps MLA in its AGM voting agenda.
The days of Sir John McEwen are long gone, the policies of rural Australia do not and have not for many decades emanated from the bush; they have been formulated by unelected committees residing in Canberra, enjoying affluence and political patronage supplied by the National Party, completely detached from the bush, and enforcing their preferred policy from the top down to this level with ruthless disregard; and then when faced with electoral destruction, they cry…!!!!! We should have no sympathy for them, they made their own bed now they should lay on it!!