Agmates

I don’t think the article goes far enough. The basic architecture of the National’s failure over these years has not been the cosiness with the Liberals but rather, in the very notion of a distinct rural party within the existing state and federal structure. If there had been distinct rural states within the federal structure then there would have been no such failure.

The maintenance of the existing structure with a rural minority party representing it has ensured that every expression of the legitimate interests of regional electors has been easily categorised as a partisan political opinion rather than a statement of relevant fact.

Once it has been categorised as political opinon, those involved in the policy process then have a choice of accepting it or rejecting it. Whereas, statements of relevant fact MUST be considered by EVERY policy process to avoid falling within the meaning of ‘improper exercise of power’.

So the very presence of a distinct rural party, rather than distinct rural states, has allowed the wholesale neglect of core rural interests to the point where we now have overwhelming evidence of failed health care policy which can still be dismissed as mere political rhetoric. The former Qld Health Minister’s defence of “Dr Death” in the face of damning evidence is a good example.

The solution will take time and it must be allowed to evolve. The first step in that evolution is to merge the parties so that the lack of proper regional self governance is no longer camouflaged by an urban Liberal faction holding itself out as a less and less credible distinct rural party.

Amalgamating the two parties can’t be the answer because we’ve had conservative government over the years without amalgamation.
I believe our Party politicians have forgotten their job is to represent their constituency. Instead, they obediently bow to Party policy and the voice of the people they purport to represent is only heard when it’s in agreement with the Party’s policies and agenda.

I understand your perspective Val and Steve, but rural Australia will never be properly represented until there are 3 or 4 rural state Premiers at the COAG table getting the proper share of the GST cake and spending it on their own priorities.

When there are rural state Premiers they will be free to fund the kind of research that currently never sees the light of day. They can attract international funds to projects that metropolitan Premiers would never support. They could shape immigration policy so we get some real farm workers instead of backpackers on a day trip.

A stand alone National Party will only mimic the Democrats.

What was clearly wrong with the democrats, Steve, is that they didn’t survive. They are in the process of leaving the Senate for the last time tomorrow. Hardly a good role model.

The problem with a rural party is that they will be pigeon holed into a farmers party and that will allow the Liberals to continue making inroads into the provincial cities that must be held if a rural party is to have any clout at all.

And most people who live close to a state border have no idea what people are going on about when they complain of the “duplication”. Residents of Tenterfield already get their hospital treatment in Stanthorpe. Ditto for the Tweed. For most people the state boundary rarely enters their mind. It is just an administrative line that they cross many times each week as they go about their lives.

This duplication issue was always a red herring. Compared to all the lost opportunities and castrated futures that metropolitan governments have inflicted on regional areas, a duplicated parliament is really small beer.

And it is getting worse. Half of all the population increase in the SE corner now comes from regional Queensland. But that is not some blind fate that we have no influence over, it is the direct result of centralist policies applied by people who really don’t care if the bush dies.

I’ll take a bit of ‘duplication’ any day before I gladly go into that long goodnight.

My interest in this situation is from the perspective of a person watching a dead cat to see which way it will bounce. The cat was not catching many mice but it occupied a space allocated to a good mouser and didn’t deliver.

The North Qld new state movement has been plugging along for more than a century but there has been little focus on the issue for the very good reason that it was only ten years ago that we had a National Party Premier.

But another 500,000 people have crossed the border since then and essentially none of them have ever voted for a National MP, let alone a National Premier. Borbidge jagged one last hurrah but those days are now dead and buried. If the South East did not vote for a National Premier in the last two elections they never will. Dreaming about doing it again is what I would call a real long shot.

Interestingly, NSW Farmers have passed motions at the last three AGMs to investigate the feasibility of non-metropolitan states. That is, more than 50% of rural opinion leaders want out of metropolitan political dominance. The writing is much clearer on the wall in NSW that they will never get to see a person they actually voted for become Premier as long as the existing structure remains.

My guess is that the same message will sink in up here when Barnaby fails to get re-elected due to the influx of green/left voters in the South East.

Interestingly, surveys of opinion on constitutional reform in both states indicate that about two thirds of voters want some sort of reform, either the abolish states option that will never get up or new states that could. Our focus groups have revealed that the abolish states people have not thought about the practicalities while the smaller group favouring new states were evenly divided between those who have thought it through and others who have simply always favoured a state of their own, as in New England (NSW) and North Queensland.

A conference was held on the issue in Sydney last year with papers from people like Prof. Wiltshire, former head of the Commonwealth Grants Commission, who pointed out that the entire federal structure was designed in the expectation that a number of new states would be formed by now. He saw it as the only way to make federalism work properly.

Well thank God for that…..What a wonderful exchange, congrats to you both, love the strong points, forget the animosity.

Ian, I reckon the new state idea has legs, I can tell you that it lies just below the surface in many Northern and Western (Queensland) political communities, perhaps it is time to widen its public consideration. The boundary is easy as with the need to obtain urban support, it is the daylight saving line.

And the democrats, well frankly I think they got what they deserved, when they gave us the GST. There is hardly a small business person who is not angered every quarter by the paper work impost, and on many farms it is the women, the Dems natural constituency who sit for days doing the infamous BAS. Politics is alive and in constant change as our world.

If the National party in Queensland wants to swallow up the Queensland Liberal Party then that is one thing. If on the other hand they want to give up their ideas and assets to a disorganize rabble like the Libs then I wonder about the logic. It will be impossible in the face of the single desk debacle to convince a large number of wheat producers to vote for them, but we are not large in numbers in Queensland anyway.

The problem of the decline of the Nats in Queensland is more to with the refusal of the elected members to hear ordinary members.

I need to give an example. In the early days of the Telstra debate a central council meeting occurred at Longreach. Several branches and electorate councils had resolutions to retain public ownership, were all gathered together to form a single resolution for council to deal with.

The debate lasted over an hour, in the end only a handful of votes came against the resolution, notably all were Federal members and advisor’s and families, a handful in fact.

One un named senator, yes one of ours, went outside and in the face of the resolution told the media he would not follow its direction, as he had done a deal with the prime minister. Now for delegates who have traveled entirely at their expense, given the time, paid the accommodation to represent their little communities this is a dreadful blow, some would never return.

Like the spider web ridden room, where all the resolutions go, each with a little local problem and some branches best endeavor to offer a solution, a connection right to the coal face of community, a complete layer of contempt for the very branches who constitute the representation of community most desperately needed for both the communities and for the system.

These are the practical issues, which have destroyed the National Party, when resolution after resolution wants to retain public ownership of certain infrastructure and it is sold anyway, with the support of the party MPs, not the members, who represent the community. The party then wants to retain respect and credibility in the eyes of the community and from its members. Yes many of these things are to do with industry policy, but many are at a very base level, where the well being of individuals and community matter and where political foundation are cast.

You may want to say well some of our MPs have lacked strength. I contend that they have become what their ordinary branch members are not. Whether it is that they have a certain malleability which then allows osmosis to occur in Canberra or some other reason is not clear, suffice to say when the political wind changes and opposition becomes a reality, public positions shift much closer to their constituency.

What is needed is a new determination to act, with new people elected who will need once again to build trust and respect in the eyes of the public. This will need to be driven from the bottom up rather than prescriptively by some individuals who have themselves presided over the demise of the party.

Rowell Walton

Thanks for the feedback, Rowell and Steve, it has been a great exchange. I couldn’t have scripted a better “devils advocate” Steve. And please excuse me if any part of what I said came over as being agro. I spend so much of my time jaming common sense down the throats of green and departmental fools that the language tools sometimes get used in the wrong places.

You are right Rowell, the issue is just under the surface everywhere. When I do public presentations on the issue we always do proper surveys of the audience before and after to see how their views have changed. And in most cases people start out just curious to see what it is all about but on the way out, with all the facts and minus the official disinformation, they are welded on to the idea.

We had one gathering at Killarney where the projector didn’t work but the audience sat there for two hours with hardly a shuffle and no break as we went through it without any of the visual bells and whistles.

And if anyone has a group that might want a really thought provoking presentation (at AGM etc) then I’ll be glad to come for the price of petrol. My long suffering wife, Joan, will shoot me if I do it for nix.

You can also see some of the material at http://www.regionalstates.com/

Steve,
I am a bit concerned at your insistance that we should scrap the states and just have one monolithic Federal Govt. Who are you advocating for ? Isn’t that what the centralist Planners are aiming for?
By losing state sovereignty we lose some of the checks and balances that our wise forefathers sought to protect when we underwent Federation. Not everyone was in favour of that transaction, and in some ways we might have been better off had we not done so.
You make quite an ado about the frustrations of interstate movements, railways etc, but what about the positive aspects of our various identities?
I’m a South Australian, and politically speaking, find the thought of being submerged into an amalgum abhorrent. We South Aussies have got a great historical heritage. We may well be better off if our states regained more dignity and self- determination, rather than being snuffed out. Why should we desire an amorphous identity?
What is wrong with diversity? Flexibility and innovation are more likely to prosper in an environment of independence than in a stifling centralist one.
Fifty years ago Canberra was much more limited in her jurisdiction, and much more in tune with the Australian Constitution than it is now. Many of our problems have arisen because the states are being fiscally choked out of action while Canberra takes over more and more control.
The old adage that, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” must apply here. That is what many of the citizens feared at the time of federation. The Constitution was written in a way that limited the power of Federal Govt, but sadly these limitations are being circumvented.
Perhaps a couple more states would be a good idea!

Yes, Rosalie. Few of the ’scap the states’ camp seem to understand what a radical constitutional revision would be required. As the Senate is currently a ’states house’ the entire role of the Senate would be on the table.

More to the point, given the past record of reducing landowners rights at every opportunity, who knows what sort of rot the urban elites would come up with if given such free rein. These people can’t even be trusted to tinker with the status of the ceremonial head of state, let alone be handed a blank cheque for every left wing whimsy they can come up with.

And few understand that while commonality is desirable, it is not so important that folks in Atherton should have every aspect of their lives dictated to them by Sydney and Melbourne.

Lets not forget that the sole reason for the formation of SA, Qld and WA was because they did not think the good folks of Sydney attended to their interests anywhere near as well as they should. And nothing has changed. In fact, the same can now be said of Brisbane.

New states are the means by which diverging communities protect both their interests and their values.

G’day Ian & Rosalie,

Rosalie I’m pleased that you are so fond of your South Australian Government and Your pride in South Australia. You obviously don’t have many issues with 3 tiers of government - Federal, State & Local which regulates everything from owning a dog, building a shed on your own land, where you can and can’t park, walk, drive to using land you own.

It would appear to me that the property rights issues that citizens across Australia are facing are State Government generated. Farmers in QLD & NSW have their State Governments to thank for land clearing bans and Native Veg Acts that make it a criminal act to cut down a tree on your land.

I just happen to believe that the states ‘protect’ us from nothing. Two tiers of government Federal and Regional based governments and no states would be a far better solution as you take out one whole level of duplicated administrative executive.

Anyway - its all academic and as you point out Ian will never happen.

Thanks for the correction, Rosalie. Sorry so late responding but have been down at farm for past 3 days.

Steve’s sentiment about the states not protecting our rights is, in part, true. But that is only because the existing states are dominated by urban interests. If there already was a few rural/regional states then there is no doubt that they would have taken a quite different approach.

And there is also no doubt that our only hope of ever reforming or correcting some of the mistakes is to exclude the urban swing voters from the equation altogether. A merged National Liberal Party will always be looking over its shoulder, compromising the interests of rural voters to satisfy the whims of the urban punters.

And thanks for the offer of an article, Steve. Will get to it soon as can.

I can understand you both having doubts but lets not forget that we already have a “Regional State” in the form of Tasmania. And they have a State Labor Government unlike any of the metropolitan dominated ones elsewhere. They protect forestry jobs while maintaining a good reserve system etc. Both sides know that their interests are directly reliant on their own local industries whereas both sides of metropolitan dominated states seriously believe they can get by without looking after the regions.

Once a city gets a population over 1 million they get an economic momentum of their own and are no longer dependent on their regions. And that, more than anything else, marks the kiss of death for any of those regions.

And as far as merely transfering the problem, Steve, best to look at the numbers. North Qld has a population of 700,000 of which 140,000 live in Townsville and 120,000 live in Cairns. That is only 37% of the electorate. And even then almost half of that urban population will still have direct family or business links with the rest of the regional community. That is a huge improvement on the current situation where most of the SEQ population have no links at all.

And if the NQ electors have their head screwed on they will ensure that neither city is the capital so neither can become a dominant metropolitan centre. The purpose of a state is to serve the people of that state, not to produce an ever bigger, uglier and less livable city, as the clowns running the SE Corner seem to think.

Many of the “farm States” in the US have capital city with less than 25% of the total population and none of them are clamoring to be run from Chicago, New York or LA.

And Rosalie, I have had a close look at the problem with the major farm groups and have concluded that the problem is caused by the paid, head office, staff. They all see their role as a link between farmers and the city government. They are city residents and continually reinterpret farm policy to make it what they think as more “acceptable” to urban ears. And in so doing they throw the baby out with the bathwater.

A regional State will not need such intermediaries. The local member is much more likely to have been the local farmers rep before entering the new parliament.

And most important of all, the most feared enemy of the bureaucrats is a small, flat, heirarchy with clear esponsibilities and direct links to the elected representatives. The trash we have at the moment need dark alleys and multiple layers to avoid their obligations and hide their misdeads and deceptive conduct. They are not entirely a creature of large metropolitan government, but it is certainly their habitat of choice.

Thank you Ian for the detail.

I’ve been agonizing for some time over the issue of more states or no states. The current city centric legislation, regulation and control by the State Governments just isn’t working in any of the states.

Agriculture is being decimated by this current structure, because the ability to manage properties is lost to the farmer.

Instead management is by a multitude of State Government departments working in no particular direction at all; with no idea about the individual properties they are impacting; thus making properties unworkable from the farmers perspective.

I think it is much worse than that, John. I think DNRM and EPA operate in a total moral and ethical vacuum. A good example was the “negotiations” with Agforce over the new Leaseholder arrangements.

The government added Aila Keto to the mix despite the fact that she has no expertise in rangeland management and is elected by no-one to represent no-one but herself and departmental bottom feeders.

And the evidence is clear that the government used Keto to apply duress that they could not, lawfully, apply themselves. The call, from Keto, for lease periods to be reduced to a ridiculous 8 to 10 years only was a totally unreasonable threat, and far beyond any concept of conscionable behaviour.

But not only did the government keep this Beattie crony in the loop, they used that preposterous and totally unworkable option as leverage to extract agreement from Agforce to terms that still come very close to unreasonable.

But when you have a government and bureaucracy that is capable of behaviour towards its own citizenry that, if exhibited by a company in negotiations in trade or commerce would clearly constitute unconscionable conduct, then one must accept that there is zero basis for any sort of long term partnership.

It is like child molestation. There are no excuses and no extenuating circumstances. They have crossed the line of a clear community taboo and any suggestion that this will not lead to repeat behaviour is delusional.

There is NO future for the bush without major change. And new regional states are the only option for change that is currently available to us.