Nationals Leader Warren Truss [pictured] has finally been given a wake up call in the light of 2 events over the weekend. Under his leadership the Federal National party has hit it’s all time lowest ebb and he is now talking about the party going it alone.
Agmates is attuned to the bush and we’ve told the Federal Nationals that it is declining because it has put its coalition with the dominant Liberal party before the people that vote for them in Rural & Regional Australia.
See a selection previous articles in which we have said exactly that.
[24/06/08] Nationals Cosy Relationship with the liberals is Killing it
[22/06/08] Liberals Betray Nationals & Rural Australia
[02/02/08] Who can save the Nationals from themselves?
[02/02/08] Nationals Must face their Irrelevance
[11/12/07] Farmer and Life-time Nationals Voter - No More
[02/12/07] National Party Ignore Vail’s Call for Gen Change
[23/11/07] National party’s Sorry record of Battling the bush
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I could go on but here’s what happened in Lyne and WA that confirms what we have been telling Truss and the Nationals.
Not that they listen to Agmates. They gave up listening to the people they are supposed to represent years ago.
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1. The Nationals got thumped in the Heart land seat of Lyne. Losing Lyne is a huge blow. The Nationals have held Lyne since it was created in 1949. The Nationals are now down to just 9 seats in the Federal House of reps. Just 10 months ago, before a Federal Election the Lyne Bi election they had 12 seats.
The seat was won by independent Rob Oakeshott [ pictured] with a whooping 30% swing against the Nationals.
2. The ‘go it alone’ National party in Western Australia lead by 35 year old wheat farmer Brendan Grylls [pictured] has convincingly won 4 seats, up from 3 and now holds the balance of power in that State. They are offering to form government with Labor or Liberal - as long as they guarantee to spend 25% of the states mining royalties or about $700million a year in rural and regional WA communities.
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The statement on the Western Australian National Party Web site says it all:
“The Nationals WA are an independent political party with a charter to represent the people who choose to live, work and invest in regional Western Australia.
We aim to empower regional Western Australians by gaining the balance of power in the State Parliament. This will enable us to deliver on our key policy, Royalties for Regions [see video below] .
Our role is to ensure everyone, no matter where they live, can prosper in these booming times.’
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The message to the Warren Truss and the Federal Nationals is clear. You don’t need John Andersons review or party hierarchy naval gazing to tell you what you need to do too reverse the slide, just look at what the voters told you through the ballot box last weekend.
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1. The Nationsl Lost Lyne because:
The defection of lifelong Nationals voters who felt Mr Vail did little for the electorate while he was deputy prime minister. In fact the inner circle was fearful that Oakeshott would stand against Vail at the last Federal election.
2. The WA Nationals did very well & will decide who governs WA because:
They ‘went it alone’ and with the party liberated from the shackles of the liberal party coalition they campaigned on a ‘royalties for regions’ policy to return more of the benefits of WA resources boom to the WA rural communities.
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Warren Truss is now ‘talking’ about the party ‘going it alone‘ and splitting from the Liberal coalition.
More talk, more talk, more talk. No action, no action, no action.
Warren, until you as leader have the fortitude to ‘lead’ an independent National party you and the once great party of rural and regional Australia will continue to get exactly what you deserve for selling your soul to the Liberal party and betraying those that you purport to represent.
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Update: 5pm
Senator Barnaby Joyce Calls for the Nationals to go it alone.
“OUTSPOKEN Queensland National Party senator Barnaby Joyce today called for the federal Nationals to go it alone and abandon the Coalition.”
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Have Your say! Tell us what you think the Federal Nationals should do.
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Related Posts
- Barnaby Joyce Takes Next Step Towards Leadership of the Nationals
- Liberals Betray Nationals & Rural Australia
- Nationals Cosy relationship with Libs is Killing It.
- Nationals Must Face their Irrelevance & Merg
- It’s On - Nationals to Form New Conservative Party
Tags: Brendan Grylls, Lyne, National Party, Ron Oakeshott, WA, Warren Truss
Well at Last some common sense by members of the National Party.
Brendan is a breath of fresh air in the political landscape, his party in WA though will need to think very seriously about the coalition to form government, it is almost a necessity to join Labor as it would damage significantly any capacity to negotiate with any other party in the future if they simply, like so many times before joined the Liberals.
If he can achieve a good result for country WA, he will most certainly be re-elected and if Labor was to prove excessively difficult in government then an alternative choice could be made at a later time.
As difficult as it seems for the old Nationals members to come to terms with, the philosophy of the old Nationals (pre the 80’s) is closer to old labor (pre 80’s) and if both respect each others needs a great partnership could unfold where the needs of each constituency is taken into account rather than a competitive process where the bush is repetitively given the poor cousin treatment which has included an industry policy which is nothing less than dog eat dog and has resulted in the destruction of our communities and all they stand for.
Labor too will need to realise , identify and remedy their own failures, especially federally as it seems Rudd is a Dud and is recirculating the old policies from the 80’s ie removal of the Single desk from wheat growers.
Its no good repeating failed policies against the will of your people and expect your people to continue to support you.
At last , real alternative, it was inevitable as those disenfranchised continue to seek effective representation.
“until you as leader have the fortitude to ‘lead’ an independent National party you and the once great party of rural and regional Australia will continue to get exactly what you deserve for selling your soul to the Liberal party and betraying those that you purport to represent.”
- and what a terrible betrayal it has been.
Hopefully “Royalties for Regions” does not translate to “more roads for regions”.
Brendon is a bit harsh on some of the Pert spending… the rail line is great, the new stadium - well you’re not telling me country folk don’t love footy, a museum… well Perth be damned for thinking a museum would be good, and the amazingly visionary Perth Waterfront project is cost neutral to the government.
It should also be noted that the Nationals are making the news because of the balance of power, not really because they have done any better than before. But good on Grylls - an ALP/Nats arrangement would be very interesting to see.
It looks like there is a chance that Labor will be able to govern without them however, so the Nats should act now rather than wait a week when their position of power may have evaporated in to thin air.
What I would really like to know but probably never will is -
When the Nationals sold their soul to the Liberals in the ’90’s when the brilliant manipulator Howard was in power did they decide to abandon small Australian family farmers in favour of large corporate US agri-business in order to promote the ‘free trade’ doctrine dictated by the World Bank, the WTO and the IMF ?
Was the support of this globalist agenda done in order to ensure the uni-polar massive corporate power of the elite of the US/UK/Israel and some countries in the EU ?
So small farmers here and in poorer countries overseas have been belted, wiped out, and suicided for daring to stay on the land trying to produce food and fibre.
Did the Nationals sell us out because of extreme Christian Zionist dogma trying to get our population to hate all Moslem’s and protect Israel or was it for massive corporate greed (with a complicit media ) for power and resources in the world or was it a combination of both?
AND they are still going along with the ridiculous globalist GW carbon trading dogma and they are not speaking against it.
SO WHAT USE ARE THEY ?
Interesting questions here Von.
I used to try and work out why also. I suspect Tim Fischer thought it would help the third world to be dragged out of poverty. I think John Anderson thought that Free Trade and deregulation; and support for Free Enterprise were one and the same.
Many people involved at the party hierarchy were large producers or were city business people and were comfortable with the policies.
Ron Boswell (Qld Senator ) who once would have opposed many of the policies; once told me that the little industries (fruit and veg, seafood, pork etc) would do it tough with free trade, but the big industries ( beef and sugar ) would get a big boon.
The free trade agreement with America made a mockery of those comments as it was no go for sugar and you had to wait 15 to 20 years to get significant benefits for beef.
Both Anderson and Boswell told me that 80% of Victorian dairy farmers supported deregulation - a figure I found out later was probably wrong. The dairy industry is now recovering somewhat - 8 years later and with hundreds less dairy farmers.
I was very happy when the WTO talks collapsed and marked the beginning of the end to the bogus so-called ‘free trade’ economic theory.
Its been bad enough here but it has been much worse in poor countries where it has forced many small farmers into the big cities and caused many more into great poverty or suicide.
It has FAILED big time as good economic policy - it has been a disaster.
Our deregulated AWB has just become another victim of this mad globalist agenda.
WTO
This result confirms Sen Joyce’s line, “differentiate or disappear”, but where does that leave Laurence Springborg? The next election here in Qld will highlight whether the party of regional Queensland has, already, disappeared.
The Nats in WA are on the right track but it is not just an issue of fair distribution of royalties. It is a broader issue of equitable distribution of all government expenditure, and this includes additional funding in the regions to off-set the proportion of each department’s head office and overhead expenses that are all spent in the capital region.
The numbers are simple. If 15% of GDP is state expenditure and 1/5th of that is purely head office outlays then there is an annual leakage of 3% of GDP from the regions to the capital. And I challenge anyone to run that sort of leakage from a regional economic circular flow model and get any other result but long term decline.
The Nationals need to sniff the wind properly and become the party of regional autonomy. Any improvement in regional autonomy would be a clear gain but the long term goal must be full regional self government as new states within the commonwealth.
This is the only way to ensure that regional elected MPs allocate their own regional share of GST money on their own regional priorities. Remember, it is almost 20 years now in QLD since regionally elected MPs had ANY say in how the regions would be governed. Another 20 years and there will be nothing left.
Regional autonomy is the one policy that is capable of attracting large numbers of regional labor voters. The WA Nats picked up more than 20% of the primary vote in the Pilbara with this policy when their farming base is only 4 or 5%.
Think about it.