Agmates

Newly elected Federal Member for Lyne Rob Oakeshott and fellow Independent Member For New England Tony Windsor in the lead up to the Lyne bi-election.

This is funny.

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Have your say!

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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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Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday launched an attack on opposition leader Brendan Nelson for saying the Murray Darling crisis is not the result of climate change:
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BRENDAN Nelson (pictured) was yesterday accused of being “blissfully immune” to the effects of climate change after he said the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin was not linked to global warming.

The Opposition Leader told the ABC on Monday night:

“What’s happening at the moment in the Murray-Darling Basin is a consequence of two things: mismanagement of the entire system for almost 100 years and also the worst drought in 100 years.

And it is quite wrong for people to suggest that what we’re seeing at the moment is a consequence of climate change.”

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Dr Nelson is 100% correct. In fact average annual rainfall has increased according to the very source that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd quotes - the Bureau of Meteorology.

There is no way anybody can blame the drought in Southern Australia on Climate Change, why because its all happened before.

In his attack on Brendan Nelson the PM says:

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“You need to get with the science on this,” the Prime Minister [kevin Rudd pictured] said. “Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.”

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In fact it is Prime Minister Rudd who needs to look at the science on this. The report that the PM is referring to predicts more frequent and horrific droughts.

Ecological niche modeler Dr David Stockwell, has checked the report’s modeling and assumptions and found them seriously flawed:

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“The most worrying failure was that simulations showed increases in droughted area over the last century in all regions, while the observed trends in drought decreased in five of the seven regions identified in the CSIRO/Bureau of Meteorology report.

Therefore there is no credible basis for the claims of increasing frequency of Exceptional Circumstances declarations made in the report.

These results are consistent with other studies finding lack of adequate validation in global warming effects modeling, and lack of skill of climate models at the regional scale.”

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But wait Dr Stockwell is not the only person who says that the science that PM Rudd is relying on is dodgy.

Ian Castles, is the former head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics He’s also checked the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO’s controversial report on future droughts, that the Kevin Rudd wants Brendan Nelson to take a look at.

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The key finding of the report, as presented in the opening words of Australia’s Primary Industry Minister Tony Burke’s [ pitured] media release of 6 July, was that:

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‘Australia could experience drought twice as often and the events will be twice as severe within 20 to 30 years.‘ …

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What the Minister Tony Burke didn’t mention was that the report hadn’t been reviewed by outsiders….

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“As it happens, a peer-reviewed study of the prospective incidence of droughts in Australia has just been published.

The paper ‘Comparison of suitable drought indices for climate change impacts assessment over Australia towards resource management’ appears in the current (August 2008) edition of the International Journal of Climatology - the journal of the UK Royal Meteorological Society.

It is authored by four CSIRO scientists, three of whom were also authors of the BoM/CSIRO report (Freddie Mpelasoka, Kevin Hennessy and Bryson Bates) and two of whom were Coordinating Lead Authors of the IPCC’s 2007 Assessment Report (Kevin Hennessy and Roger Jones)…

In short, the simulations from the two models (of the CSIRO and the Canadian Climate Centre) suggest that in the medium-term (20-30 years) there will be a tendency towards a small increase in drought frequency in most of Australia, but with decreases in drought frequency in some areas.

Although the peer-reviewed study comes from several of the same scientists, it gives no support to the cries of alarm and disaster which have accompanied the release of the BoM/CSIRO report…

The impression given by the peer-reviewed paper is vastly different from that given in the report to the Australian Government.”

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Or would Mr Rudd like to read what Steve McIntyre had to say. A new scientific paper has tested 18 years of predictions by global warming models against real-world rainfall and temperature. The result found is that when compared to what has acually already happened the climate models are useless.

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“Geographically distributed predictions of future climate, obtained through climate models, are widely used in hydrology and many other disciplines, typically without assessing their reliability. Here we compare the output of various models to temperature and precipitation observations from eight stations with long (over 100 years) records from around the globe. The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible,”

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However as demonstrated on the recent 60 Minutes program the Prime Minister has undying faith in the IPCC findings. He will let his ‘fact’ not be confused by any amount of new scientific data that does not confirm his beliefs.

Its now about ‘faith’ not science for PM Rudd.

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DAVID EVANS: I urge them [the Rudd Government] to look at the modern science, the evidence isn’t there. There is no evidence that carbon emissions cause a significant amount of global warming.

PM KEVIN RUDD: I am not, myself, a qualified scientist. I’m elected as Prime Minister of Australia to act on the basis of the considered scientific advice.

TARA BROWN: But it’s never too late to continue the debate is it?

PM KEVIN RUDD: Look at your kids in the eye tonight and ask yourself this question - “If we have this much evidence available to us now “on climate change and just refuse to act, “then what are the consequences for them?” The alternative, however, is to just stick your head in the sand and hope it all goes away.

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Brendan Nelson should be telling Kevin Rudd “You need to get with the science on this”.

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Have Your say!

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Prime minister Kevin Rudd is off overseas again. This will be his 8th oversea’s jaunt in just 10 months of being Prime Minister.

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Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has announced that he and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will go to the United Nations General Assembly [in New York] next month.

“One of the very significant events that the Prime Minister and I will be attending is the millennium development goal functions at the United Nations General Assembly,” he said.

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Lets see - this month PM Kevin Rudd has been to Beijing for the Olympics then home to fix the Murray Darling crisis, then off to the Pacific Island’s forum to hand out Jobs and rebuff Fiji. Then home to open the new session of Parliament and fix the education system.

Now off to New York to help the UN set its global goals.

Hows the PM feeling about his contribution to cutting global carbon emissions with all of the jet fuel he’s chewing up.

Strutting the world stage - and producing enormous amounts of hot air whilst the Australian economy slides backwards.

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Have your say!

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Federal Small Business Minister Craig Emerson wins an Agmates ‘onya’.

So ‘onya’ Craig, a huge thumbs up from Agmates.

At Agmates we respect a politician with intelligence, common sense and who is capable of “straight talking”.

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Craig (pictured below) is the member for Rankin in QLD.

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In his fantastic article the Rudd Labor minister gives the Green religion a proper spray.

Dark Green Barbarians.

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“Twenty-first century mysticism and superstition is finding expression in the big environmental debates.

Deep green extremists yearn for a return to a pre-industrial society, before the Enlightenment when faith and dogma prevailed over rational thinking and evidence-based science.

In this gentle agrarian society (absent environmentally destructive hard-hoofed farm animals), human beings are tolerated, as long as they leave no carbon footprint.”

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It is comforting to know that there are a few in the Rudd Labor cabinet who are awake to the Green Religion. I’m not sure if he’s actually a Global Warming skeptic, if not he’s not far off.

Don’t think he’ll ever get the Environment portfolio in the Dark Green Labor cabinet.

Well done Craig - you’re the first recipient of an Agmates ‘onya’.

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Have Your say! After you read Craig’s article why not come back here and give us your feedback. Who knows Craig might even read it?

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Australian Bureau of Statistic (ABS) figures for 2007-08 just release show that domestic beef prices are helping hold down the CPI and thus inflation.

Australia’s Inflation rate came in at 4.5%. Food prices across the board increased less that the overall inflation rate at 3.9%.

ABS found that beef prices increased by just 1.7%

Over the same period Milk prices rose 12%, Poultry 11%, Pork 7% and bread 7%.

Interestingly Bill Bray, president of the Cattle Council of Australia, expressed disappointment that beef did not keep pace with other foods.

Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) spent $18,300,000 on domestic beef marketing in 2007 - 08. The best figures we can find are that Domestic consumption of beef was static for the period. MLA head of marketing David Thomason (pictured) was in a meeting and unable to call us before publishing this article.

ABARE (Australian Bureau of Agriculture & Resource Economics) statistics are telling. The figures for Australian Farm Costs and Returns show a grim picture for Australian farmers:

Real Net Farm Cash Income:

2003-2004 - $14.600 Billion

2004-2005 - $13.805 Billion

2005-2006 - $11.870 Billion

2006-2007 - $ 8.479 Billion

2007 -2008 -$ 8.478 Billion (Estimate)

The actual 2007-2008 are not available yet but I would imagine will the huge rises seen in the 4 major farm inputs - fuel, chemical, fertilizer & interest rates that it will not be a pretty picture.

What the figures do tell us is that in the 3 years from 2003 -2004 to 2006-2007 Australian farming’s real net farm cash income after expenses fell by a whooping 42%. That was the period according to the previous coalition government when Australian’s had never been better off.

Is it any wonder the rural sector was growing weary of the previous government.

Not that things have improved one bit for farmers under the Rudd Labor government.

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Have Your say!

The Trucking stouch with the government that has been brewing for weeks is set to ignite into one of the most bitter and protracted disputes that Australia has seen for decades.

Truck drivers, owner drivers and the all powerful Transport Workers Union are lining up against State and federal governments across Australia. The dispute is over a number of issues that are forcing drivers out of the industry and owner operators out of business.

The first major salvo was fired last night on the ABC’s 7.30 report. You can watch the program here (scroll down the side bar and its the third story) or read the transcript here.

The 7.30 report basically outlines the Transport Workers Union(TWU) take on the issue. It is ominous when you see Tony Sheldon Federal secretary of the TWU saying:

“It’s breaking point. Drivers are literally being forced to put their lives and other’s lives at risk.”

The program takes a major swipe at Coles & Woolworths (you know the Supermarket Duopoly thats maintains it pays farmers a fair market price for their produce).

Apparently they won’t pay truckies more money to carry the goods either. In his interview when Tony says client, it’s actually code for Coles, Woolworths, major retailers and the major Transport compies that sub contract their work to 1,000’s of smaller privately owned trucking companies that are getting the short end of the stick (sound familiar). Tony Sheldon (pictured below) -

“The fuel costs mean the drivers work longer, harder and faster to meet the client demand. More drivers are getting killed, more people on our roads are being injured as a result of the pressures on truck drivers driven by economics of the clients.

The major retailers across the country are lying when they say that the prices have to go up because of fuel, because they’re actually not paying it to many of the people that cart their goods.

There would be hardly a driver in the country, whether they be employees or owner drivers that won’t be ruling out blockades.”

Meanwhile Mick Pattel who represents the grass roots uprising of drivers and owner operators agrees whole heartedly with the TWU stance. He has reported instances medium sized sub-contractors being threaten by Heavy weights in the Transport industry who carry for national retailers like Coles and Woolworths.

These huge multi-national transport groups are threatening to black ban any sub contractor who supports the shut down. This would effectively shut down many of these operators businesses. Mick has passed this information onto the TWU.

The drivers and owner drivers have a list of 20 demands that they want met. Top of the list is the scrapping of demerit points and fines for log book inaccuracies. It was clearly demonstrated in our recent article that a simple clerical error by a drive in a log book will cost them $600 and the loss of 3 points off the drivers license. Policing of these “poorly drafted laws” is causing many long serving drivers to leave the industry.

Here is what Queensland Minister for Transport John Mickel (pictured below) speaking to Arlie Douglas of Toowoomba ABC had to say about a recent meeting with Mick Pattel on this very issue:

“We won’t back down on one of the demands set by truckies planning to strike this Sunday.

Safety concerns will mean demerit points related to fatigue laws won’t be dropped.

One of the issues they wanted was the demerit points for log books which was introduced in March of 2007.

I will not be moving on that……..

There is nothing more dangerous than a driver who is fatigued being on the road with other road users.”

Mr Mickel might like to explain how fining a truck driver $600 for not drawing a line across a page, when the rest of the log book is in order including adherence to all fatigue laws is a safety issue. The facts are he and his Labor colleagues have drafted a ‘bad’ law.

Mr Mickels office told us on Monday that they realize there may be some issues with the way that the laws are policed and they will look into this. I’ll remind the minister that the police just enforce the laws they make. Have a look at the cartoon satire - Why Democracy is better. There is a line in there that Mr Mickel and all politicans should heed.

“Hi we are the Police force, we can only obey the laws, so whatever laws he makes, we’ve got to obey.”

It is the ultimate cop-out to blame the way police enforce the laws he and his Labor colleagues have made.

Agmates told the Minister that elements of the National Transport Bill were bad law making in our article “Lazy Labor Legislation will Impact Food Prices” back on the 19th of May this year. Indeed our articles on the issued formed a part of debate on the bill.

If the stand off escalates as it looks, that prediction about the laws impacting food prices will come true within months. As Geoff Thomas of Woolworths said on the 7.30 report:

“Blockades, depending on their nature and severity, could have a significant impact on Woolworth’s business.”

Blockades aside, food would be dearer in supermarkets if Woolworths and Coles were forced to stop using their 70% market domination to squeeze the life out of those that grow and deliver the product to their supermakets before they mark it up 100-250%.

The supermarkets rack up their margins and increase their profits whilst they squeeze the life blood out of every farmer and truckie who is responsible for putting food in their supermarkets.

They call this greater efficiencies in the supermarket business.

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Have Your say!

South East QLD Farmer Viv Forbes writes:

As a farmer & chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition I am accusing the big farming lobby groups, government departments, politicians and Ministers representing agriculture of ignoring science and abandoning farmers to unjustified carbon taxation.

We believe there was no justification whatsoever for including emissions from farm animals in any carbon emissions tax scheme.

Every intelligent farmer can understand the carbon food cycle whereby every bit of carbon dioxide released by farm animals or plants into the atmosphere has previously been removed from the same atmosphere.

This simple process is surely not beyond the understanding of all the lobbyists, bureaucrats, researchers and media living off farmers?

In the farm sector carbon balance, apart from any fossil fuel used, it is a zero sum game, and all farm animals have ZERO NET CARBON EMISSIONS.

Grazing animals have not yet learned to live on coal or diesel fuel, and they cannot create carbon out of rocks, soil or water. Therefore they must extract it, via grasses and grains, from that marvellous gas of life in our atmosphere, carbon dioxide.

All foods and organic matter represent carbon that has been sequestered by life processes into living bodies.

Farm plants and animals are every bit as green as forests.

Both farms and forests extract carbon from the air and store it in organic life forms until that organic matter is burnt or decays in the open air, thus returning their borrowed carbon to the atmospheric storehouse.

Why then does growing forests attract a carbon credit and but growing cattle and sheep cops a carbon tax?

Australia and New Zealand lead the world in harvesting solar energy and carbon dioxide to produce an abundance of clean green food. Why then are both the New Zealand and the Australian governments proposing to force farm animals into their emissions trading quagmire?

And why are they subsidising the conversion of farmland producing food into forests producing nothing but carbon credits or crops producing ethanol motor fuel? What are future generations going to eat?

We are saying that farmers need to start agitating now or they risk being the only bunnies still paying carbon taxes.

Motorists who vote and use petrol will escape the carbon tax by sleight of hand - petrol excise will in future be called “carbon tax”.

Exporters will get an exemption to enable them to compete with more sensible regimes with no carbon taxes. Other protected species like working families in marginal electorates will get subsidies to cover carbon taxes on electricity bills.

Truckies will blockade the roads if politicians add carbon tax to diesel prices. That leaves farmers as the only big group with so few votes and such incompetent leadership that they will pay the carbon tax.

Farmers have been abandoned by Ag Force, the Meat and Livestock Authority, CSIRO, the National Party, and most of the similar organisations in New Zealand. It is not clear whether this is because of a lack of scientific logic or cowardice in the face of electoral hysteria on global warming.

But the politicians representing the treasured “working families” in the battling suburbs had better start taking notice of rising food prices or a more soundly based hysteria about the growing shortage of food will sweep emissions trading nonsense from the political landscape.

Viv Forbes, Farmer, BScApp, FAusIMM, FSIA

Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition

Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes:

The Federal National party faces a huge test at the Saturday’s Gippsland by-election. The party due to its overly cosy relationship with the Liberal party has lost it’s direction and identity and a loss in the by-election could well hasten the ultimate demise of the party.

Over a period of time I have formed the view that the party must disassociate itself from the Liberal party and go it alone as the 3rd stand alone party representing rural & regional Australia. Indeed it is the close alignment with the liberal party that is killing the Nationals brand and identity.

Below is an extract from a terrific article that appeared 2 days ago in the Canberra Observer which beautifully encapsulates my thinking at the present. There is a link at the bottom to read the whole article. Please when you have read it come back here and give me your thoughts.

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The glory days of the Federal National Party were under the leadership of John McEwen (pictured). McEwen demanded and got tariff protection to develop industries which would “value add” to Australia’s primary production.

“McEwenism”, as it became known, is now a dirty word around the power corridors of Canberra. The only politicians who dare to speak of it are the independents Bob Katter & Tony Windsor.

However its no coincidence that the winding back of McEwenism goes hand in hand with the steady decline in farm incomes, a seemingly suicidal goal of unilateral free trade and deregulation at any price, the disappearance of tens of thousands of people from the land, and the emptying of rural communities.

Seats held by Nationals MPs are generally now the poorest in the country, in terms of per capita income.

Link to Canberra Observer Article:

Have Your Say! Tell us what you think.

Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes:

The Liberals have given away any legitimate claim they had to National Party & Rural Australian support by their betrayal of both in the parliament this week.

What an incredible scene. It will be noted in the annals of history, the day the entire Liberal party crossed the floor of parliament to join forces with their lifetime Labor enemies to kill off Australian Wheat farmers hopes and dreams.

Looking from the outside, the scene was bizarre. The Liberals to a man and women deserted their National Party partners who have stood shoulder to shoulder with them for almost 12 years in government and the last 6 months in opposition.

They walked across the political divide to the enemy trenches, settled in alongside their Labor colleagues. Willfully at the behest of their new labor commander they raised their guns and fired, killing off the Australian Single Desk Export Wheat Marketing system.

The Liberal Party have had the unquestioning & Loyal support of the National party for decades. Yet on this one issue of critical importance to Australian wheat farmers, that was backed and championed by their National Party colleagues, the Liberals gleefully to a man and women not only killed off the single desk but also any pretense of a meaningful coalition.

The Nationals, left stranded and hopelessly out numbered on their side of the house where annihilated in the vote. A crushing defeat and humiliation at the hands of their coalition partners.

“Forgive the Liberals - for they know not what they’ve done”

How can National party rank and file federally now even consider an merger with the treacherous Liberal’s?

We have always been lead to believe that the Nationals controlled Coalition policy on Rural affairs in the coalition. It is now clear this is not the case.

What then is the point of a coalition let alone a merger? Let the National party stand alone federally to represent rural and regional Australia. Scrap the coalition.

The Nationals have the opportunity to become the most powerful federal party in Australia. A third Stand alone party with representation in the house of Reps and the Senate.

When elections are close they can then decide who they will join with - Liberal or Labor to form a coalition government for that term.

That way Rural and Regional Australian would nearly always have their party involved in government and both the Liberal party and the Labor party would have to work for they’re support to form government.

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Have your say! Are you outraged by this Liberal treachery? Do you believe like I do that this act has killed off any chance of a merger?