A malaise in the Nationals

The predictable loss of the key New South Wales National Party federal seat of Lyne to popular local independent Rob Oakeshott is a classic example of the malaise confronting the National Party.

In the past 20 years, the Nationals’ share of the primary vote in the House of Representatives has dropped from a high of 11.5 per cent in 1987 down to a low of 5.3 per cent in 1998. Although its share rose 5.9 per cent in the 2004 election, the number of seats the Nationals won was at its lowest at 12, since 1949.

During the Howard government, the number of National seats won dropped with every election from 18, to 16, to 13, to 12 in 2004.

More recently, the 2007 federal election saw the number of seats drop to 10 and with the loss of Lyne, compounded this devastating downwards trend to just nine (including one provincial) National Party seats.

An analysis by Clive Bean of federal election results from 1983 to 1993 has shown that support for the National Party from farmers who make up its core constituency, fell from 55 per cent of the House of Representatives first preference vote in 1984, following the National Party’s decision to vote with the Labor Party on the Representation Bill 1983 which increased the number of MPs in Parliament, to just 43 per cent in 1993. With support for the Liberal Party from this constituency at 44 per cent, these figures show support for the National Party is below that.

The National Party has also lost support from the self employed and as people move from the country to metropolitan areas, their traditional support base is haemorrhaging.

Migration from the cities into coastal areas, most notably northern NSW, is diluting previous National Party strongholds. To compound the problem, farmers are moving off the land and the percentage of people (particularly young people) involved in farming activity has significantly decreased in all rural areas, particularly in Queensland and the north coast of NSW.

Given these compelling factors which are placing significant pressure on the National Party’s ability to survive as a creditable and influential rural-based political party, it is not surprising that former respected leaders of the National Party such as Doug Anthony, Ian Sinclair, Peter Nixon and John Anderson have called for a merger of the Liberal and National Parties.

Doug Anthony made the following poignant comment in his article “Better to Merge than Fade Away” on March 13, 2008:

Realistically the most important thing that the members of the Nationals can do is to have a political force that can attend to the interests of rural and regional people. It is our belief that if all the rural representatives of the parties could speak with one voice, then more positive action would occur and be a greater challenge to the Labor Party which is infiltrating territory that it is not traditionally dedicated to.

The sensible recognition of the need for a strong conservative force of rural based MPs vigorously representing rural and regional conservative interests, is much more relevant now than it was when Doug Anthony voiced concerns in the March 2008 opinion piece.

The National Party loss of the federal seat of Lyne to an independent has highlighted the perilous state of their rural representation at the federal level and has emphasised how dramatically their rural presence has declined in the House of Representatives.

There are 42 rural based MPs made up as follows - 18 Liberal, 13 ALP, eight National and three Independent. If you take into consideration the 21 provincial MPs (as per the AEC profile) 16 ALP, four Liberal and one National, it is not surprising there are serious concerns within the National Party about its ability to survive.

There is an obvious recognition within the thinking ranks of the National Party that the human, financial and organisational resources of both parties would be better utilised with less duplication.

This would be the case, particularly in those seats where three-cornered contests occur. There would need to be only one party headquarters and one campaign effort not two, as is the current position. Financial supporters of both parties are increasingly expressing their disgust at their donations being wasted on National/Liberal three-cornered contests and are threatening to withdraw financial support unless a merger of both parties occurs.

The so called “country mindedness” which has been used as a differentiating factor between the Nationals and the Liberals is no longer a credible argument. First, the Liberal Party has twice the number of rural MPs that the Nationals have. Second, better roads, improving communications and government services combined with nationally networked media and the internet have ensured that country people feel less isolated than before. Therefore, the Nationals’ ability to play on the differences between the country and the city has been diminished.

What needs to be recognised by both the Liberal Party and the National Party is without their combined 31 rural and provincial MPs, they can’t win government.

Similarly, “die hard” Nationals cannot continue to ignore the reality that their demise as a political party is inevitable unless they confront the compelling and truthful analysis by Messrs Anthony, Sinclair, Nixon and Anderson that the two Coalition parties need to merge; thereby introducing a new overdue conservative dynamic into the Australian rural political landscape.