The National Party has suffered under the iron hand of the free trade capitalism of the Liberal Party. The National Party has not produced a leader who will stand up to the Liberals since Black Jack McEwen, therein lies the problem.

The only way for the National Party to survive as I see it is independent of the Liberal Party, while they are in coalition the party will continue to suffer and suffer badly. 38 out of the bottom 40 federal seats are held by the National Party, not a good look, and becoming worse because of Liberal Party policies.

3 months before the Latham election it was painful to visit construction sites.
Clearly a surge was on away from the ALP some times for the first time in those voters life's.
Now it is quite different and in National heartland, seats Labor would truly need massive swings to win ,movement I never thought I would see is taking place.
Newly trained farm owners and workers ,prawn fisher men, people who have never voted other than National are turning.
Unheard of 91 out of 107 have joined the union!
Speak openly of change in this election wives of these now first time unionists are hurting, country low income jobs are lower than ever before.
A shift is on if I wanted improvement from the Nationals ,and I do not Joyce would be leading not the Liberal they have now.

Isn't it time that the Liberal National Coalition became a Party rather than a coalition ? They could even call themselves "the Coalition" for short.

Anyone with small "l" liberal tendancies could join the ALP or the Democrats if they hate unions.

Gosh, I thought the National Party had vanished long ago and was now just a front for secretive but powerful Cotton Growers Party, whose sole policy is to suck up all the water in the Darling River for their private gain ;)

A lot of the coastal areas the author refers to have also attracted a lot of urban people making the sea or tree change. They're highly unlikely to vote National.

"The Nationals may be heading into the wilderness, forever."
All repeat all, the political parties espouse economic nationalism including the trade unions. And all of them are in a deepening crisis as they are being undermined by global multi-nationals. The firms went global in order to take a greater share of the wealth off the nation states. Today, Labor, Liberal, Democrat and Green are the spearhead for the multi-nationals. In consequence, behind the scenes they are all intent on lowering living standards, weekly earnings and filling up their own pockets and their masters. All of them have signed up with Bush and Wall Street for the 'war on terror' and the war on workers. Although the Greens or Labor Party generally for electioneering huckstering, espouse some mealy mouthed oppositional words whilst in practice, bolster every parliamentary bill. This is why none of them explain the real criminality of US and Australian operations that have caused a death toll that has now passed 1 million deaths in Iraq. All done, to dominate this particular region of the world, check the ambitions of their trade rivals and steal the oil. These crimes all fit the Nuremberg definition of an unprovoked war of aggression, the central crime for which the Nazi regime was found guilty in October 1946.
"Kevin Rudd's industrial appeal is not to militant unionists but to conservative working-class non-union members." This is incorrect, Rudd appeals daily, on his hands and knees to the ruling elite, and lately, is crafting an appeal to the Christian right. On and before election day, after consultation with his advisors he will say anything to get elected.

Looks like the power of the bush has had its day.

As an oldie going on 87, glad I left school early to work on the farm during the Depression, earlier in the last year cheering cockies as they picketed the one Wesfarmer's weighbridge, part of the wheat hold-up that finally threw out Big Biz middle-men, Bunge and Dreyfus, the Pollard Labor Federal government allowing the formation of the single-desk AWB which by backing the cost of production allowed what was left of the cockies to stay on the land.

Now as a crazy old student looking back, now realise we were agrarian unionists, and must say still real proud of it, and must still say ordinary cockies with a mind for sport and general local friendliness, will never be part of the corporate culture that now props up the ersatz liberal Party - never really a party of the ordinary folk.

Regards, BB - WA.

The Nationals in league with the National Farmers Federation and the Liberals have now said farmers don't have to pay the last national wage case increase to their low paid workers because of the drought.

This is a disgrace but typical of the attitude taken by the NFF and the Nationals over the years.

It won't be long before they will be importing lags again by the boatload from the old country to do their work .

One would have thought that if they are really sincere about the welfare of those that would elect them in the country, Howard and the Nationals, under pressure from the NFF would have "topped Up" their low paid workers wages.

These are those people who help farmers gain their incomes and are an important component in the make up of those small but vital country towns all over Australia .

With the weak kneed Nationals well heeled supporters dwindling in number, as they retire to the coast; and with disasterous market orientated social policies and agendas for the bush they are doomed.

There has been hardly a real murmur out of them in Victoria as Melbourne seeks to steal huge quantities of valuable water from the bush in northern Victoria for Melbourne's future gardens and toilets.

Jim,You're forgetting the softdrink companies who're gettin' the cheap bore water,nobody is mentioning that! How many years would that water take to seep down to that level? It is not even turned into a healthy product.This country is being raped. Tell me if I'm wrong.

Some true escapes from reality and the thread here.
Some forever and ever can not see the type of world they want is unlikely ever to exist.
Voters will not fill a line waiting to vote as told ,that is the problem the Nationals face.
They still look like farmers but are in fact the party of the mine owners.
And it shows coastal towns that are in National hands now will not be forever, as people understand Nationals are a rump not a coalition.
However if we drop our biases and consider the actions of Barnaby Joyce, understanding the pressure he has always been under from within the air wasting party?
We may just see a man who can prolong the party's slide into oblivion.

Farmers surviving world change. I have enormous empathy for farmers in Australia. Yes, the dollars required for drought relief is good...but it is a long way from the real story.

Since the mid 1990s I am astounded with the technical progress of farmers.Of all the industries it is perhaps one of the most progressive industrys of all but also the most vunerable.

Whats to happen in the future for farmers. With so many leaving the land ... the shifting age demographics, shifting markets and decreasing product returns because of drought... it is getting tougher for farmers.

Politically, I see the National Party having more in common with the Greens or Labor then it has with Liberal the party. This is because services in the bush are increasingly under stress.

I see Mental Health and Employment, Transport, Communication and access to markets as the major issues that will depict the stablity for the bush.

Skills development is a key underlying the problem solve.This is a major planning issue that must bridge generations as well as combat market and technological issues that will contribute to the way rural people access future wealth and influence the distribution of this wealth within smaller communities at ground levels.

The Nationals have always been a poor second choice substitute for real self government in the regions. They have always owed their existence to the fact that there is rarely a one-size-fits-all solution between metropolitan and regional needs. But any attempt to address these differences have been perceived by metro voters as some sort of special pleading for favourable treatment.

Put new regional states in place and the need for specific policies for those regions will be met by their own parliament. The region itself will become the distinct political brand, not the political party. That way we will then see the proper development of legitimate interests within the existing major parties in the same way that the US Republicans and Democrats from the 'farm states' can elect members with distinctly regional flavours.

You are very much right, Perseus. Am going on 87, and reckon my wife and I did alright by me returning to cockyin' after WW2, but one thing I learnt during the Depression was the need for people on the land to get together and unionise.

But both from the one son and his sons now running the farms, can't get them interested in farmer's groups possibly because modern farm advisers tell them that farming is a business and should be run like a business.

Okay to run a farm like a business, but also remember the farm contains your home, and your district community is a special way of life, which unfortunately with advancing communication has tied us too much to the cities, even sport having become so regional that rather than more than a dozen district teams in our shire of Dalwallinu, we only have a couple of cricket teams for example in Dalwallinu itself.

The way it was it seemed sport and bush unionism went together, and we can well now understand the saying from the city electorates, when the Country Party was changed to the National Party, the original moniker of the now Liberal Party, that thank God the days of the Feudal Yoke are over.

All too true, yet in countries like France and Germany the Feudal Yoke is still well alive, still bearing the name of agrarian socialism, yet a socialism or get-togetherism that can strike either right or left as Stalin found out when the Russian Kulaks refused to hand over their seed grain, which for them was something very personal.

No need to portray much more, except to still pine a bit for the old days?

The sooner the Nationals disappear from Australia's political scene, the better. As a former Liberal MP who turned independent, my 8 years in the WA parliament convinced me that we no longer need agrarian socialists to represent some of the hardest working people in the country, namely, our farmers. They (the farmers) have enough problems without being asked to believe that taxpayer-funded handouts are the solutions to all their problems. While most of the Nationals MPs that I know are good people, they live in a bygone era and simply don't understand modern day reality.
When the Nationals are gone, country people will be able to more easily vote for one of the two major parties who, in my experience, will be better able to represent them in our modern, complex and challenging world.