The worst thing that the Nats did was to change their name from the Country Party, because they thought it was going to get them city votes. Never happened, never will. Because they are so subservient to the Liberals, they have lost the confidence of the country voters. They should be independent of either Libs or Labor and sit on the cross benches. The free traders among the others would then have to take some notice of them. Unless farmers are given some massive support by whomsoever is in power, there will not be any left in another ten years to vote, one way or the other.

I agree with VK3AUU that it was a bad mistake to change the name of the Party. 'Country' Party was descriptive and self-explanatory. 'National' means nothing and everything.

Peter van Onselen nearly hit the nail on the head when he wrote: "The Nationals are, perhaps ironically given their name, not a national organisation." He was referring to the structure of the Party which is all over the shop.

Peter was closer to the mark when he said, "Philosophically the Nationals used to be the party of the agrarian socialist, a collection of farmers opposed to trade unions and progressive social views but also uncomfortable about the free trade agenda that harmed the competitiveness of Australia's agricultural industry when competing in the global market."

Yet even here he misses the central issue. It was not so much opposition to trade unions and progressive social views which characterised the old Country Party. It was plain self-interest: getting as much as you could for farmers and graziers from government.

But globalisation changed the name of the game and the Nationals were confused about what that response should be. The choice was never between "doing battle with the growing free trade tendencies of Liberals" or "trying to overcome the stranglehold the trade union movement has over the Labor Party".

It was about how to remain relevant to their power base by serving the interests of country people and that was primarily a matter of how to play the new economic game. They took their eye off the ball.

The nats are irrelevant as the landed gentry are now all corporate entities or city investors. People in the country areas are ordinary folk who have been forgotten by pollies on all counts, except for the greens.
Scary hey

The Nats as a party lost the plot when they stopped representing their heartland the farmers and chose political expediency . You turn your back on your supporters at your own peril . Many years ago I went to see our factory manager to see what direction our farming enterprise was headed after 30 minutes of positive spin which I didn't understand I simplified the question by asking if we would have more money or less . His answer was less and that other people didn't show their ignorance by asking . I lived through deregulation
knowing globalisation is flawed . The truth will go on for ever but
all that is built on sand will fall . Our future at the moment is in free fall because of all the leftwing claptrap put in place of truth. I read a small booklet on the droughtmaster and it was INTERIGITY INTERIGITY
as the future of the breed is in the hands of the breeders.
The future of the nats is in their own hands and they chose political expediency ahead of intregity and built on the sand.

Excuse my language, but as an old cockie going on 88, might say that wheat farmers are now regarded by both Labor and Liberal as just the proverbial at the bottom of the economic barrel.

Such was proven when Rudd put Burke, not much more than a boy in charge of an industry that was regarded as so important in the Depression Days when it took a Labor governmment to quarantee cockies at least the cost of production.

How shocked us old ccckies were when Burke gave priority in WA to Barry Court's crowd who like crows will never look after the whole grain industry properly, but fully in praise of the 1920's method when every single farmer had to act as his own competitor with cut-throat buyers like Bunge and Dreyfus.

Thus to get rid of the cut-throat competition the world has not only had grain growing subdidised in the the US, but in the whole of Europe including the UK.

Now with us heading again towards the end of the glory days of the Roaring Twenties, from which our over confident days since the 1980's have been patterned, something much safer than the Rudd-Burke agenda for our farming future must be given much thought.

It is so interesting that qualified historian oldies like myself are virtually forbidden to use the terms nowadays such as our shaky government policies being based on quarry economics and pitstock politics, as if our ag- industries can be pretty well forgotten.

Have Fun, BB, Buntine.

Its curious. I am from a farm but live from the mining industry. I support free trade, but the farm subsidies of the US and EU certainly make it hard for farmers to compete internationally and seeking political ways of protecting the livelihoods of country people is very appropriate.

But there is one reason the survival of the Nats does not interest me. In 1996 they betrayed the decent people of Australia who happen to enjoy shooting, for the approval of a lynch mob. They can FOAD for all I care.

Very unfortunately the farming community is their own worst enemy. To protect themselves( as mainly independent farmers) against global cartel commodity rip offs, almost endemic previous to WW2, they formed their own particular political party to further represent their interests. Results were impressive: Wheat boards, Potato Boards, Grain pools,Wool boards, Dairy boards, Meat boards,Onion boards,Fuel & fertilzer subsidies,the list is almost endless. All with the express purpose of taking the financial risk out of farming with guaranteed prices, markets, & profits. A socialist utopia. Then,they decided to completely throw their lot in with the Liberal Party & became a rump of the Liberal Party. So began the slow inevetible decline of their dedicated farming interest party. Their only hope of survival is to follow the example set by Brendan Grylls in Western Australia & sit on the cross benches of Parliaments both State & Federal. Their policies in recent years have been to blindly follow their political masters(the Liberal Party)which policy can only lead to their complete ingestion into the Liberal Party. It is quite obvious that the Liberal Party intend eventually to swallow up the few Nationals left in Parliaments & probably the sooner the better.

For the two respondents to my country grizzle, must say I agree mostly with you both - which goes to prove that a dinkum bush party accepting a city-based party title was sure to have problems.

Personally with my grandkids now running our farm business, and unlike me both having had college educations, it seems they have to be almost shunted in to vote even for the Nationals.

Which indeed makes me proud that I was always against discarding the old Country Party monicka, which Black Jack McKewan carried aloft so well.

The real problem for WA country-based people at present, of course, is that with more and more lack of bush voting power, we need fighters like young Brendan Gryll more than ever.

Finally, it does not say much for city-country respect when we have Barnett trying to forego the monetary arrangement with Gryll that enabled Barnett to become WA premier.

Cheers, BB, WA.

Barney Joyce, as a young potentially greater Australian leader, I am disappointed in you.

I believe you are leading rural Australia down a narrow drovers-fence closed, backwards.

Barney you are navel gazing. The barb-wire is rusty and brittle. Making a national policy advantage with this line - disuseful and difficult.

Your immediate unwise men are putting a most negative demand on their own parties politics. They misuse true depth - belly up on honesty and or wisdom.

Like you, I am an independent thinker, and I too have principal. We/I respected you last year.... we recognized potential inside you.

Today however, I have had about enough. How can people like us in rural regions ever support the ignorance and mental violence your inner party obsesses.

Is it you Barney, or is it the oats?

What I have respected about you previous was your intelligence. The way you have past contemplated - reflected your drive to do the right thing. It was refreshing.

Your recent comments... the reference to the $10.4 million injection and (china) as Australians buy their christmas presents. Frankly (30 years ago) it was a halfway smart comment .... today however, it requires a "whole" math equation, not one left as presently uncompleted.

I hope you grow Barney. Without Tim Fischer at the helm... we need someone with depth to take his place. Tim made real ground for Australia - across the Pacific and Asia, adding value to both exchange markets with a transitional gain.

www.miacat.com
.

"The Nationals are bleeding to death and it is hard to know how to stop it."

Yes, what a shame. I thought the farmers shot beasts who couldn't last the distance... is that apporpriate maybe?

It is a larf what's going on in Qld. The Qld Nats are going to evaporate as an identity here as the Libs impose their relationship with Canberra and 'new blood' from One Nation and all the other extremist groups flood in to the LNP.

The old agrarian socialism has gone anyway, so there really is no room for the Nats at any level of government these days.

The days of having 'decent fellows' with a few yaers of farmwork behind them wafting into parliaments has gone anyway, and the Nats aren't exactly overflowing with neurons are they?

There is something always a bit 'dodgy' about farmers anyway... they support 'free trade' but always want a free loan, a subsidy, a protection on prices, a place on the dole queue while keeping their income making small business going at the same time, while their Party hoes into dole bludgers and 'single mums'... most of whom seem to fill our nations country towns from my experience oop norf.

You don't ever see an ownerdriver of an interstate jigger running his/her business and getting a dole cheque at the same time because the free market truckies support isn't going their way do you? And they 'love' their Kennies as much as farmers 'love' their land.

Let's just say goodbye...and good riddance to the hayseeds of the bush... they charted their own demise by clinging to power with Howard and never saying boo! to the Liberals

Hey Blue Cross, as old as I am as a WW2 veteran, reckon as a former bush rifleman as well as having marksman in my military paybook, could still knock you off at 300 yards no trouble.

Just be careful what you say, because there is still a few of us around who detest the decision that made us part of the Liberal Party as proven by my earlier missile in another thread.

In fact, the old Country Party was actually started by Victorian dairy farmers who were probably former miners like many of the wheat cockies in the Dalwallinu district who formed what they called the Cockies Union, most of them also former miners with experience of the dire necessity for agressive unionism to combat the business mafia.

It was thus that bush unionism was able to have Pollard elected as Aussie PM, being how bush unionism had Australian agriculture looked after for a long period, in some ways, both the US and the EU now having their farming subsidised for the same reasons.

Have Fun,
cheers, BB, WA

The Nationals are the heirs to the exploitation and theft of Aboriginal land..

Now the Nationals are the victims of ruthless political machinations which are portents of their demise.

The bible calls this 'reaping' ...what you sow. (in their case, literally)

Just because the wages of sin don't come each thursday week... does not mean they don't ever come.

"You will sow but you will not reap. You will tread the olive but will not anoint yourself with oil; And the grapes, but you will not drink wine." Micah 6:15

8 Woe to you who add house to house
and join field to field
till no space is left
and you live alone in the land.

9 The LORD Almighty has declared in my hearing:
"Surely the great houses will become desolate,
the fine mansions left without occupants. Isaiah 5:8

Super is self destructing....
Shares losing their value....
American housing prices collapsing...

II Chronicles 7:14

"If my people who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways...then will I hear from heaven, and heal their land."

May the Lord open all our hearts to His word.

Unfortunately the Coalition is killing the Nationals but unfortunately the Nationals aren't representing their constituents either. On the positive side, the Nationals have been around longer than the Democrats and have outlasted the Democrats so attaching themselves to a political party no matter what has mean their survival has lasted this long.

Unfortunately those living in coastal metropolitan areas don't give a rats about people in rural area, apparently they're all farmers, they're not. Most cockies are the upper class of rural areas just like the affluent suburbs in the city.

Whenever some tries to improve something in a country area, its just the whinging farmers and I thought you were supposed to be self sufficient. Let's turn that on its head and look at the major urban centres of the various states and when those people whine about transport, the State Governments if not the Federal government steps right in and gives them exactly what they want. Clearly because that is where the political capital is and that's how they will get re-elected. A good example is the train system in NSW which there is nothing wrong with but people complain about it all the time.

Sure sometimes the trains are late due to track maintenance but mostly it is the amount of time it takes people to get on board and disembark. Perhaps catch an earlier train if possible.

Or instead of closing a hospital in the country, close one in the city as the next one is only around the corner instead of several 100kms away.

How does this relate back to the Nationals decline? They're not getting anything done for their non-farm constituents and that's mostly why independents are being elected. They might bring up the issues with the coalition partners but being the junior partner and bringing next to no political capital, they can ignore them.

The coastal metro areas want everyone in the country to move to the city into cramped quarters, high pace, high stress environments and put more strain on alleged failing infrastructure. There's even complaints about not enough land in some places in urban areas at the moment.

Doesn't it make more sense to move beyond the metro areas for land and build out there and increase country populations eventually creating economies of scales for industries, new grounds for entrepreneurs and employment and a levelling of all playing fields for urban and country areas alike?

After all remove the affluent of country areas and maybe even including them, the median income is a lot lower than urban centres, so it is more affordable and comfortable for those of coastal metro areas to move to the country than the unaffordable country alternative of moving to the metro areas?

All this foul crying about infrastructure, build, fix, replace the infrastructure in the country areas and there will be a new economic boom.

Again unfortunately for the Nationals and their farm constituents, all their oligopoly industries have been completely deregulated straight into feudal capitalism which just means the affluent stay that way and the less affluent can never rise above it. And lets face it there is not a lot of intellect in the Nationals for the most part, they say the stupidest things but at least they're forthright unlike the increasingly conservative snobbish other parties and their constituents who can't fathom attachment to the land, ownership of property and just want to jetset about the world.

So yes the coalition is killing the nats but the greens will kill the rest of the country areas and there is not a single party that gives a damn.

There are solutions but no one is interested.