Today, coastal seats are full of refugees from the city who are used to Labor-Liberal contests. They move to a coastal seat and there is no recognisable Lib, just a slow-talking freak in a tweed jacket covered in grass-seeds against a seemingly normal Labor candidate. Over time the Nat MP sitting on an ever-diminishing majority has less reason to love the newcomers, nor they the local member, and so it goes. It’s easy to be blithe about the long-predicted demise of the Nats, but there is no countervailing trend that would suggest their future is secure.

The trend you described left a greater proportion of small business owner/operators and some reasonably well-off people in the middle of last century. The slow decline of rural communities means that this conservative bulwark i rural communities is not what it was.

would like to see The Greens win more seats but definitely NOT at the price of losing Australian Democrats seats. We need the Democrats in the bush.

yea, puts both my partner & I in a quandary…we like Andrew Bartlett’s policies…but also want to see the Greens in the Senate put some pressure on Labor (if they win) to go less w/ fossil fuels.

We’ll vote 1 Labor in the Reps provided they get this factionalism stuff dealt with…& don’t triangulate too much…was amazed how ‘alarmist Rudd was yesterday over the Thai ‘bloodless’ coup…I mean c’mon!…overthrown prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra is no straight arrow…& that’s about as diplomatic as I can put it.

Beattie is politically exhausted. He may get a second wind if Bligh gets overwhelmed and is heading for defeat, but otherwise that bird has flown.

We need the Democrats in the bush.

Are they approaching anything like a critical mass in any rural electorate in any state/territory? How many Democrats are sitting, elected members of local councils, rural or urban? Anyone?

I would like to see The Greens win more seats but definitely NOT at the price of losing Australian Democrats seats. We need the Democrats in the bush.

This morning, I heard on the radio The Greens hit the jackpot by exposing all the spin and malarkey on inflation, consumer-price-index and standards of living, especially where it really does hurt those living in the bush. The distant rumbling sound I could hear was of several hundred head of former Nationals voters rushing to join The Greens.

Even tho I have Green tendencies, I still reckon yer right Graham Bell regarding Nats being more likely to shift in Labor’s direction…perhaps Greens will benefit in the Senate (I certainly hope so) but a case in point is my Father-in-law (he has a hobby farm & has spent his life in the bush, nary a sock or shoe in sight). For a year or so he’s been hinting he’ll swing his vote from the Federal Coalition to Labor ’cause he thinks “the Government doesn’t have time for, or protects, the small farmers”.

To him & his cocky mates, Howard is selling the country down the drain to the Americans & big companies/landowners. He reckons as long as a Whitlam-like character doesn’t takeover Labor, they could win. Regardless of how many positive policies of the Whitlam era I point out to him, he stands stubbornly by the opinion that “Whitlam sent the Nation bankrupt”. So it looks like Beazley’s the go.

No wonder Vaille is panicking…& w/ the latest revelations regarding what Bushies can expect from Telstra…& the Thai ‘bloodless’ coup that could possibly see changes in trade terms…& the possible Dem takeover in Congress that might lead to committees w/ REAL claws to unearth the AWB & Aussie Government’s motives in Iraq, & lead to more competition from US wheat against our exports…the rural sector is going to recognize ‘deceit’ for what it is…& realise their interests aren’t coming first when it comes to most of the present Nats in parliament. Katter’s no fool, nor Barnaby…they saw it coming…wouldn’t be surprised if Barnaby knocks out Vaille down the road to take the Leadership…or heads into Independent territory. We need more rogues & less Borgs here in QLD to stop the rot.

Incidentally, the ALP member Katter defeated is Rob Hulls – the current Victorian Labor Attorney-General.

In the 70s there were talks about an amalgamation nationally between the DLP and the Nats. But in Qld the DLP essentially collapsed itself into the Nats (it had a different trajectory anyway from the Victorian DLP as the QLP split in 57 and it didn’t affiliate with the DLP til the early 60s). There’s a substantial sort of pseudo-labourist agrarian socialist Catholic conservative faction or tendency within the Qld Nats – hence Barnaby.

D McD: How is this different from what Windsor and Andren (or for that matter, Graham Campbell) have been going on about for years?

… National seats becoming Labor. What strategy/appeal could Labor offer??

This is one of those instances where: never mind if it works in practice, how does it work in theory?

RARA tends to feature lower incomes than urban Australia, and if Labor resurrected Bill McKell by going around the regions and telling it straight, going through the coastal caravan parks from Hervey Bay to Lakes Entrance, there are plenty of stray votes to be picked up. City voters would be more awake up to ALP malarkey about job security but rural voters would give it a go. The model is Labor’s Justine Elliott knocking over a third-generation National Minister in 2004, with everything going against her except votes.

The tough, clever and lucky ALP machine of the 1980s would be all over this. There’s nothing the Libs could do short of declare the Coalition over and charge in themselves: won’t happen before next year, but the following term of Parliament will be interesting (and will guarantee Labor wins state elections 2007-10).

According to today’s Oz, it’ll favour:

-more state intervention
-collective sale (or something) for ag products
-greater personal freedom (read: guns, fishing, hunting)

This could be start of something rich and strange. Or, more likely, a bunch of ignorant rednecks complaining about the government. We’ll just wait and see, won’t we?

The union most cane-farmers dealt with was the AWU; an atypical union to say the least (some would say peculiar or use swear-words when speaking about the AWU …. and non-members were even more unkind!); this regular contact with the AWU certainly did influence their attitudes.

But, because many farmers on small assignments boosted their income by working in the sugar mills, they could also be very enthusiastic unionists too. This was a situation with which neither the CountryParty/NationalParty nor the Labor Party could ever come to terms with though individual party officials did recognize the vote-winning potential of it.

Add to that the anarchist, syndicalist, communist, fascist, libertarian, mafia, freemason, Catholic and whatever backgrounds of migrants who became cane-farmers and you have a political potpourri that seemed always to be beyond the comprehension of poltical high-flyers from multicultural Sydney or Canberra.

As to your general point that

I think farmers in Qld tend to see themsleves as men (and women) of enterprise unlikely to vote for a party espousing socialism in cahoots with the unions.

I agree. But these divides make the ‘farmers’ politically impotent.

Their children who attend public schools are not allowed to watch any TV or use computers. That causes problems in any modern classroom. A person with whom I worked who was raised as an Exclusive Brethren told me of his childhood which was devoid of not only TV but also radio.

Women were never part of any delegations.

Also Exclusive Brethren do not vote. But as you suggest they are not above ‘influencing’ elections.

One of the ‘ironies’ as far as I was concerned related to their ‘hatred’ of computers. They drove to see me in very modern computer controlled vehicles, presumably stopping at computer controlled traffic lights, and ascending twenty odd stories in computer controlled lifts. They didn’t object when their concerns were recorded on a laptop etc.

They are interesting.

I think farmers in Qld tend to see themsleves as men (and women) of enterprise unlikely to vote for a party espousing socialism in cahoots with the unions.

I could be wrong, though. The voting booth is a private place.

The Nationals are the soft underbelly of the government and the ALP would be smart to hunt them down like dogs. They will do so half-heartedly this time, and will win a few seats. Labor will reap the disappointment that comes from a winning strategy not being pursued.

You may be right. Certainly, based on my personal experience at a State level, the Nationals hate the Liberals and the Liberals absolutely despise the Nationals.

But I don’t know enough about the history of National seats becoming Labor. What strategy/appeal could Labor offer??

IMHO, people like Katter get elected because they say ‘elect me’ and I’ll kick them between the big toes. The rural punters seem to have lost hope; so they vote for people who promise to ’spit in the eye.

I am not sure that they could ‘lower’ themselves to vote Labor. But I am interested in your views.

This morning, I heard on the radio The Greens hit the jackpot by exposing all the spin and malarkey on inflation, consumer-price-index and standards of living, especially where it really does hurt those living in the bush. The distant rumbling sound I could hear was of several hundred head of former Nationals voters rushing to join The Greens. It even upstaged Andrew Bartlett’s oh-so-casual demonstration, this morning. that he would make a better Foreign Affairs Minister than Alexander Downer.

After that effort at prediction about The Greens, I hereby promise not to try to tell everyone which horse will win the 2006 Melbourne Cup.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: if Labor were smart they would steal a march on Howard by targetting the National-held seats hard over the next 12 months, following the Richmond formula but with more resources. There are only 11 of them, and if they got 7 or 8 (independents would account for the rest next time) they’d be halfway to government.

Erm… and what does that say about Qld? Still the hillbilly redneck state?”

It probably reflect the fact that a greater fraction of Qld’s population lives in rural and regional areas than in other states and that people in those areas are more likely to vote National (at least in the eastern states).

The only other state in which the Nats might outvote the Greens would be NSW, as the Nats background vote is too low in other states (Vic, SA and WA).

BTW, don’t the WA Nats have more greenish policies than the WA Libs? and are possibly more socially liberal?