The Borg’s “Pineapple Party” is set to take off on the back of his own rebranding (visible on huge billboards in Brisbane and no doubt throughout the state) as the “new face of Queensland”. Although Mal Brough, newly elected as Queensland Liberals president, may be renegotiating aspects of the deal with the Libs to create the Liberal National Party, there’s no doubt that many Liberals are still worried that the Pineapple Party is – in effect – a takeover by the Queensland Nats. Lawrence Springborg himself has been saying very little on policy, let alone resurrecting some of his charming thoughts on immigration, for instance. But Barnaby Joyce – as he’s wont to do – may have let a cat or three out of the bag (should that be his swag?)…
The National Party is a party based on agrarian, socialist principles, as can be seen in the single desk for the orderly sale of wheat, drought aid and regional development.
The Liberals believe in the free market and it is probably in their economics where they are truly liberal. They believe in pure market principles and that the consequences of what happens next are, in the long term, the best outcome.
The Nationals believe greed is a higher order driver than market principles and market power ultimately destroys market theory. The Liberals believe the market will look after you; the Nationals believe, unguided, it will walk over you.
In an op/ed he wrote for the SMH on the weekend, Joyce goes on to spell out a whole series of contrasts between the core beliefs of the Nats and the Libs. He might be sanguine about which will ultimately prevail in a Queensland entity where Nats MPs and branch members both outnumber Liberals by big margins, but are Liberals at either state or federal level happy to have this sort of “debate” going on within a merged party? And no doubt producing all sorts of juicy stories about disunity?
Can’t see them being happy about it Kim, but is it avoidable? As my brother (a Labor member) reminds me, similar debates happen amongst the factions on a daily basis. Labor have just become really good at keeping it behind closed doors.
Ooh, a politician actually talking about real stuff and core beliefs! Well I never…
I rather like Barnaby Joyce. Wouldn’t (and can’t vote) for him, but I’m very glad he’s around.
Barnaby’s right, of course. Agree with wilful.I can hear the heartless hard-right economic rationalists in Howard’s Liberal Party spewing from here.
Barnaby also goes on to say that the Nats are basically pro-life on abortion where the Libs go for this conscience vote stuff which is another biggie.
If more people talked of issues like Barnaby and had their beliefs so well thought out and reasoned more people would agree with him against economic rationalism. The disgruntled who identified with One Nation couldn’t really tell you what they were fighting against. They couldn’t put is as succinctly as “greed is a higher order driver than market principles…”. But that was one of their big issues.
If a lot of Liberals seriously thought more about principles they might agree that their God-like belief in the “free-market” is tainted by greed.
Barnaby is one politician who knows what and why he believes what he believes. I wish they were all like him.
(on a side – we don’t hear much about economic rationalism these days. Seems the left is trying to attack business and industry with crippling carbon tax nonsense instead.)
Jeez. He looks like Barnaby Joyce. They both look like maybe there’s quite a few people outback in Bananaland who mate with cane toads for some reason.
*pssst*
*Adrien!!!*
That IS Barnaby, dude.
Crossover memebership between the labor party & the national party has always existed. To the point of there even being a national party minister in a labor govt.
As a heartless economic rationalist Liberal myself…
I think Barnaby’s editorial accurately sums up his philosophical outlook. However what Barnaby believes and what other members of the National party believe are two different things. Like every political party, the Nats are not a homogenous whole. There are definitely economic rationalist Nats in the party and hardline protectionists as well.
Similarly, there are social liberals and social conservatives in the Liberal party as well as individuals with varying degrees of confidence in markets. The ALP also has a great deal of ideological diversity in its ranks. The extent to which genuine debate can be managed within a modern political party depends largely on leadership and structural frameworks. I don’t think the reason that the Nats (or rather SOME Nats) are opposed to markets is a salient reason for disagreeing with a merger.
Many Liberals like me are opposed to a merger because they believe that the Coalition arrangement is a much better mechanism for uniting non-ALP political forces. The coalition arrangement allows for ideological, geographical and demographic diversity. The multiple problems with the proposed constitution aside, it seems that this merger is largely inspired by the Canadian model with the (laregely eastern) PCs & the (largely western) Alliance merged. In that particular case, there was a merging of two geographical separate entities. In Queensland though, both entities exist within broadly the same space. It’s one thing to reconcile two entities on opposite ends of the country with relatively similar organisational structures, it’s quite another to reconcile two parties with long histories, mutual animosities, relatively different organisational structures etc…
Barnaby confirms that the Nats are just a bunch of dirty socialists. I’d love to know what Joh thinks of this popular boy from country Queensland.
What Barnaby Joyce says and what he does are generally two different things.
An interesting story from Australian history from Artie Fadden’s autobiography. (Artie Fedden was leader of the then Country Party in the 1940s and was briefly PM in WW2.) When Artie decided to go into politics in (I think the late 20s, but I’m not sure) he tossed a coin, heads, Labor, tails, Country Party (ot vice versa). Anyway, the coin came up for the Country Party so he joined them. (This was back in the days when the ALP really was a Socialist party.)
This constant description of the Country Party, oops Nationals, as ’socialists’ really gets up my nose.
Feudal aristocrats more like.
Greed for a select elite at the expense of the majority is not what socialism {Maquarie: “System of social organization which advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production …in the community as a whole] is about and I don’t care if the term agrarian socialists, as applied to the Nats., is essentially ironic, I wish it were not used.
“it seems that this merger is largely inspired by the Canadian model with the (laregely eastern) PCs & the (largely western) Alliance merged.In that particular case, there was a merging of two geographical separate entities.”
And the merger arose because the PC vote totally collapsed in 1993 and never recovered in 1997 or 2000. The Alliance, formerly known as Reform, was made up largely of people who had been PC supporters until ‘93. (Comparing the Alliance/Reform to the Nats is totally off the rails – they’re much much more like a grown-up One Nation that moved to the centre. The Canadian version of the Nats merged with the Labour movement in the 30s to form the CCF which became the NDP)
d
*pssst*
*Sam!!!*
Joh is dead, dude.
Daryl,
This statement is not totally accurate: “The Alliance, formerly known as Reform, was made up largely of people who had been PC supporters until ‘93.”
The Alliance was pretty much stationed in Alberta. While the PC vote did collapse in 1993 (due to the GST), it did recover a bit in 1997 & 2000 in the Western states. The biggest problem was that the Alliance was unable to capture support in the West.
Regardless, Toby is right. Springborg is very enamoured by the Canadian Federal situation and has visited Canada on a “fact-finding” expedition at least once. Canada has a strangely successful history of political mergers. For another successful example see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatchewan_Party Given that the Queensland Libs are apparently insolvent, this seems to be a very relevant example!
It takes a real idiot like Joyce to take an ironic insult like “Agrarian Socialists” and turn it into a political philosophy. If someone slipped him a packet of Juicy Fruit he’d never be able to leave the house as he’d lose the insight to walk.
Whoops.
>
Still looks like his grandma’s a toad.
Agrarian Socialism is the avowed political philosophy of the Qld Nats. Or at least that’s what the one’s I’ve known has always told me. ‘Course it’s a top down kinda socialism.
More insults to the real mistreated minority, worse than the homosexuals and aboriginals, the rural dwellers. I don’t particularly mean the farmers, but the townspeople.
Whilst this is absolutely true, it is also not far from what Labor believes.
However because Labor and Greens often tend to align, they have little care for regional and rural people as demonstrated when they oppose these following things.
Should the single wheat desk be completely deregulated, absolutely not. That’ll drive many people into poverty. Should it be deregulated? Yes but limited. So about four desks or so, so as not to overly complicate the issue. After the bogus Iraq rorts affair which every country in the world was doing or has done, this blew up but I’m not sure what the ultimate outcome was.
Drought aid – this mostly gets used up by the big farmers that don’t need it and the multiple subsidies that are available on so many things requires way too much red tape. I agree that some of these farms are unviable but not all.
Regional Development – well these communities do lots of studies and then suggest them to the relevant state and federal bodies and all they do is say we’ll do a study and/or say no outright. That’s another stuff you, there is not enough political capital available. I again refer you to all the new roads and tunnels, most of which are losing money and not being used.
As for the merger, in every layman’s eyes from the east coast to the west coast, from the top end to tassie, the libs/nats are the one party. So it makes sense to formalise it.
The party members of each party however are likely to disagree and from a lay perspective it looks like the libs will block the QLD merger but Graham Young’s blog tends to suggest it’ll succeed.
I do like the fact that Barnaby does have independent thoughts and does says what he thinks, but what he thinks can still be nonsense. The ‘agrarian socialist’ tag is ludicrous as Hannah’s Dad and David R have suggested – but it does rather highlight the endless sense of entitlement which still permeates much of the Nats and some of the farming sector. It’s really the old cliche about ’socialise the losses and privatise the profits’ – and that sort of greed is apparently OK, as opposed to the Liberal’s version.
Whilst he is right in saying the Nats are mostly anti-abortion, anti-gay etc, it is not universal. NSW National Senator Fiona Nash helped push the RU486 Bill through the Senate, and some Nats MPs in NSW and WA have been reasonably enlightened in opposing the standard anti-gay rhetoric. With the ‘Liberals’ now dominated by arch-conservatives in most states and federally, the differences in this area with the Nats is a lot less than it might once have been. If there is a merger, I imagine the differences will diminish fairly quickly.
Excellent summary Vee
Agrarian socialism may be a term coined by those having an ironic take on the wealth distribution that flows from the rural sector.
Looking at the commotion that the loss of the single desk is causing among some grain growers I do wonder if they aren’t being used as a sort of reform experiment.
It appears from the statements of Wilson Tuckey that the Libs are wedded to the concept that the market will deliver regardless of the turmoil of change whereas grain growers look to acting in a completely rational manner economically despite being supposedly ‘anti- market ‘.
I have also come across a rarely mentioned political philosophy recently and wonder if others have any familarity with it’s influence in Australia.
The following link is to an abstract only ( sorry ) but the concept is agricultural fundamentalism.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1236055
Even more groovy is that Cato the Censor was the originator of it’s basic concepts
http://newcrop.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/history/lecture19/lec19.html
The section on Cato is about halfway down.
Adrien at 5, you do realise I suppose that Barnaby was born and raised south of the border.
The sort of rural business that Barnaby is mostly for supporting is the small family owned farm. He believes the Nationals are the true party of small business. He is a small business accountant himself.
Some readers here seem to think that all farms are huge rural fiefdoms employing hundreds (maybe Kerry Packer’s was). Go visit a family dairy and be in for a shock.
It is Labor and Liberal that truly support big business. Libs are pro the biggest business winning and Labor only wants to support big unionised companies like Coles and Woolies, not the family corner store.
On the desk issue, the actual growers want a single desk. If you local silo/port facilities are owned by one of even 4 companies you can hardly pay the huge freight costs to find the next port to negotiate a price for all your grain. You will have to take what they offer you – in the best interest of their stock brokers – not growers. This is ideologically driven nonsense by the Libs.
Merger, no merger it won’t matter. Without a change in outlook and approach you will still have the same failed ‘Party’ in whatever form that will not have learnt from its lessons and the people will reject once again and again and again.
Perhaps Mal Brough and his more moderate executive will change the outlook of the Liberals and provide them with a chance to succeed for once by offering people something that they would like.