A malaise in the Nationals

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.