The desertion of the member for Kennedy, Bob Katter, from the National Party probably marks the death-throes of what has been an abiding debate in Australian politics – – protectionism verses free trade. Mr Katter himself would probably proclaim himself a free trader. However, his stand as an opponent of privatisation, economic rationalism and globalisation in fact it puts him in the corner with what, at least until the election of the Howard Government, had been the National Party’s traditional protectionist position. The National Party and its predecessor the Country Party had always agreed that the Australian industry should be protected against competition from the rest of the world and the Government should subsidise services into regional and rural Australia. Also, for a long time it had supported the he the regulation of the marketing of agricultural products.
Australia and the rest of the world began deregulation, privatisation and a globalisation in the 1980s. Then, Australia had a Labor Government and the Liberal and National Party’s could attack that Government from both ends of the stick. The Liberals could rant against the big power of unions and the National Party could attack the consequences of Labor’s freeing of the financial markets and privatisation of the Commonwealth bank. However, once in government the fundamental philosophical differences between the Liberal Party and National Party could no longer be papered over. Both parts of the coalition had to support coalition policy. John Howard came to government with a committed privatisation and deregulation agenda. In the past five years that has had considerable fall-out in the bush, as unprofitable banking, public-sector, telecommunications and other services could no longer be cross subsidised under a pro-privatisation regime.
The National Party found itself defending policies which had hurt its core constituents. The National Party had always stood for the socialising of losses through government subsidy and the capitalising of profits by restricting free trade philosophy only to export trading in agricultural goods. There was no difficulty when the chilly winds of privatisation and economic rationalism only blew through the corridors of public-service power in Canberra, but once they went through the shopping centres of country towns, the National Party, and Mr Katter in particular became very uncomfortable. Mr Katter has often criticised government policy in the past five years, and in the past six months or so he has openly canvassed whether he can continue in the National Party while it is pursuing policies which he sees as destructive to his constituents. This came to a crunch at the weekend when Mr Katter announced that he would sit as an independent.
Mr Katter’s National Party colleagues are struggling to maintain support in an increasingly disenchanted electorate. The last thing they want is trouble from their own side. Mr Katter has been accused by his erstwhile colleagues of risking the loss of his seat to the Labor Party. However, this is very unlikely. The seat is rabidly anti-Labor. Preferences are likely to flow from the National Party to Mr Katter or vice versa and one or other will win the seat. The real danger for the Coalition is not in one or two specific seats at the election, but the effect of his defection in the lead-up to the election.
It would be statistically unlikely that Mr Katter and of the two or three other rural conservative independent candidates would hold the balance of power after the election. If they attracted it so many votes away from the Government, it would be likely that Labor would have a majority in any event. However, in the lead-up to the election the defection of people like Mr Katter and campaigning by him and other rural conservatives against government policy will make the task for Mr Howard and National Party leader John Anderson very much more difficult.