The Leader of the National Party, John Anderson, has signaled that he will reform his party by taking it from a “”collection of state-based parties” to a party that must accept more federal direction. “”We have to operate as a focused, co-ordinated, federally-oriented federal team.” He said that the specifics of his proposals were a matter for the party internally, but they would be about funds management, the federal directorship, and strategies for individual electorates and pre-selecting appropriate candidates.
There is something seriously missing here. Policy.
The National Party lost two seats to the Liberal Party – one of them the seat vacated by the former leader Tim Fischer – and one to an independent – former National MP Bob Katter. The National Party is down to 13 Members of the House of Representatives. The loss to Mr Katter symbolises the National Party’s fundamental difficulty – that while in Government with the Liberals it has to juggle loyalties between a Coalition partner which is economically dry, on one hand, and its grass-roots constituency which is economically interventionist, on the other. Typical rural constituents likes Government to provide subsidies for telecommunications, uneconomic roads and railways and for the wherewithal of agricultural production. They want agricultural marketing arrangements that offend the rules of competition. These are an anathema to the philosophy of the Liberal Party. The only two economic policies the Nationals and the Liberals share are labour-market reform and free external trade, and even then many Nationals only support free export trade and would happily see an end to the influence of globalisation that makes inefficient rural non-exporting industry unviable.
The two Coalition parties have had an easier time on the social front with the ascendancy of social conservatism in the Liberal Party under John Howard, but there is still a latent social liberalism in the Liberal party that might break out after Mr Howard departs causing further trouble for the National Party.
Mr Anderson can rabbit on as long as he wants about structures, financing and candidate selection, but he cannot escape the policy dilemma. He must either convince his constituency of the merits of economic liberalism or he must convince his coalition partner of the merits of regulation and market distortion through subsidies. Even in the lead up to a tight election he failed on the latter score and the resounding victory of Mr Katter indicated his failure on the former.
In short the National Party is between the devil and the deep blue sea, and the deep blue sea has become even deeper in the term of the Howard Government which has had no time for the interventionist conservatism of the Menzies and Fraser Governments.
Now, reports of the National (or Country) Party’s death have been greatly exaggerated. But reports of them facing death by a thousands cuts have not. In the lead up to the 1977 election – 25 years ago – they had 23 members of the House of Representatives. That is double what they have now, factoring in the increased size of the House.
The Nationals lost a lot of ground to One Nation in 1998 because One Nation expressed economic backwardness and social conservatism in a way more appealing to rural voters. The Nationals clawed most of the first-preference vote back in 2001 – but the overall two-party preferred vote hovered. This was because the Nationals’ Coalition partner read some of the rural message and started to listen to and pander to the “”rural and regional” voter. Alas for the Nationals, it did not help them, it just drove many rural voters directly to the Liberals.
Maybe Mr Anderson should look at the adage, “”If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.”. In any event, he needs to do more than reorganise the finances and structures of his party.