Comments on: For Nationals, the rump stakes are high

By: The Zebras

The Zebras — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 02:23:50 +0000

Oh man… what a glorious day it will be when the nats are dead. No other group or individual has done more to retard the development of this country than the Country/National Party. They are a pack of small-minded arseclowns that provide a handful of other small-minded arseclowns with far more political influence than they deserve. Please let them die quickly.

By: scot mcphee

scot mcphee — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:24:06 +0000

The next half-senate election has Brandis in top spot and Joyce in second. He will be running as a QLD LNP candidate and not a National. How he can become leader of the Nationals escapes me, unless he migrates to NSW and stands for the Nationals there.

By: RaymondChurch

RaymondChurch — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:20:54 +0000

The interesting point you make Tom is the Nats have never shown the same interest in the environment that the Greens have. Yet they purport to be the party of the land, well whats left of them do. I cannot recall when I last heard B Joyce make a serious contribution
to the restoration of logged land, or the invasion of the cane toad in his home state, or the protection of native birds and plants, or the disaster that is a river system in decay. Mind you it is difficult to recall Joyce making a serious contribution on anything. He and Sen Fielding should be locked in a room for 24 hours, they would bore each other into a permanent state of rigormortis. It is not going to do the Nats cause any favours when he eventually takes over the leadership as must surely happen. Hopefully for the sake of sane debate in the Senate and the media, his lot will have either shrunk to non influential numbers and he is merely a dumb arse filling a seat. He wont lack for company.

By: Tom McLoughlin

Tom McLoughlin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:01:01 +0000

Actually I think a deconstruction of the Nats funding sources will indicate a strong base in the extractive industries, which include so called “timber” industry where in reality most product by volume is not timber but woodchips, and thus more akin to a mining operation. Mining of green carbon in fact into soon discarded paper in Japan or similar.

But also extractive industries as generally understood - the mining sector.

I think your thesis, and that of Antony Green, is probably right but with that important qualification. Indeed I may be wrong but I understood that was the underlying rationale behind the name change from Country Party to National Party to expand beyond the traditional rural industry.

What I think you have identified here is that mechanisation has seen the agglomeration of family farms into big Agri, depopulating the regions, with climate chasing that demographic this last 10 years also regarding sustained reduced rainfall. And because politics like nature abhors a vacuum both Liberals and Labor and Independents have increasingly hunted the Nats for a meal.

The trouble for the Nats is that unless they green up (!) because they do understand land use and resource management, if only to exploit it, they can’t claim exclusivity on the mining sector like they could on rural industry. Demographics is indeed destiny. Methinks they better get their biosequestration skates on, and start promoting protection of old growth forests - because conversion of these in particular to dry schlerophyll is wildfire madness.

Really.

By: scot mcphee

scot mcphee — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:04:33 +0000

Isn’t Barnyard a member of a party - the QLD Liberal-National Party (LNP) that is Federally affiliated to the Liberal Party? He won’t be standing the next election as a National anyway if he stands in QLD. He’s opposing his own party! Or is he proposing the LNP disaffiliate?

By: Robert Garnett

Robert Garnett — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:45:25 +0000

Spot on! When the Nationals represent all people in regional Australia instead of the traditional Cockeys and Big Ag, when they stop slandering ordinary country workers, pandering to the Liberal Party, when they face up to the damage being caused to the country by the people in the Melbourne and Sydney to the country environment and when they face up to climate change will I vote for them.

I reckon a lot of other country people who don’t plough paddocks, milk cows or sell tractors would as well.