Well the Nationals really lost it, didn’t they?
While Scott Morrison stuck to his National Rifle Association talking points on the weekend and said it wasn’t the time to link climate change to the bushfire catastrophe unfolding in NSW, the Nationals’ current leader, Michael McCormack, had gone berserk (or was that “beresk”) at “raving inner city lunatics” who believed in climate change.
Yesterday, anyone who mentioned climate change was “a bloody disgrace”, according to NSW deputy premier and Nats leader John Barilaro in an attack on “bloody greenies or lefties”. Leader-in-waiting Barnaby Joyce joined in to claim the bushfire threat has “been created by the Greens” and the only mention of climate change was “for your own political purpose”.
The hysterical reactions suggest something deeper at work than mere partisan sniping. The Nationals have always been the more extreme party of climate denialism; Barnaby Joyce has entertained conspiracy theories about it; former senior National Ron Boswell used to argue global cooling, not warming, was occurring. Coal fetishist and former Joyce staffer Matt Canavan has blamed climate protesters for high energy prices. In September, another putative leader, David Littleproud, rejected a link between climate change and drought.
But the Nationals’ aggressive denialism and conspiracy theories are increasingly at odds with their own constituency. Many of them represent voters who face the most serious impacts of rising temperatures in Australia. But they refuse to engage with farming groups concerned about climate change impacts, despite evidence showing strong support within farming communities for climate action.
In 2016, the National Farmers Federation ceased quibbling about the evidence of climate change, accepted the need for agriculture to reduce emissions and better adapt to a changing climate, and welcomed the Farmers for Climate Action as an associate member. In 2017, even the Young Nationals called for an emissions trading scheme.
Why have Nationals MPs refused to shift with their own base to accept climate change exists and the need to address it? The answer lies in the reason the Nationals exist at all. They are unique in Australian politics in rejecting the idea of any kind of national interest as their raison d’être, instead existing purely to manipulate the democratic system to deliver rewards to a sectional interest, agricultural communities and, to a lesser extent, regional communities more broadly.
National policy challenges — let alone international ones — are outside the Nationals’ remit; if it can’t be monetised into funding that can be handed to farmers then it doesn’t exist.
Drought funding illustrates the problem perfectly: the National Farmers Federation has been calling for a properly coordinated national drought policy that would replace ad hoc handouts that actually undermine the incentives for farmers to prepare for drought and become more resilient.
But the focus of Nationals MPs has been entirely on making sure they can take credit for providing yet further rounds of handouts to battling farmers, usually via concessional loans, which simply encourage farmers to undertake uncommercial investments.
A coherent national drought policy would shift away from rounds of handouts toward recognising that drought will worsen due to climate change and that farmers must invest — as so many already do — in preparedness and resilience, while allowing unviable properties to shut down or be acquired by those who can make them viable.
This would accelerate the already significant reduction in the agricultural workforce that has occurred in recent years and place further demographic pressure on already marginal small regional communities, further shrinking the Nationals’ electoral base. Better to prop up unviable farms and unviable rural towns with taxpayer largesse than permit a coherent and rational policy.
Climate change also requires a coherent national policy around both emissions abatement — which agriculture must play a role in, as the NFF recognises — and adaptation. It is not a problem amenable to ceaseless rounds of handouts and “thoughts and prayers” after every disaster. Regional communities — like those in northern Australia — eventually become uninsurable.
Industries become investment pariahs. Farmers have to become smarter and more innovative or fail. A growing proportion of the Nationals’ electoral base understands that. But the National Party itself cannot understand it. It can only see threats to its business model of acting as a siphon for taxpayer dollars to its constituents.
This is, as far as I can tell, a problem that could be in theory remedied at the ballot box. That Nationals keep getting elected says that the people in those seats are comfortable with the present arrangement – or at the least they see no better alternative.
Come now, Bernard, we know its been at least a decade since the Nats have truly represented Rural Communities……outside of election times.
Though they do support certain aspects of agriculture (like export Cotton & export Sugarcane), they now principally represent Water Traders, the Coal Industry & the CSG industry.
Perhaps it is caught between too many interests. The water crisis has distant resemblance to the 19th century struggle between squatter and selectors, with big scale irrigators akin to the squatters. On top of this is the desire to appease the mining industry, which runs against emissions reduction.
Agreed. Any NATs’ drought policy is bound to be incoherent and ad hoc because their main constituents these days are the mining and plantation (cotton, rice) industries, not plain old ‘farmers’. Those two groups want merely water for themselves and carbon emissions for all.
Having spent the weekend in Northern Victoria, talking to a number of ‘family farmers’, you have missed the key point, Bernard.
This is where you miss the mark, in describing the Nats reason for existing;
“They are unique in Australian politics in rejecting the idea of any kind of national interest as their raison d’être, instead existing purely to manipulate the democratic system to deliver rewards to a sectional interest, agricultural communities and, to a lesser extent, regional communities more broadly.”
They do not exist to benefit “agricultural communities”; they exist to benefit “agribusiness”.
Some of the farmers I spoke to on the weekend were among those who ‘protested’ the Nats devotion to agribusiness, recently, including by launching an effigy of Littleproud off a bridge, into the Murray.
Littleproud is emblematic of why the Nats are so ‘on the nose in the bush’. He’s a former NAB & Suncorp ‘agribusiness banker’, who owns an equipment rental franchise with his wife.
Further evidence for the Nats real constituency was seen in the news this morning;
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-12/dairy-farmers-angry-over-new-milk-processor-regulations/11694996
“Dairy farmers say draft code of conduct meant to protect them gives power to milk processors instead”
“………Under pressure to save an industry in trouble, the government promised new regulations to force processors to stick to prices and agreements.
A draft code of conduct released in January “prohibited” such actions unless there were “exceptional circumstances.”
But in a new draft released last month by Agriculture Minister Bridget McKenzie, processors could change contract conditions after they were signed if there are “circumstances beyond the reasonable control” of the processor.
“There wouldn’t be much there to stand up for farmers having that clause written in that way,” Mr Forbes, who runs an 800-head dairy farm in Gloucester on the NSW Mid North Coast, told AM……….”
“Exceptional” becomes “reasonable”, and the power in the hands of the processors becomes further entrenched.
Couldn’t have put it better myself, David. Look at the average Nationals MP today, & you don’t see rural hayseeds. You see ex-bankers, accountants & representatives of fossil fuel & agri-business concerns.
If they are so “on the nose” in the bush, then who voted them into Parliament? Urban voters certainly didn’t. It is unarguable that there are good farmers it is also unarguable that the majority are the worst of Australians, who care nothing for the national interest, who abuse their workforce, who destroy the land that gives them their income, and whose first response to any issue id to demand more money from city based taxpayers, the very people they abuse.
You talk about the dairy industry, well they wanted a deregulated market, Howard gave them one as well as billions in free and tax free taxpayers money, they have had some of their best years over the past few, yet the still want more handouts. They are better con artists than farmers.
Much the same people who voted Morrison into government in the ‘burbs. Still, they could have voted ALP, I suppose, and had Joel Fitzgibbon ‘representing’ the interests of coal mining corporations (not coal ‘miners’) in furious agreement with Joyce’s former staffer, and familied-up coal lover, Canavan.
Most of the smaller farmers don’t have a “workforce” to abuse, other than family and neighbours.
Unlike Dominos Pizza, Calombaris, Perry, Woolworths and the rest of the ever growing list of wage thieves.
The small farmers wanted deregulated markets about as much as union members wanted work choices, and that includes the dairy industry.
Of all those deregulated markets, water is the prime example. Do you honestly think farmers saw the chance to make ‘hay’ trading for scarce water against the likes of Chris Corrigan and foreign investment banks?
You seem to think ordinary citizens, whatever their endeavours, actually have some say. That’s not even remotely realistic in this bought and paid for ‘Western liberal democracy’.
I suggest that’s less arguable than another of your sweeping contentions; that ‘the majority of farmers are the worst of Australians’.
The GNats are like a burglar who steals from you and at the same time runs a go fund me page for victims.