Good news back home
I come from West Australia so I’m more than pleased with the results of the weekend election. The ALP are ever hopeful but I think they’ve lost the battle.
I just can’t image the new powerbroker Grylls doing a deal with Carpenter and if he does then it would surely be the first time in Australia when the Nats and the ALP have formed such a liaison. He says he doesn’t care who he deals with but I would expect the Libs to be the eventual winner.
Brendon Grylls, the powerbroker, is just 35, country to his bootstraps, has a three-legged dog named Kokoda and boasts an iron determination to put country people back on the political map.He has a very clear strategy based on;
..seeking Royalties for Regions – a pledge to quarantine 25 per cent of the $2.7 billion in royalties received by the state government annually and inject it into regional areas. The concept was simple. If they won the balance of power, the Nationals would use that power to leverage $675 million a year to spend on regional projects over and above current and budgeted estimates.Seems reasonable to me being a country lad myself.
Facebook
Twitter
Kev
I see this as the most interesting development in Australian politics in a long time (I’m referring to the party establishments being held to promises for much-neglected rural voters).
Most public administration these days relies on a combination of the principle of contestability and raw population data. As you head north and west (or north and east in WA) this means services to the bush wither on the vine – through contestability because there’s no competition, and through population data because there’s fewer people per square kilometer.
One vote-one value has taken the political heat out of the issue, and tax concessions for rural communities are almost non-existent.
With the opportunity in WA for a rural rump party to wield real power, we may see a change. Barnarby Joyce is already promoting the Nats withdrawal from the Federal coalition in the light of the result of the Lyne by-election. I think he has a point – either they do this, or they begin to lose more seats to the rural independents (the likes of Bob Katter etc).
I’d like to see the same thing happen in Queensland, with either the Nats or a group of independents holding the balance of power. It would make for a healthy democracy, and provide justice for the people in the bush who pay the same taxes as everyone else, produce the bulk of the wealth of the nation through mining or rural production and get bugger-all in terms of services.
Being country I am onside with Gryll’s demands and see merit in it. I worry about independants – some are good, some aren’t and in national politics a national view is needed. Sure you have to look after your electorate but some decisions are national centric and not always the best for a local situation but are for the country. This is a fine line and party politics, at it’s best, looks after the fine line. At it’s worst it doesn’t of course but that’s where the local member, independant or party man, earns his money.
I think the better approach for the Nats is to make themselves as relevant as the new independants we see in the parliaments. Tie them up… compromise, reshape, throw the cards up in the air and start again. We need a coalition to match the ALP and if we don’t have it we’ll spend more time negotiating deals (like Harradine from TAS) that are too narrow, than we do running the country.
Too many independants and we could end up like Italy.