The Nationals have copped a flogging at the Orange by-election, receiving the same message Americans delivered in electing Donald Trump.
That is: political parties who pander to elites and ignore average punters’ concerns while sprouting shallow, vacuous rhetoric lose elections.
Rural Australians are now using the balance of power to their advantage. People in both Orange and the USA feel disenfranchised from governments and discovering why is difficult.
Perhaps the most accurate analysis I have read was in a book “Deer hunting with Jesus” by Joe Bageant, a local from Winchester, Virginia, a town of about 26,000.
He paints a graphic picture of the living conditions, hopes and aspirations of people and why they feel so disenfranchised from government.
People feel their country is moving without them, with little income growth since the global financial crisis. But the line that really hit me was “working-class passivity, antipathy to intellect and belligerence towards the outside world”.
Perhaps this best describes a lot of rural communities in Australia also.
My interpretation is: people don’t want to be involved in politics and they dislike bureaucracies and governments who want to tell them what to do.
Recognising their dissatisfaction is important, but equally important is finding honest solutions that will help them. Policies such as a 40 per cent tariff on Chinese imports, killing the new health system and stopping trade as Trump has promised will only make their situation worse.
In NSW the voters of Orange did not like the Sydney government decimating the dog racing industry, which a lot of people enjoy. They did not like council amalgamations and they wondered how the Baird Government could be so far out of touch with them.
The Trump election poses potential risks to Australian farmers. With trade between Australia and the USA heavily tilted in their favour – our exports to the US consisted of $13.4 billion worth of goods and $7.1 billion of services in 2014-15. In the same period America sold us $44.1 billion worth of goods and $13.7 billion of services.
That’s more than a two-to-one advantage to the US. Trump would hurt his own people more than us if he fiddles with the 2005 US-Australia free trade agreement, but because Australian agriculture exports 60 per cent of its production, trade is critical to Australian farmers.
Rubbing a bit more salt in the wound is US farmers are subsidised about $11 billion annually. We can only hope President Trump does not increase that to our detriment.
Governments today operate in volatile times and both Americans and the good people of Orange are clearly not happy.
But perhaps Americans can take solace that politicians rarely keep their promises, so a lot of Trump’s rhetoric will probably evaporate. However for the people of Orange venting their spleen might be a clarion call to the Nationals that all is not well in the bush and people are hurting, needing some clever solutions to our problems.
