By ABC's Heather Ewart Thursday 20 November 2014
Photo: Doug Anthony, Black Jack McEwan, Peter Nixon and Ian Sinclair in 1963.
The Nationals were once at the heart of the national conversation, but faced with changing economic realities and fewer farmers in their heartlands, they have had to reinvent themselves, writes Heather Ewart.
I was anointed a junior "wombat" in late 1980, on an RAAF flight from Canberra to the Whitsundays.
This momentous occasion had to be celebrated with a Bundaberg rum and milk, under the instructions of veteran press gallery reporter, Wally Brown, a kindly man with twinkling blue eyes who took pity on a young female reporter not too sure of her role. I duly did as I was told. It was 10am, but never too early in Queensland - or so said my seasoned and much older male travelling companions who seemed to have done all this before.
A newcomer to Canberra, I was on my first ever "wombat trail", assigned to cover National Party leader Doug Anthony's five day tour of regional Queensland and file radio reports for ABC News.
The term "wombats" had been coined for the Nationals by press gallery wags during the 1977 federal election campaign, and it stuck. To this day, travelling with the Nationals is known as going on the wombat trail. The leader even carries a wooden wombat mascot on the plane during campaigns. At one point, men's ties bearing a wombat swigging down a beer were introduced as extra adornments for those inclined to wear them on the trail, though they seem to have disappeared as politics everywhere has become more earnest.
That was the thing about the Nationals and their staff back in 1980. There was nothing too earnest about them. Life on the wombat trail was fun. Reporters vied to get on board. There was never any shortage of stories and I would not be disappointed on my first journey with Doug Anthony.
First off, he publicly declared there should be sand mining on Fraser Island - a sensitive issue at the time in the Fraser government's cabinet discussions. This made headline news on ABC bulletins. That night, over a few drinks - a favourite pastime on the wombat trail - Doug briefly lamented sticking his neck out and then thought better of it. After all, why shouldn't he spell out what he and his party wanted?
Photo: Warren Truss on the 'wombat trail' during the 2013 federal election campaign. (ABC News: James Glenday)
Almost 35 years on, Doug Anthony has lost none of his feistiness. He was my first port of call when the ABC commissioned our small team to make a three-part documentary on the Nationals.
Now back on the farm in the Tweed Valley in NSW, Doug spoke fondly of his party's hey days, when he and his colleagues, fellow farmers Peter Nixon and Ian Sinclair, carried a lot of clout. They were known as the troika. Not for them the heavy use of slogans and one liners so prevalent in politics today. Not for them hiding their disagreements behind closed doors. They were about winning, and making sure their constituents knew when they had the wins.
"We weren't timid and if we had to fight, we would fight," Doug Anthony reflected. "You've got to stand up for what you believe in, and have the courage to do that, even if the media try to humiliate you."
The three first flexed their muscles back in the late sixties, when Billie McMahon was PM and wanted to revalue the currency. This, they believed, would hurt rural exports. So they stormed out of cabinet three times and even contemplated quitting the coalition, until they got their way.
Just try to imagine the junior coalition partner doing that these days. It wouldn't happen.
"Hindsight tells me that that established Doug and Ian and I in the minds of people as having some value on tough issues," Peter Nixon told us when we went to visit him at his property in Victoria's Gippsland region. "We were close, no question. We knew each other ... very well. We trusted each other."
They worked and socialised together, as did their young families - another striking difference. When's the last time you heard any politician talking about liking and trusting his or her colleagues?
And for that matter, when's the last time you heard a deputy prime minister publicly slamming a close ally like Britain, without first workshopping it? Doug Anthony did just that when Britain decided to join the Common Market, effectively dumping Australian farmers. He went to Westminster to tell the Poms he was furious:
The whole place was bedlam. I was disgusted. Here we were, their best friend that they'd ever had. We'd sent our forces to Gallipoli, we'd sent our forces to France. The Second War we came along and gave all the support possible to Britain ... and yet here, after supplying you with about 15 years of food at a concessional price, you go and dump us.
He marched outside and repeated his tirade to the waiting cameras. It didn't change anything, but the National Party again looked tough, leading the charge to defend its constituency. Doug Anthony never forgave the British, and from that moment on, became a staunch republican.
The troika, and Anthony in particular, were hard shoes to fill for the generation that followed. The political scene was changing. The old order of economic policy where protectionism reigned supreme was no longer relevant.
Demographics in National Party heartland were shifting too. There were fewer and fewer farmers, and the party had to try harder to reinvent itself to attract new voters in country towns and cities.
In the words of defector Tony Windsor, the former independent member for New England:
The National Party had this unique history coming out of the 20s, when they were the Country Party, and they got through to the early 80s, and then they blew it.
Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser thinks that after his period of government, the Nationals allowed their image to be swallowed by the Liberals. "They crossed too many lines in the sand," he told us, "and didn't realise the power they could have had."
Today's National Party leader, the steady, low-key Warren Truss of course disagrees. He countered, "Often the best way to achieve things we want is by quiet negotiation behind closed doors."
Maybe so, but do the voters know about it?
These are just some of the challenges facing the National Party, canvassed at length in our documentary. What is clear is that the party lacks the outspoken characters who were the hallmarks of its past. Journalists no longer vie to get on the wombat trail. And I doubt those that do would be sipping Bundaberg rum and milks at 10am to celebrate being on board.
Those days are long gone, never to be repeated. Some Nationals though, would love nothing more than for their party to at least be noticed again, to get rid of that constant elephant in the room: "Can the Nationals continue to go it alone?"
They respect Warren Truss and his success at the last federal election. But they see Barnaby Joyce as the heir apparent, and the best chance for the party's future.
Heather Ewart's three-part series about the Nationals - A Country Road - begins Tuesday November 25 at 8.30pm on ABC.
Heather Ewart is national affairs correspondent for 7.30. View her full profile here.
On the wombat trail: the history of the Nationals - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
