Merger would depress the market in voters

_{28, May 2002}

Merging the Liberal and National Parties makes about as much sense as merging Coke and Pepsi. If Pepsi and Coke merged less people would drink cola – not more. Constant competitive rivalry boosts consumption as new products reach out to new markets, whether its soda or politics.

Despite the fact that the Liberal Party does win seats in the bush, it remains a fact that the National Party is to regional Australia, what Labor is to the unions. It has 16 seats in the House of Representatives – all in regional Australia. It is the natural party to represent their interests and the challenge is, just like it is for Coke and Pepsi, to find innovative ways of tapping into greater support in regional Australia.

For the Liberal Party a merger with the Nationals represents disaster in the long term. There is no doubt that a merger is attractive to the Party’s right wing warriors such as Finance Minister Nick Minchin, because they see it as an opportunity to cement in place forever the populist conservative view that dominates the Party today. But the impact of this will be to cleave away many urban supporters who are liberal socially as well as economically liberal at the same time as it would fail to satisfy many rural conservatives who have recently found a home with One Nation and Independents.

In fact, we have witnessed in a small way the kind of splintering that would occur if the Liberals and National merged. In Western Australia, where the right wing of the Liberal Party dominates, the issue of logging in old-growth forests saw the creation of a splinter group in key wealthy Liberal electorates in Perth. That group, ‘Liberals for Forests’, had a membership base that was essentially higher income earners with tertiary education. The Perth equivalent of Sydney’s North Shore or Melbourne’s inner eastern suburbs.

And the possibility of more splinter groups emerging from a merged conservative party is reinforced when one considers the significant shift in Liberal Party policy outlook in recent years. It is fair to say that the Howard government sees its continued electoral success through the prism of the blue-collar conservative vote, that can be found in areas like Sydney’s west. As the Australian National University’s National Public Leadership Centre put it in its analysis of last year’s election, “John Howard traded support from those living in Sydney’s inner north shore for people living in Sydney’s western suburbs. This is a significant demographic realignment in Australian politics.”

For how much longer can those who support the non-labor cause but believe in globalisation, socially progressive policy and 21st century symbols for a multi-cultural Australia, keep voting for a political party that, even without the Nationals on board, is increasingly disconnected from these ideas and values.

And the National Party should not countenance a merger because it will be a takeover in all parts of Australia bar Queensland (which explains why the move has the support of the remnants of Bjelke-Petersenism in that state). But more than that, it will make it more difficult for conservative candidates in regional Australia to beat off One Nation types. The current coalition arrangements make it possible for a stand alone National Party to give those groups and individuals who are protectionist and isolationist, and believe that they are the victims of globalisation, a say in mainstream politics. A conglomerate Liberal Party couldn’t.

Perhaps most importantly a merger represents the politics of democratic deficit. At a time when voters are increasingly disillusioned with mainstream politics because the major parties seem to be monolithic and intolerant of dissent, to suggest that the electorate’s choice in much of Australia will be reduced even further is to simply increase cynicism and disillusion with the democratic process.

This is not the first time that the suggestion of a merger between the Liberals and Nationals has been proposed. In Queensland in 1994 a shotgun state-based union was almost consummated by then Liberal State President and former NT Chief Minister Paul Everingham. But the Liberal bride reneged and Everingham resigned. The succeeding Liberal administration put its mind to expanding its vote and working out a cooperative arrangement with the Nats. The result was two-thirds more seats for the Libs and the fall of the Goss Labor Government.

This current proposal suffers from all of the defects of the Queensland one, and then some. It is a plan that seeks to substitute organisational restructuring for plain hard work and merely demonstrates that the proponents are either running away from that hard work or have ulterior motives. Rather than work out how they can better represent their constituencies better to increase their electoral appeal, they fancy they can borrow each other’s voters.

Co-authored with Greg Barns

Published in The Age