She's always been regarded a political talent to watch, but last week NSW Nationals Senator Fiona Nash showed she's a woman of steely backbone.
Sticking to her principles, she joined three other Nationals to cross the floor in the Senate and vote with the Greens against Labor and the Opposition on giving tax breaks to private forestry carbon sinks. The tax breaks are part of the Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme, but the Nationals have long argued these private investment plantations are undermining rural communities by distorting land values and taking land out of food production. So it was hardly a big political shock when Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce, Ron Boswell, John Williams and Nash walked to support a disallowance motion on the tax breaks moved by Greens Senator Christine Milne.
But what is surprising is that, as a result of this stand, Nash was forced to resign as shadow parliamentary secretary for water resources and conservation. According to a Parliamentary Library chart on frequent floor-crossers, former Liberal Senator Robert Hill crossed to the other side 10 times to vote against his party on tax, the environment, human rights, and referendum bills in his political career – and kept his various portfolios. Queensland Nationals Senator Flo Bjelke-Petersen did the walk 81 times without censure and Tasmanian Liberal Senator Reg Wright initiated 60 of the divisions on which he crossed the floor, topping the chart with a record 150 crossings in his 28-year career.
So why was Nash forced to resign her portfolio? She offered her resignation as a matter of form, but Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull was not duty-bound to accept it. He could have silenced speculation about a possible Coalition split by saying the Nationals had a long-standing opposition to managed investment schemes, including private forestry carbon sinks. But the cross-over was a rebuke to Turnbull, who helped design the tax breaks as former environment minister in the Howard government. He also spoke in support of the schemes at a joint party meeting last month.
Does any of this matter? Turnbull hasn’t announced a replacement for Nash as yet, but there’s a dearth of backbench Liberal talent to match her background in this area. Conservation and water are key issues for rural Australia and it makes sense to have a National – and, in Nash’s case, a farming partner – in the shadow parliamentary secretary role.
In her first speech to the Senate, when she was elected in 2005, Nash quoted from a speech given by former Nationals leader and deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson. It a speech – and a cracker of speech, at that – given by Anderson in 1999, but it still rings true today. He was talking about the possibility of Australian becoming two nations – urban and rural –split by poverty and lack of understanding.
“The sense of alienation, of being left behind, of no longer being recognised and respected for the contribution to the nation being made, is deep and palpable in much of rural and regional Australia today. While there are areas and industries that are doing very well, there are many that are not. This issue must be addressed by all of us who collectively make up Australia, if we are to be a whole nation, because we can and must do everything we can to draw alongside those facing great challenge.’’ Anderson said.
Nash went on her speech to note conditions in rural electorates had changed, and the Nationals now represented many of the country’s poorest electorates. “It is often those communities who need the greatest support, and the Nationals make no apology for fighting as hard as we possibly can for them,’’ she said.
Here’s a story to put these comments in context. Last month, I was talking to a campaigner with a national conservation organisation, who was pushing the simplistic argument that rural poverty is an indicator that farming practices needed to change. He claimed farmers were failing to cope with climate change and needed should leave the land to retrain for new careers. Their farms could then be “freed-up’’ (his words) to be forestry carbon sinks. So who would grow our food and fibre? We’d import those from developing nations, he said. What about the social cost to rural communities? He was scathing about “the romantic drivel that’s talked about farmers’’. If rural communities were facing problems it was because farmers had over-cleared (he used a ruder, shorter word) the land and taken too much water from our rivers. Is there such as word as “ruralist’’ to describe such blinkered prejudice?
Given such appalling ignorance on the economic, social and cultural role of rural Australia, we need politicians like Fiona Nash to speak out. And we definitely need people like her in our federal parliament, who are prepared to put principle before party rung-climbing and self-interest.
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