Fresh food for rural discontent

A One Nation-style political backlash is building in the bush.

Drew Hutton

DREW Hutton cuts an unlikely figure as the new Pauline Hanson. But through opposition to coal seam gas and open-cut coalmining on rural land, the Queensland Greens co-founder has forged an extraordinary political constituency that almost defies belief.

On Tuesday he was in Byron Bay, the love-fest capital of northern NSW speaking to the dreadlocked and moneyed sea changers. Days before he was on talkback radio with Alan Jones, in the belly of the beast of daily dissatisfaction. He recently received a standing ovation from the right-wing Property Rights Australia group which, not long ago, would have refused to give him the time of day.

In short, Hutton has left politics but is riding a potent new wave of bush dissatisfaction stretching from north Queensland to southern Victoria that mirrors the reform fatigue rebellion that helped to seed One Nation 14 years ago .

A new political disconnect has written a fresh chapter of rural discontent. The unrelenting march of open-cut mining and coal seam gas exploration of the new century has replaced deregulation and industry adjustment of the 1990s as the reform-driven existential threat to country life. Food security has become the proxy for fear of foreign capital.

For some people, it is the beginnings of a revolution that will invigorate minority political parties and independents. They see the Greens as a new One Nation, taking votes from the Nationals and Labor, as rural insecurity is harnessed and married to a new wave of city-based militant environmental activism.

For Hutton, who heads a national federation of civil disobedience groups through which thousands of landowners Lock the Gate on mining, it's an easy sell.

"Are we going to continue tearing up our food bowl?" Hutton asks. "Why are we inviting multinational corporations to come in and tear up the Liverpool Plains, tear up the Darling Downs, tear up the Golden Triangle in central western Queensland, tear up the Hunter Valley, the Southern Highlands in NSW, the Northern Rivers and threaten the Great Artesian Basin?"

Is it really that simple? Or is the disconnect confirmation that politicians have lost control of the mining boom, that the stresses of a two-speed economy and enduring political disunity have finally split the city and country?

Is widespread anger in the bush over the march of coalmining, the loss of productive farmland, the spread of coal seam gas exploration and its perceived threat to the Great Artesian Basin really a proxy for much deeper political misgivings? If so, who is at fault and who has most to lose?

Hutton has no doubt there are greater forces at work but says "locking the gate creates a sense of drama around the whole issue and provides a context for it to be taken up in urban areas, which is where it needs to be taken up in order to get real political leverage.

"This issue is morphing into really an issue about people's empowerment. About taking on the big guys, people who don't care, people who won't listen, including governments."

Hutton says he has "absolutely no doubt" the anti-mining campaign has become a proxy for deeper seated resentments. "They have got an Australian dollar that is going berserk and that throws all sorts of industries into danger like agriculture, tourism, education and manufacturing," Hutton says. "Things are out of their control, but they suspect if governments cared then they wouldn't be feeling so disempowered. Like One Nation, it is about losing control."

According to John Wanna from the School of Politics and International Relations at Australian National University, the xenophobic response to China buying farmland to develop coalmines is part of an ongoing battle about Australia's need to import foreign capital to develop.

Rather than xenophobia, Wanna says the stronger argument for the Greens rests in asking why Australia is developing more and more coalmines. "If they can put together a political argument that says protect farms, protect the food bowl, protect the regions, the scenery of the regions and link that to the belief we ought to be moving away from coal and not simply exporting the carbon then that might be a powerful message," Wanna says.

But, as things stand, Wanna rejects suggestions the Nationals have the most to lose from the issue. "The Greens aren't going to be challenging them from the conservative side, which is what One Nation did," he says. "If the Nationals and Liberals hold together on this and say these aren't our policies and can taint Labor with the blame they can hold the line that they will look after the countryside."

Wanna also sees the issue as much deeper than coalmining per se. "It is the confluence of many things that is breeding dissatisfaction," he says. "The fact that politically we can't seem to solve a lot of the big problems and have a consensus agreement on the rising cost of living and bills and everything.

"They are not all similar issues but they are all feeding into a kind of disgruntled factor," Wanna says. "It is amazing how disparate things can come together and people with no necessary agreement on what they are dissatisfied about can share a dissatisfaction."

This issue was explored at The Australian and Melbourne Institute's Economic and Social Outlook Conference in Melbourne last week. Chris Richardson of Deloitte Access Economics told the conference the key characteristics of any resources boom were the strength of the exchange rate and interest rates.

"Those high exchange rates and interest rates are a real problem for the farmers and the manufacturers and the fact they are hurting off the back of that is no surprise," Richardson said.

Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson said Australia was gradually coming to realise the negative implications in terms of the structural adjustment being forced on parts of the non-mining sector by the sustained increase in the exchange rate. "What we have still not begun to appreciate, though, is the implications of the emergence of a massive new middle class in Asia arising from the success of China and India in lifting hundreds of millions of people from poverty," Parkinson said.

"I am continually surprised that Australian investors have not yet realised the potential benefits of this new middle class for our agricultural industries."

For Wanna the rising dissatisfaction in the bush is a sure sign of political failure. "It is all about the political system not being in touch with people's views, or to put it the other way around, the political system not spending enough time educating, explaining, bringing along community views to the direction that they are going in."

Given the political division on the introduction of a carbon tax, and the reform fatigue equivalent of the two-speed economy on the back of the protracted mining boom, there is a risk of history repeating itself, with disaffected rural blocs shifting away from the main parties. Much of the debate taking place in rural communities on the issue of global warming is a world away from the official view that will now be promoted with a big-spending, government-funded advertising campaign.

It is difficult to see how this dissatisfaction could be harnessed by the Greens. But former Queensland Labor senator John Black says it would be a big mistake to underestimate the grassroots skills of Hutton. "Right now the Labor Party is just treated with total contempt; I think it is irretrievable," Black says. "The Liberal Party is basically regarded as having run out of ideas, and the National Party doesn't stand for anything anymore. The National Party is the one that is really vulnerable in all of this, it has got a real identity crisis."

Black believes the coalition of discontent may unlock the less educated, blue-collar, low-income male vote that was the secret to John Howard's electoral success.

His view is rejected by Queensland Nationals Senator Ron Boswell.

"There is angst in the bush, no doubt about it," Boswell says. "But I think people are so focused on the carbon tax, live cattle exports, boat people and other disasters. I don't think they are going to risk their votes going to independents or any other party," he says.

Ironically, Boswell was among the first to equate the Greens with One Nation. "Australia needs to work out very quickly that the Greens are the One Nation of the Left," Boswell told the Senate last year.

For Hutton, the equation is simple. "Whichever party comes out and says we will stop this madness, we will change federal legislation and introduce a food security program for this country which involves protecting our good agricultural lands and preserving parts of it for the future, that is the party that is going to do best in the next federal election.

"I think the Greens are most in touch at the present time, but there are sections of the Coalition who are definitely getting it."