posted on 2024-11-18, 09:12authored byGeoffrey Robinson
Since 1972 Labor federal governments have implemented a policy of economic liberalisation in Australian agriculture. It was in this area that the Whitlam government showed itself most sympathetic to market liberalism. Australian agricultural economists were the first Australian economists to champion economic liberalisation and they welcomed Whitlam's initiatives. I To economic liberals all forms of agricultural product market regulation constitute unproductive rent seeking. As a result agricultural economists have shown little interest in examining the ideologies and forms of Labor agricultural regulation.2 Labour historians and activists have followed a similar pattern. They have taken for granted Labor's support of agricultural regulation, and the party's pursuit of farmers ' votes, and have argued over its significance. To the right it demonstrates Labor's status as a peoples' party, to the left it shows how Labor in government from an early stage privileged petty-bourgeoisie interests.3 Agricultural policy was contested within the pre-Whitlam Australian Labor Party (ALP). I will demonstrate this fact by an examination of the agricultural policy of the NSW Labor government of 1930-32, with particular reference to wheat and dairy farming. In 1930 NSW Labor campaigned heavily on agricultural issues and won a level of rural electoral support comparable to that of William McKell in 1941, an achievement neglected by McKell's admirers" In eighteen months of power Jack Lang's government devoted as much attention to agricultural policy as did McKell's government, which the NSW ALP right takes as the model of Labor agrarianism.s Despite this attention at the May 1932 election NSW Labor lost every rural electorate. This debacle revealed the limits of labour agrarianism.