US, Australia free trade deal/australian farmers

[Grant Lee]

> The joke amongst die hard Liberals used to be that the National Party was
the
> last refuge of socialism in the Australian parliament, on account of the
Wheat
> Board and at a state level, the Dairy Coops. In a bygone era, Salazar
criticised
> Australia's "communist" coprah purchasing board in New Guinea before the
League
> of Nations...
>
> Thiago Oppermann
>

Yes. In Australia there's a long history of (for want of a better term)
petty bourgeois socialism, arguably going back as far as the Eureka
Rebellion of 1854. It's an irony that the agarian socialist element in the
National (or Country) Party naturally loathed the urban working class
unions, who increased rail and shipping prices. (I'm not sure about other
regions, but the Communist Party did have some support among the WW1
veterans who took up farming in the West Australian wheatbelt.)