The Victorian Farmers’ Union, Country, and National Party, 1916-2000: Survival, Adaptation, and Evolution

Abstract

This thesis undertakes a detailed analysis of the Country-National Party in Victorian state politics from its formation as the Victorian Farmers’ Union during the First World War through to the defeat of the Kennett Liberal-National Coalition Government in 1999. Long neglected as a subject of dedicated research, the Victorian Country-National Party is a rare example of an agrarian party that endured for over a century in a developed and comparatively urbanised democratic polity. The thesis examines the various survival and adaptation strategies deployed by the movement as it transitioned from its origins as an exclusively agrarian, political-industrial farmers union into a more broad-based, ..