No sympathy for Nats
There's no need to waste sympathy on the NSW Nationals after the Orange by-election.
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It would be more productive to find out what planet they're on.
It was the old Country Party which forced the introduction of preferential voting, and then made sure that everyone else had to stick to the system.
The Nats have been told since at least 1990 that their beloved voting system has defects which can be fixed, but they have flatly refused to consider any change.
They simply don't care about losing seats which they should win, nor even about losing whole elections.
Result: they take consolation in the likes of Tony Abbott, who said after Labor won the 2014 South Australian election that the system sometimes gets it wrong.
So they took no notice in the Queensland election of 2015, when Labor finally learnt how to use the system to its own advantage.
"Vote for whoever you like, but put the LNP last", was the message which went out.
That slogan worked so well for Labor that it was used in the 2016 Federal election.
And of course it was the message which Alan Jones and Ray Hadley took to Orange, to great anti-Nat effect.
The Nats had already long forgotten the voter discontent in Orange which led to a Federal political career for one Peter Andren.
And the discontent in Tamworth which did the same for Tony Windsor.
They believe that once discontent dies down it will never flare up again.
So just what planet are the Nats on?
Here on Earth, political parties become irrelevant if their voters abandon them.
Earthling political parties become irrelevant even faster if they stick to voting systems which help voters to abandon them, and faster still if such parties refuse to fix the systems.