Doug Anthony remembered as a hard man of bush politics

As leader of the Country Party/National Party for 12 years and deputy prime minister for nearly 10, he headed a group of hard men who maintained bush influence on coalition policies for much of the 1970s and early 1980s.

His boyish, slightly hayseed appearance disguised his toughness.

His most famous saying was: "If you see a head — kick it.”

John Douglas Anthony, who died on December 20, aged 90, was born on December 31, 1929.

His father Larry was a battler who made good. A post office messenger, Gallipoli veteran and soldier settler, he won the seat of Richmond on the far north coast of NSW for the Country Party in 1937 and became postmaster-general in the Menzies Government.

The young Mr Anthony took a Diploma of Agriculture from Queensland Agricultural College at Gatton and played rugby for Queensland.

In 1957 he married Margot Budd, from another prominent Country Party family.

Later that year his father died suddenly and, at the age of 27 and with his wife pregnant with the first of their three children, Mr Anthony forsook farming and won Richmond in a by-election. He was to hold the seat through 11 more elections.

Menzies promoted him in 1964 — just when he was thinking of quitting politics and going off to the Ord River — to Minister for the Interior, which largely meant responsibility for the national capital.

His three years in the post coincided with Canberra's rapid development, which included construction of the National Library and the opening of Lake Burley Griffin.

He also became close, personally and politically, to an ambitious young Liberal MP with a farming background, Malcolm Fraser.

His chief mentor was Country Party leader John (Black Jack) McEwen, the hardest of all the party's chieftains. Mr Anthony said he was a political master craftsman, who knew just when and how to strike.

In 1967 he was promoted to primary industry, a position he held until McEwen retired in 1971.

Mr Anthony succeeded him as Country Party leader, deputy prime minister and Trade and Industry Minister in the Gorton, and later McMahon, governments.

He regarded his years in primary industry, which coincided with tough times for farmers, as his hardest.

“It was the worst period in Australia, if anything could have broken me that would have been it,” he recalled.

The crisis also led to his roughest meeting, with British agriculture minister Geoffrey Rippon over European farm policies.

“It was the contempt that I couldn't put up with,” Mr Anthony said.

“It's always been the attitude of the colonial powers. After the loyalty that we'd shown, the wars that we'd fought — I thought it was a pretty shabby way to treat us.”

Among his achievements were the wheat quota scheme, reconstruction of the dairy industry and the upgrading of export abattoirs to US standards to maintain the beef trade.

Wheat was one of his biggest battles. The scheme, he said, cost him one wheat seat, but without it there'd have been chaos.

One of his biggest wins, the wool reserve price scheme, came despite ferocious Treasury objections.

Mr Anthony was supported by Ian Sinclair, his deputy throughout his leadership, and Peter Nixon. Then, and later under Mr Fraser, this deadly trio was the tough heart of a party struggling with demographic change in its heartlands.

By the time of the 1972 election that brought Gough Whitlam to power, relations between the Coalition partners were so bad that Mr McMahon wouldn't even tell his deputy the election date.

Mr Anthony found out by phoning New Zealand PM Jack Marshall.

From opposition, Mr Anthony watched with growing alarm what he regarded as a fractured Whitlam Government embarking on social experiments of great risk.

And while Billy Snedden was Liberal leader, relations between the two parties worsened.

Mr Anthony was upset that Liberal Phillip Lynch, rather than he, was deputy opposition leader and that Country Party views were not given proper attention.

In 1975, Mr Fraser — to Mr Anthony's delight — became Liberal leader and, shortly afterwards, set off on his risky and controversial course of forcing an election through withholding supply in the Senate.

In the tense final days of the crisis, with the opposition parties worried by waverers in the Senate, Mr Anthony reinforced Mr Fraser's calls to stand firm.

Throughout the Fraser years, Mr Anthony was deputy PM and Trade and Resources Minister.

He was much helped by being so close to Mr Fraser, who was more comfortable with men from the bush than city Liberals.

He supported Mr Fraser against the emerging market-driven ‘dries’ who pressed the government to embrace the policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

Together, they successfully opposed then Treasurer John Howard's proposal for a broadly based indirect tax and moves for industry deregulation and lower tariffs.

Mr Anthony sometimes stood in as acting PM from a caravan on a coastal holiday block.

At the ministerial level, he led a wide range of negotiations for better Australian trade access, multilateral and bilateral.

In a resources boom period, he struck deals with Japan on iron ore and coal and strengthened the coal, bauxite, alumina, oil and gas industries.

He was instrumental in opening the rich Middle East market and completed the Closer Economic Relations agreement with New Zealand.

Realising his party's traditional base was dwindling, Mr Anthony tried to broaden its appeal.

The name was changed to National Country Party (Country was dropped later), partly in the hope — never significantly realised — that it could appeal to the suburbs.

In January 1984, less than a year after Mr Fraser was finally defeated, Mr Anthony suddenly quit politics.

Although only 55, his 26 years as an MP made him the longest-serving member of the House of representatives at the time.

“I always said I didn't want to be an old man in politics,” he said.

Mr Anthony went back to his dairy farm, Sunnymeadows, at Murwillumbah. He also had piggery and, on the Namoi River out west, cotton interests.

In 1996, the Anthonys’ youngest, Larry, won the seat of Richmond — and became Youth Affairs Minister — after losing in 1993, the first Anthony to lose an election.

While there have been plenty of offspring following fathers into federal parliament, this was the first three-generation all-ministerial dynasty.

Not that Doug Anthony liked the word dynasty.

“It connotes privilege, it connotes royalty, power, wealth — that isn't us,” he said.