Onto the meat then. The Nationals have an interest in promoting and
being seen to promote rural/country interests (I'm distinguishing people
on farms from the much larger number of people in country towns here --
both are the Nationals target voters). These interests overlap to a
point some of the political messages about Free Software, eg building up
local skills and local knowledge, increased equality of access to IT
(the Nationals are sensitive to the idea that their constituency is
disadvantages when it comes to access to information and communication,
hence why there was *any* fuss about Telstra). They are in most (maybe
all now) states and federally in an unusually close Coalition with one
of the target parties already, but they do have a different
constituency.