If ever there was a case for the National party to get out of the Coalition, it was there in Heather Ewart’s excellent documentary A Country Road: The Nationals.

The argument presented for a long-term partnership with the Liberal party has always been that bush seats will always receive more attention when their members are sitting permanently on government benches.

But the gains made by independents and minority parties in recent years must force a reassessment of that view.

As the political landscape changes under the captain of Team Australia and his deputy Warren Truss, voters are proving they are no longer prepared to be overlooked by the major parties.

While conservatives predicted rural independents would never win again after Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott sided with Julia Gillard in 2010, they are proving surprisingly resilient.

The Victorian election showed that country independents are not a one-term wonder with the election of Suzanna Sheed in Shepparton, coming on the back of Cathy McGowan’s win in the federal seat of Indi. In the northern rivers region of NSW, the conditions are ripe for a move against the Coalition incumbent, likewise in the federal seat of Parkes. Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is having another tilt and there is the latest arrival, Clive Palmer.

Across rural and regional Australia, discontent has been bubbling to the surface around issues such as land use, internet and mobile black spots and budget cuts to services. Community leaders are watching political dynamics in other seats carefully.

A telling example occurred this week in the New South Wales town of Tamworth, in Tony Windsor’s old seat of New England, now held by deputy Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, a future Nationals leader.

Armidale was the first place to get top shelf National Broadband Network on the back of the Gillard independent agreement to form minority government. Just down the road, Tamworth was slated for the same in 2013. Since the reassessment under the new government, Tamworth town centre has fallen off the list, notwithstanding the local MP is a cabinet member.

Tamworth’s mayor, Col Murray, was not backwards in coming forwards and local media was toxic. Murray’s comments went straight to the heart of the issue: what is the point of having a government member?

“The only thing that has changed in this is the political scene, and that is a discussion we are very much having with our member for New England, Barnaby Joyce,” he told ABC radio.

“I think this is of such importance to our community, and I can only assume, rightfully or wrongfully that Tamworth is considered a safe seat. What I would like to suggest particularly to our federal member is that I don’t think that situation will remain if we are not included.

“If our business community doesn’t have its expectations (met), the ones they had a couple of years ago when we were going to be connected next after our neighbouring city Armidale, with all this infrastructure already in the ground, then I think that that political landscape may well change.”

Nationals leader from 1974 to 1984 Doug Anthony (centre) with his wife, Margot, and Ewart. Photograph: ABC

As the leader of a regional centre, Murray says he has learnt from hard experience that communities are becoming more reactive. The opportunity to have a platform and share a view is so much easier than the old method of writing a letter to a small town paper. Now, he tells me, if his community is unhappy, he will hear about it.

The seeds of the Nationals’ woes began in the 1980s with drought and economic deregulation but the troubles accelerated rapidly with the election of the Howard government in 1996 and the expectations in the bush.

Economic rationalism was the flavour of the government and there was a failure by the Nationals leadership to differentiate, to show how they are arguing for their constituents as John Howard stepped into rural Australia to grab support for the Liberal party.

Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, who was seen as too close to the National party in his own years in office, said the Nationals should have never accepted the situation.

“So the National party themselves became much weaker than they were,” Fraser said. “They didn’t realise the inherent strength they could have had.”

The answer, in former leader John Anderson’s mind and others, was amalgamation with the Liberal party to overcome changing bush demographics and a party funding crisis.

“I felt that it had to be deeply and honestly examined, not amalgamation at any cost by no means, at the very least I wanted a recognition of a proper place for the country members around the cabinet table,” Anderson told Ewart.

Notwithstanding disquiet or outright opposition by members such as former senator Ron Boswell, Anderson was sent to sound out John Howard.

Ever the politician, Howard wasted no time in ruling it out. The essence of his message was that the National party needs to hold the parking spot so no one else gets it, with one eye (at that time) on One Nation and the rise of independents.

“My great fear was if you forced it at a parliamentary level, it would not be accepted at the grassroots and then you would get people running as ‘authentic real Nationals’ or they would even revive the old name of the Country party and run against Coalition members and we would just be recreating the very disunity we were trying to get rid of,” said Howard.

“You can imagine if you had a forced amalgamation the disgruntled members of the Nationals and some Liberals would easily see friendships in people like (Tony) Windsor.”

The great shame for rural and regional people is that a once head-kicking party representing country interests has become an anodyne shadow of its former self. If, by Howard’s assessment, the Nationals are just placeholders for the Liberal party, country people can just as well tick the Liberal box.

But there has never been more of a need for a true country party, a centre party that stands up for rural communities. That is not just for farmers but for all its regional communities, the poor, the marginalised, the Indigenous, the uneducated.

There are National MPs who understand this. Look at NSW education minister Adrian Piccoli’s understanding of bush schools, most visibly seen in his support for the Gonski funding model and his resistance to Christopher Pyne’s changes.

A country party should be able to stand up in a cabinet that seeks to make young unemployed people apply for 40 jobs a month in towns that are lucky to have one job vacancy in that time.

A country party should know that in a small town, a Medicare co-payment will hit hard and “sausage machine medicine” is the only option for doctors with so many patients to see.

A country party could unite rural and metropolitan voters on issues such as land use around farming and mining, sustainable food production, rural communications and, dare I say it, climate change, the biggest threat to agriculture. A country party should be able to appeal to every foodie that walks into a farmers market and asks where their produce comes from.

The danger for the Nationals is that on one flank country independents are rising, and on the other Labor is alive to the possibilities of non-metropolitan seats. The bottom line is, if the National party doesn’t seize the opportunity, someone else will.

You can only hold a parking spot for so long

• A Country Road: The Nationals can be seen on ABC iView