Yesterday, the Nationals announced that they would not be renewing the coalition with the Liberal Party following the 2025 federal election. This is unlikely to be a permanent break, but rather the parties taking some time apart to re-assess their positions after a devastating election defeat.
The nature of these political parties is quite peculiar. Sometimes, the Coalition can best be analysed as a single entity – in contrast to Labor, who run in every seat across the country, no Coalition party runs everywhere. In other ways, they are two parties. That is more relevant to how they operate in Parliament (which, with no immediate federal election, is the most relevant to the current moment). And in other ways the Coalition consists of four parties, with singular parties existing in Queensland and the Northern Territory, with their members sitting with one of the two parties in Canberra. I analysed this peculiarity in detail in 2022.
As the parties now re-assess their position following the recent election, this peculiar relationship seems relevant, because both parties find themselves out of government, and quite a long way out of government. But only one of the two parties bears almost all of the burden of getting back into government.
Sometimes you will see people try to analyse the relative performance of the Liberal and National parties by looking at how well their “vote held up”, or how many seats each party has won.
But the problem with this sort of comparative analysis is that the parties rarely if ever contest seats against each other. Putting aside the Nationals parties in South Australia and Western Australia, which were effectively not a part of the Coalition, the parties only ran against each other in the seat of Bendigo.
The Nationals performed impressively in Bendigo, but that’s just one seat. Everywhere else on the east coast, voters just had one of the two parties to choose from. Indeed in Queensland, they appeared on the ballot as a single party, even though now those successful LNP candidates now have parted ways as either Liberals or Nationals.
While the Coalition as a whole has a vote that goes up or down in electoral competition with other political forces (be they Labor, the Greens, teals, One Nation or anyone else), and gains or loses seats, the relative strength of these two parties is entirely down to the shape of their coalition agreement, which in almost all cases biases the status quo: Liberal seats stay Liberal, and Nationals seats stay National.
The only exceptions are the rare cases where an open seat is challenged by the other party, which has seen seats like Farrer and Nicholls change hands. A defection in the NSW state seat of Port Macquarie also saw that seat move from Nationals to Liberal. The seat was then vacated earlier this year, leading to a fierce by-election contest won by the Liberal.
It seems to be even more difficult for a Queensland seat to move between the two parties after the Liberal National Party merger of 2008. Ian Macfarlane was a Liberal MP representing the seat of Groom, which mostly covers the city of Toowoomba in Queensland. In 2015, he was dropped from the ministry following the election of Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal leader and subsequently prime minister. Later that year, he announced his intention to sit as a National from then on. He had support from local LNP members, but the LNP state executive blocked the move. He ended up retiring at the 2016 election, and Groom remains a Liberal seat.
So the electoral success of the two separate parties is entirely dependent on how they perform in contests against other opponents: Labor, the Greens and independents.
What is particularly peculiar about the most recent iteration of the Coalition is that the Nationals has become a party that exists almost entirely in safe seats.
There are 91 seats where the Coalition was the runner-up on the two-candidate-preferred vote (likely to drop to 90 when the count finishes in Blaxland). The Nationals only made the 2CP in four of those seats – Calare, Bendigo and Richmond, as well as the presumed-National in Lingiari (although Jacinta Price’s defection makes me question that classification). The Nationals were the primary Coalition party in Hunter, where they came third to One Nation, but every other non-classic seat won by a non-Coalition party was one where the Liberals ran.
The former-and-presumably-future Coalition needs to win 33 seats to win the next election. The 33 most marginal seats where the Liberals or Nationals came second in 2025 include just two seats primarily contested by the Nationals: Bendigo and Calare.
While the Nationals could theoretically contest more of these seats, they wouldn’t be a contender in many. Just ten of those seats lie outside of a metropolitan area. This is another reminder that the path for the Coalition to regain power comes from through the cities, a task the Nationals cannot help with.
So almost every seat contested by the Nationals is already held by the Nationals, even after the Coalition suffered such heavy losses in 2025. The Nationals also hold safer seats now: the average Liberal margin is 5.5%, and the average Nationals margin is 11.9%. Of the 18 Liberal or Nationals seats held on margins of 6% or less, just one (Cowper) is a Nationals seat.
As a consequence of the Liberal Party’s domination of marginal seats, the Nationals are now largely immune to electoral fortunes, good or bad. The Nationals now hold exactly the same number of House seats as they did at the peak of the Coalition in 2013. Over that same time, the Liberal Party has lost 47 seats. The Nationals made up 1/6 of their numbers in 2013, but now have over one third.
This wasn’t always the case. Back in 2007, the Labor government won a number of former Nationals seats including Page, Dawson, Capricornia and the newly-created notional Nationals seat of Flynn. They had also won Richmond off the Nationals in 2004. So The Coalition’s defeat in 2007 hit both the Liberals and Nationals about equally, as a proportion of their strength. And they largely recovered proportionally in 2010 and 2013. But since 2013, the strength of the Liberal Party in cities has collapsed while in regional areas Liberal and Nationals MPs have become relatively safer.
The Nationals also had lost a number of rural seats to independents in the 2007-2013 period, but seats like New England and Lyne are now safe Nationals seats while the independent challenge is strongest in the cities or in regional Liberal seats.
Does this reflect the Nationals just being better at their jobs? I think the evidence is weak. In states where both the Liberals and Nationals had seats where they were in the 2CP (NSW, VIC, QLD and NT), swings in rural classic seats were a bit bigger in the Liberal seats (2.8% to Labor) compared to Nationals seats (1.1% to Labor). The Nationals on paper actually had a swing towards them in provincial seats, but if you exclude their big swing in Bendigo the two parties had almost identical 2.1% swings against them everywhere else.
Such an analysis is basically impossible, because we are not comparing like with like. The Nationals just run in places where Labor is less of a presence.
Now we have the Liberal and National parties separating. For now the space where this coalition breakdown will play out is in the parliamentary arena. It will give them a chance to consider their policy direction, and how it might differ, and eventually how they can make those possibly different directions work together.
The Liberal Party’s path back to government is almost entirely urban. This will be challenging enough with a party room consisting of very few urban MPs, but made even harder with the addition of the Nationals.eee
The Nationals are in a funny position now. They are in one sense now even more influential in terms of setting the direction of the parties of the once-and-future coalition, particularly considering the numbers of rural Liberals and the divided state of that party room. But that is unlikely to put them on track to returning to government. The Nationals’ influence over a government is entirely dependent on the Liberals finding more seats in the cities.
For now, the coalition’s breakdown is going to play out in the parliament. If it can’t be resolved before the next election, we may see the parties contest more seats against each other. That would also be fascinating, but it may not go the way the Nationals hope. There are numerous seats on the north coast of New South Wales which remain legacy Nationals seats, but now contain large populations of retirees from the capital cities who may be used to voting Liberal. The Liberal Party has already broken through in the state seat of Port Macquarie, and there have been Liberal breakthroughs on local councils in Tweed and Mid-Coast.
I saw a comment earlier today that said the Nationals would be well served by having a relationship with the Liberals more like the relationship the Greens have with Labor. They may not really enjoy such a relationship: it would give the Nationals a lot more freedom to express disagreement, but the electoral system does not do well for smaller parties. The Nationals have been able to keep these seats to themselves. I don’t think the Liberals would sweep them away if there was open competition, but I think it would be tougher on the smaller party. I also don’t see how such a relationship is possible as long as the parties are merged in Queensland, their strongest state.
My assumption at the moment is the parties will find a way to patch up their differences before 2028, but perhaps with such a large gap between their current position and a return to government, the parties may decide to take their chances on a more open electoral contest next time around.
Qld LNP MPs do not choose which party they sit with in the Coalition. It is laid down the merger agreement that formed the Qld LNP. Essentially If the seat was National at the time of the agreement the seat remains National and viceversa.
How will the Qld LNP contest the next federal election if the coalition is not restored? Will they campaign on the National’s policies, or Liberal’s? Or is a demerger the only way to cleanly contest a coalition-free environment?
I think it is in both parties best interest to stay seperate for the 2028 election.
The Nationals can focus on more of a tradional rural platform and run in Liberal held rural seats. Maybe pick up more seats which stay theirs when they rejoin.
The Liberals can run on a platform that appeals more to suburbs. Counting on the Nationals to take the fight to the ALP rurally.
As to QLD Josh, I believe each candidate will run more locally on the issues of the party they sit with.
id say once the libs find their footing and another leadership spill occurs they will find more common ground
@ Greg. Do you have a split number of what this now represents from the 2025 election? How many will now be nominally Nats and how many will be nominally Liberals.
Re: David May 21, 2025 at 11:25 am
The Nationals can focus on more of a tradional rural platform and run in Liberal held rural seats. Maybe pick up more seats which stay theirs when they rejoin.
You mean like Farrer? That might not go down so well
While I think both parties will kiss and make up before 2028, I think it opens up the possibility of a very early election if either party doesn’t get its act together within a reasonable time. Never let an opportunity pass you by and if both parties are so far apart or haven’t done the necessary policy work within 18 months, then Albo might engineer an early election to take advantage and seal in a third term.
While Littleproud sounded somewhat measured and convincing on 7.30 Report last night, I get the whiff that the Nats are now beholden to a major donor, who shall remain nameless and she wants certain policy outcomes that won’t go down well with city voters. While ever the Nats are prepared to take this gold coin, I think this may not go down so well in National heartland, as the realities of climate change start to bite harder with small to mid-size scale farmers and people living in rural townships.
As for expectations the Nats numbers will stay static, what’s to stop them air brushing their image, swapping their Blunnies & hats for workboots & hardhats & going for the same conservative urban demographic that Dutton was hoping to harvest (and before him back to Howard), targetting seats that are currently both Liberal and ALP. As a bonus, such a party would be a more natural ally for ON than the Liberals. Whilst even then they’d be very unlikely to get the numbers to form government, they could well be the major partner in a future coalition with a much reduced Liberal party.
@ Neil
QLD has 6 nominal nats and 10 libs. 2 each in the QLD senate.
For a total of 15 nats and 25 Libs unless counts change. For instance I think there is still a chance Tim Wilson loses, making it 24.
the nats seats are usually stagnant as unlike the greens they dont face any threats from the other conservative parties labor has to fight both the greens and libs whereas the libs only have to fight labor. and to a lesser extend inds but they are bceoming a threat to all sides now that they have begun targetting safe labor seats. thats why the nats could pour so many resources into bendigo because the 3 seats they controlled wrere safe fro any challenge
Seats like Eden Monaro will be liberal not national seats.. same for Monash and la trobe. Nats have no marginal seats versus Labor… so the chances of nats winning extra seats are remote.
There are 15 Nationals and 28 Liberals. Assuming they don’t win Bradfield.
@mick bendigo?
@ Mick
The state seat of Monaro has been Nationals held before so i think Nats have a right to put up a candidiate. Monash should have seen a Nationals candidate it is now a rural safe non Labor sea. La Trobe is a hybrid seat but as urbanisation and ethnic diversification continue the seat will likely improve for Labor and will be a longer term Labor target. This means Libs will be confined to peri-urban seats like Casey, Hume, Canning and the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast while the Nats attempt to take out the Libs or enticing defections from Groom, Barker, O’Connor etc
lingiari as well. also Ullwinkel the 3cp they are awfully close and id imagine if they outpolled the liberals they may ahve won it. and after their success in bendigo i wouldn t be surprised if they give ballarat a tilt as well.
It’s near impossible for either to at least become a semi-competitive opposition without each other.
It’s possible that they will reunite before the next election.
They could possibly merge but it’s difficult right now given their ideological differences. The other ‘Five Eyes’ countries have a main centre-right to right party that caters for big-city and rural political interests. It may be trickier to emulate in Australia because of the vast distances between major cities and history of coalition agreements.
The concept of which seats each party could or should hold is a map idea. Will make that soon.
But for now, here’s my predictions for this period of Parliament:
* Multiple by-elections to be held (presumably at least one goes to the Coalition and another to Labor)
* The Coalition will be reunited in a few months
* Albo won’t be Prime Minister or Labor leader in 2028; the truth is leaders don’t have the capacity to serve more than six years anymore (hence why Mark McGowan resigned)
Also a random wildcard on the state/territory level for a similar reason to Albo: Andrew Barr resigns out of fatigue.
@ Votante
I think in UK the rural areas are not as remote as they are in Australia, Canada or US. Rural areas in UK are more like the Southern Highlands, Macedon Ranges, Scenic Rim etc often have good transport connections market towns etc. NZ is less densley populated but i think again due to smaller country geographically it is more like UK than the 3 other anglosphere countries so no need for a seperate rural party. In Canada, there is a 3 party system and the Canadian Liberals are more like the Teals so can win affluent seats which Labor is Australia cannot win as there is a working class NDP party to fill that void. In the US, Social values play a bigger role and Democrats can win very affluent seats which in Australia Labor cannot. Also population spread in the US means regional/rural voters have a bigger weighting.
There is inconsistency in which seats are contested by which party. There are urbanising seats with a growing non-agricultural demographic but have a Nationals candidate running. I’m talking Hunter and Richmond especially. There are regional electorates with Liberal MPs e.g Wannon, Farrer. Liberals and Nationals wouldn’t want to exhaust resources competing against each other.
The path for the Liberals would be to claw back outer suburban seats they just lost such as Hughes or Forde.
Bendigo was a close race because the Nats dumped a lot of resources into it and campaigned hard on state issues, or so I heard.
Votante, that is probably why instead of a Liberal/National split the divide should be moderate vs conservative which is the case for UK and Canada. Both countries feature a conservative party that wins both urban and rural seats, and also a centrist type of party (Liberal Democrats and Liberals respectively) that is typically the third force that slots in between Labor and the Conservatives (although Canada Liberals seem to be the main left party that tends to form government more often).
@ Votante
Nationals have never held Hunter. in fact Hunter has been Labor held since the famous 1910 election when Labor won its first majority government. The reason why Nats contest Hunter is that they are the only party with an overlapping state seat. Richmond is the only seat that Nats have lost in the last 30 years to Labor which they have nor recovered yet. The issue in Richmond is more than urbanisation that it contains an extreme left wing area in Byron Shire where i doubt even a moderate Liberal candidate wil make a difference.
Good point Nimalan about the federal seat of Hunter, historically it overlapped with the state seat of Upper Hunter (extending from Singleton up towards the New England region). However, with the abolition of Charlton in 2016, Hunter has now moved towards Newcastle and Lake Macquarie, losing most of the Upper Hunter region (only Singleton remains as of 2025, and if Parliament does not expand then Hunter may well become a predominantly Newcastle and Lake Macquarie area seat).
The problem for Littleproud is he supports NetZero and ost of his voters don’t. Canavan has been trying to exploit this, the problem is if they bail on NetZero, there goes their reasoning behind the need for Nuclear.
Only way out is to jettison Littleproud and dump Nuclear before Labor put it forward as an option.
Which they will have to, renewables won’t ever work in their current form, as Littleproud hasw more or less said.
Leichardt and Herbert are particular oddities – Leichardt was held by Warren Entsch as a Liberal and Phil Thompson holds the Townsville seat of Herbert. There’s an argument for both of these seats to be Nationals seats, given that Dawson and Capricornia are.
However the redistribution next year has the potential to shake up all of the coastal seats north of Noosa.
In terms of who sits where, the LNP occasionally dabbles with the the idea of joining the CLP to form their own party room. This discussion ebbs and flows with the proportion of Queensland representatives there are in Parliament.
@mrk yore qld is scheduled to be redistributed a month after parliament first sits
@John The process starts 30 days after the first sitting of the new Parliament. It was due to start on 27 March 2025 but it was deferred because it was within a year of the due date for the election, so it all has to be wrapped up by May 2027.
On my count Queensland crossed into 30.5 quotas in February 2025, so there’s an extra seat that needs to be squeezed in. BUT we won’t know that officially, because the Electoral Act says “the Electoral Commissioner is required to use the latest official published statistics of the Commonwealth to ascertain the Australian population on the day after the one year anniversary of the first meeting of the House of Representatives”. So for the next year it’s mostly admin preparing for the Queensland redistribution. The actual call for submissions won’t come until 2026. The AEC will have a very good idea of the actual numbers so expect to see some media releases about the additional electorate so it doesn’t come as a complete surprise.
Probably on the Sunshine Coast, because that’s where the growth is. It may also mean that Noosa comes out of Wide Bay and back into a Sunny Coast seat. I will be arguing strongly for not chopping up Central and North Queensland cities.
@mark i id the math the other day and qld is currenty at 30.39 quotas.
if a new seat were to be added it would likelly consist of parts of blair (somerset), longman, fisher and fairfax
John, I agree partly with Mark. Even though current calculations might have Queensland below 30.5 quotas, it is close enough to the threshold that the commissioners would prefer to delay/postpone the redistribution again until the 2026 entitlement determination which will confirm whether or not an extra seat is gained.
Otherwise, it would be pointless if they start a 30-seat redistribution only for the new entitlement determination to show 31 seats are required. Then they have to start the whole process again from scratch.
they will be able to determine growth and if the growth is slow then they will be able to conclude wether or not it will tip over by next year
This does open up the chance for the Libs to run in Richmond, Page, Cowper and Lyne. Should the Libs win even one of those, the writing is on the wall for the Nats in NSW as the coastal wall will have broken.. The Nats have held Farrer before so they could be in with a chance there but Albury is a Liberal City as Wagga was before Daryl Maguire “shat the bed’. What the break up may do is pull the rug out from some “community’ independents running in regional areas as there will be a choice on the right. Where the Nats will come unstuck is that running separately they have next to no hope of winning Senate seats in NSW and Victoria. They will end up in the senate as a Qld rump.
@redistributed lib would have no chance in cowper and page. richmond they would probably make the 2pp because of the urbanisation lyne 50/50
they would obviously not be restricted to running just there. but in new england, parkes riverina and calare as well.
If the Qld Nats veer off toward One Nation, it is conceivable that one or both of Michael McCormack or Darren Chester would go to the Libs or just walk out. Would Andrew Gee join the Libs?
It is a pity that there aren’t more moderate Liberal MPs as some might say – “they left the building, they ain’t coming back” and the new agenda goes from there.