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.
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.
The nats have not lost a seating almost 20 years.
A few things should be cleared up here:
* Polling shows that the majority of Nationals voters (even in Maranoa) support net zero, and given polling also shows that Nationals voters also mostly support same-sex marriage now I’d say even in Maranoa most support it given in 2017 the No vote there was only 56%
* Polling also shows that even among Nationals voters Trump is unpopular, though in preferred President contests most are undecided; also gun laws tend to be respected in the regions now
* Page is not a swing seat anymore, in fact without Lismore and the hippie towns around it, it would be safer than Cowper but not quite as safe as Lyne (especially without the Maitland outskirts) or New England
* The Nationals still represent agricultural interests, which is why they get voted in, but rural areas aren’t as rich as urban areas which is why the coal industry had the Nationals’ support (so rural families could keep the lights on), but now that nuclear is achievable they’re backing that instead
This is why a Nationals-One Nation hybrid conservative party wouldn’t ever win a lower house seat. Yes One Nation does well in specific areas but not well enough to win a seat. To win a seat you need at least half of the TPP, and if the average electorate has 100,000 people they’d need more than 50,000 votes on TPP, which the small booths combined don’t have.
However as Nimalan said in European countries and New Zealand there aren’t as many remote areas. This is because European countries like the UK are small, as is New Zealand, while Australia is big (similar to the US or Canada).
Here’s an example: I asked ChatGPT to name a random rural town in Australia and the UK. For Australia it gave Winton in Queensland while for the UK it gave Hawes in West Yorkshire. The nearest city of over 100,000 to Winton is Townsville, which is 598.4km away. The nearest to Hawes is Middlesbrough, which is 89.8km (55.8mi) away. So in the UK there is often a city of over 100,000 under 100km away, whereas in Australia there often isn’t.
This is probably a key factor for why there are less Māori-majority areas in New Zealand than Indigenous-majority areas in Australia as well as a factor for why Māori are less disadvantaged than Indigenous Australians.
It would not surprise me if even a majority of One Nation voters either support or are indifferent to SSM.
yeah i agree ONP voters tend to be irreligious so i dont think they care as much about SSM and Pauline Hanson does not campaign on cracking down on pornography etc which Family First does.
There are currently 93 government mps 28 opposition mps and 27 members of the crossbench. With 2 seats to be decided. So theoretically the crossbench could be larger then the opposition.
@Nicholas you’re probably right to be honest. Even Republican voters do these days.
Family First on the other hand still cracks down on same-sex marriage and even porn. Their leader criticised Sam Kerr and her fiancée Kristie Mewis for having a son. It takes a serious nutcase to say something like that in 2025 in public about one of Australia’s most famous people when it’s really none of his business what people do.
I’m personally of the view that people can make their own decisions when it comes to their own personal lives and preferences without government interference. Is porn addiction a problem? Of course, but so’s alcohol addiction and gambling addiction, yet no one’s saying ban them.
Interestingly, some European countries have sepeate Agrarian parties especially the Nordic countries where they are named the Centre Parties. The Nordic countries are less densley populated have a harsh climate so Agarian parties are often needed which are different to main Centre right party such as Moderate Party in Sweden or National Coalition Party in Finland etc.
@John Calare? The Nats won it in 2022, but not in 2025. Does that not count as losing a seat?
Well technically no since the sitting mp defected. The simply it then became an in d held seat and they were not the incumbent I did think of that BTW. But no it’s no a loss since they didn’t lose the seat
@Real Talk I think what John meant is they haven’t lost a seat to Labor in 18 years. The Nationals also lost O’Connor to the Liberals in 2013 (though it was a WA Nats seat and it switched Coalition parties).
But it is worth noting that Nationals seats are not only safe or very safe for the Nationals without any Labor threat, they don’t swing. Even in a landslide they wouldn’t win them. In contrast city seats do swing and in landslides safe city seats can flip or become marginal unlike safe rural seats.
@Nimalan in Scandinavian countries they have alliances between different parties but they aren’t like the Coalition. However in these alliances because of the threat of the extreme right parties to democracy many countries have a cordon sanitaire with them meaning they refuse to cooperate with them.
In Sweden after the 2022 election there was the standard Red-Greens alliance on the centre-left and left-wing (the Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Greens) and the new Tidö Agreement (named after Tidö Castle where the agreement was negotiated) on the centre-right and right-wing (the Sweden Democrats, the Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals). Until 2019 the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals were part of the Alliance for Sweden which doesn’t exist anymore. In 2022 the Social Democrats got the most votes and seats, followed by the Sweden Democrats, but the result was a hung parliament, so the Tidö Agreement took place between the right-leaning parties. Even though the Moderates had the third-highest seat total, their leader Ulf Kristersson became Prime Minister because the Sweden Democrats are too right-wing.
I don’t see Australia ever having a situation like that to be honest. Again we have two major parties and many minor parties and the minor parties barely win lower house seats.
Contemplating the (highly, highly unlikely) prospect that maybe the Libs and Nats could go to the next election still out of coalition, and somehow still win a combined majority of seats.
Probably everyone would assume that we’d see a replay of 1922-1923, with the Nats making exorbitant demands, and the Libs being willing to agree to just about anything to gain power.
But what if instead the Libs went in with a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude, offering no concessions whatsover, and daring the Nats to keep a Labor minority government in power if they don’t like it?
It probably won’t happen, but I’d be getting the popcorn if it did.
@Real Talk Longman has a strong One Nation base, unlikely as it seems. It used to have a mix of older blue-collar Labor voters, a few of the very right LNP voters and a chunk of voters from minor parties who put One Nation second. Plus quite a substantial vote out of the Bribie Island booths.
@john @Yoh An My numbers say 30.501 as of February, but it will mostly keep going due to interstate migration. My thought on any new seat are that it will be a Sunshine Coast seat. Assuming Blair gets pulled back closer to Ipswich and loses everything north of Esk, there are two ways the redistribution could go. The first is to base the new electorates on Caloundra, Maroochydore and Noosa and head west for each of them. The second way is to create a coastal seat that stops at the Bruce Highway (so you have Caloundra to Maroochydore, then a hinterland seat based on Nambour that takes almost all of the northern part of Blair, then a Noosa to Rainbow Bay and out to Gympie seat.
But I haven’t worked out the numbers yet and there are some massive housing developments that are coming online including the area south of Aura so it’s not worthwhile looking at the numbers just yet. However Queensland went from 3,507,525 on the roll as at 30 April 2022 to 3,743,919 as at 30 April 2025, or 236,394 net new voters from election to election. Total Australian roll growth over the same period was 884,859, so Queensland account for 26.7% of the total growth.
@Mark and Caboolture was even held by one nation in 1998