Here we go again – the Future of the National Party

In my 36 years working at the ABC, the background brief I was asked to prepare more than any other was about the future of the National Party.

The first time I was asked was after my first federal election in 1990. The National (formerly Country) Party recorded its worst ever federal result that year. It was the worst on three separate measures – share of vote, share of seats won, and share of Coalition seats.

In looking back through my notes, I found this well written introduction.

“From its inception, the Country (now National) Party has faced the challenge of being a rural party in a predominantly urban nation. Predictions of its demise have been consistent both in their regularity and their incorrectness. It has withstood the battles of government and the futility of opposition. It has weathered with difficulty the remorseless decline in the proportion of non-urban Australians, and has managed to survive relatively amicably with its urban coalition partner, while at the same time demurely rejecting propositions to merge.”

“Yet at the end of the twentieth century, as the National Party celebrates its 80th birthday, it also faces its greatest test. Having in the past withstood attacks from without by both its Coalition partner and the Labor Party, its now faces the greater challenge of decay from within. For the first time its position as the party best able to represent the interests of rural and regional voters has been seriously questioned by the voters themselves.” (See end of post for reference)

I wrote the above in the year 2000 for a book chapter on rural politics. Twenty five year later only the references to years needs updating. And maybe a reference to the currently suspended Coalition agreement.

In 2000 the continuing challenge to the Nationals was rural Independents, though the chapter also covered the spectacular early rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation before the new entrant’s support faded.

Twenty five years later the challenge of Independents has migrated to cities to haunt the Liberals. But One Nation, the ghost of elections past, has returned with full force and is rocking the foundations of the National Party and the federal Coalition.

Since the Coalition lost office in 2022, the National Party has several times pre-empted its Coalition partner by announcing more conservative positions on contentious policies. The Nationals moved first in opposition to The Voice referendum. The party pushed the Coalition on adopting nuclear power, and since the 2025 defeat, has dragged the Liberals to a position opposing net-zero carbon emissions.

The Nationals and Leader David Littleproud have argued their party has retained its support and seats over the last two elections and it is the Liberals that have haemorrhaged support by going ‘Labor-lite’.

But is moving to be ‘One Nation-lite’ the best answer to successive defeats?

At the 2025 election, the Nationals were returned with 35.9% of the Coalition’s seats. This is the party’s highest proportion since the Second World War and an argument that the Nationals should have a bigger say on Coalition policy.

But the chart below, plotting the Nationals’ percentage of Coalition seats at elections since 1922, shows the Country/National Party always records a higher share of Coalition seats in parliaments where the Coalition is on the opposition benches. When the Coalition is in government, the Nationals’ share of seats is always lower.

The reason the Nationals share has surged at the last two elections is because the Liberal Party’s result has been so bad. The National percentage of Coalition seats has risen only because the number of Liberal seats plummeted while the National Party has avoided losing many seats.

When the Coalition loses government, it is always due to Liberal Party losing seats. And victory for the Coalition is always built on the back of the Liberal Party gaining seats, not the Nationals.

It strikes me that the best way for the Coalition to win government is to work out how the Liberal Party can win metropolitan seats. At the moment the advice on how to do this seems to be coming from the National Party who have never held metropolitan seats. And conservative Liberals, most of whom also do not hold metropolitan seats.

But let me look at other measures of National Party support.

Country to National to LNP

It was the Queensland Country Party in 1974 that first changed its name to the National Party. Other state branches and the Federal party followed over the next decade. The Queensland move was aimed at trying to attract urban voters in the state’s growing south-east, particularly on the Gold and Sunshine Coasts.

The collapse of the Queensland state Coalition in 1983 was followed by six years of the Nationals governing alone. In 1987 the farcical ‘Joh for Canberra’ campaign helped defeat John Howard’s first run for Prime Minister, and two years later Wayne Goss led Labor to victory in Queensland. Labor has governed Queensland for most of the 36 years since, though the Coalition parties, more recently known as the Liberal National Party, have dominated Queensland at Federal elections.

For reasons to do with state politics, the Liberals and Nationals developed the urge to merge after defeat at the 2006 state election. The campaign had been de-railed by Liberal Leader Dr Bruce Flegg’s declaration that if his party won more seats than the Nationals, he rather than Lawrence Springborg would be Premier.

(Rather than clog up this post with a lot of important but not directly related material on the LNP, I did write a detailed analysis piece on the new party when it finally formed in 2008.)

The formation of the LNP complicates attempts to measure overall National Party support. To update the history of National Party election results, in this post I’ve broken apart the LNP vote at elections since 2010. I have accumulated a National vote for Queensland based on results in the seven seats where elected LNP members would sit in Canberra as Nationals.

This produces the graph below of Country/National Party percentage vote at elections since 1919, as well as seats won as a percentage of House seats.

The National Party vote and proportion of seats won has declined over many decades. Its high point was in the 1930s in a period when the United Australia Party (nothing to do with Clive Palmer) struggled with internal organisation and eventually collapsed in 1943.

Some former Country Party members found a home in Robert Menzies’ new Liberal Party after 1946. The expansion of the parliament in 1949 and the Coalition agreement barring three-cornered contests against sitting members saw a decline in Country Party nation-wide vote and representation. Between 1949 to the parliament’s next expansion in 1984, the Country/National Party averaged around 8-11% of the vote and between 14% and 18% of seats.

The next decline in numbers began in the 1980s as bitter rivalries in Queensland and Victoria multiplied the number of three-cornered contests with Liberals and Nationals competing in the same seat, even where one party had a sitting member.

John Howard had away of talking his junior party in government out of three-cornered contests. Along with the formation of the LNP in 2008, three-cornered contests in the eastern states largely disappeared. For the last two decades, the National Party in its limited number of seats has accumulated around 6% of the national vote and 10% of House seats. That stability as Liberal holdings collapsed delivers the National Party greater strength in policy fights with the Liberals.

Or did until the Coalition collapsed in the last fortnight. With a spill motion in the Nationals party room on Monday, and with Liberal MPs back in Canberra, events could be fast moving this week.

The chart below shows the number of seats contested by the National Party at elections since the expansion of the Parliament in 1984, and the number of seats that were three-cornered contests with the Liberal Party.

Three-cornered contests took place in most Victorian seats in 1984 and 1987 before a state Coalition agreement resolved differences. The Joh for Canberra campaign saw the Nationals contest all seats in WA and SA in 1987, and the Liberals and Nationals ran against each other in all Queensland seats between 1984 and 1993. Periodic redistributions could also generate three-cornered contests in NSW, most notably in 1993 and 1998.

In 1987 Labor gained the Queensland National seats of Fisher and Hinkler on leaked Liberal preferences after Labor trailed the combined Coalition vote. In 1990 Labor won two more Queensland seats on leaked Coalition preferences after trailing the combined Coalition vote in Moreton and Kennedy.

Over the next few election, the Nationals lost more seats to the Liberals than Labor. Both Lyne and Mallee came within a few hundred votes of being won by the Liberals in 1993. In 1996, an older male National candidate was defeated by a younger female Liberal candidate in the Victorian seat of Murray. In 2001, following the retirement of Tim Fischer, another older male National candidate lost to a younger female Liberal candidate. That candidate, Sussan Ley, is currently Leader of the Liberal Party.

The National Party won 21 seats in 1984. It won 15 in 2025, reduced to 14 once you factor in Barnaby Joyce’s resignation.

Comparing 1984 to 2025, the NSW rural electorate of Gwydir has been abolished and the NSW south coast seat of Gilmore made unwinnable for the Nationals by redistributions. Over the years Fairfax (QLD), Farrer (NSW), Fisher (QLD) and Groom (QLD) have been lost to the Liberals and Kennedy (QLD) lost through Bob Katter’s resignation from the party. Richmond (NSW) has been held by Labor since 2004.

Compensating for these loses have been Capricornia and Flynn in Queensland. Both are mixed rural, mining and industrial seats, the sort of seats that have been slipping away from Labor for several decades.

Several other seats have come and gone with Independents, including Calare, Lyne and New England in NSW.

This catalogue of seats is building up to make a point about the decline of three-cornered contests shown in the above graph. The last time the Nationals and Liberals seriously competed against each other between 1987 and 1993, it was the National Party that came off worse.

With One Nation also competing, it seems hard to imagine that the Nationals would go alone at the next election and risk the Liberal Party contesting seats and creating four way contests with Labor and One Nation.

Yes, the National Party came out of the 2025 election with a huge increase to 35.9% of seats on the Coalition side of Parliament, but only because of the collapse in Liberal support. Yes, the party did extremely well in outpolling the Liberals in Bendigo and almost snatching the seat from Labor. But the Victorian Nationals have built a state profile separate from the fractious state Liberals and been strategic in candidate choice in recent years.

As I said at the start of this post, predictions of the National Party’s demise have been consistent both in their regularity and their incorrectness.

But under serious bombardment from One Nation and estranged from the Liberal Party, the Nationals enter 2026 facing the most serious threat yet to the party’s existence.

References

Results for 1919-1990 taken from from Brian Costar, “The Merger Idea and Australia’s Non-Labor Parties, 1917-1990”, in Costar and Prasser (eds) Amalgamate or Perish? The Future of non-Labor Parties in Australia.

Twenty five year old quotes by me taken from Antony Green, “Bush politics: the rise and fall of the Country/National Party” in Rurality bites / edited by Stewart Lockie and Lisa Bourke (eds), Rurality Bites

Data for elections since 1993 compiled by Antony Green based on election results publications by the Research Service of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library, and published results by Australian Electoral Commission.

All calculations for results since 2010 have been calculated based on there being seven Queensland LNP seats designated for representation purposes as National seats. These are Bob Katter’s seat of Kennedy, and the six seats the party currently hold – Capricornia, Dawson, Flynn, Hinkler, Maranoa and Wide Bay.