A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | CH | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
The Coalition Liberal–National Coalition | |
|---|---|
.svg) | |
| Abbreviation | LNP[a] |
| Leader | Peter Dutton |
| Deputy Leader | David Littleproud |
| Founded | 1923; 1934; 1940 |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Centre-right to right-wing |
| Federal member parties | |
| State/territory member parties | Liberal: National: Other: |
| House of Representatives | 55 / 151 |
| Senate | 31 / 76 |
| State/territory lower houses | 149 / 455 |
| State upper houses | 50 / 155 |
| This article is part of a series on |
| Conservatism in Australia |
|---|
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The Liberal–National Coalition, commonly known simply as the Coalition or the LNP,[a] is an alliance of centre-right to right-wing political parties that forms one of the two major groupings in Australian federal politics. The two partners in the Coalition are the Liberal Party of Australia and the National Party of Australia (the latter previously known as the Country Party and the National Country Party). Its main opponent is the Australian Labor Party (ALP); the two forces are often regarded as operating in a two-party system. The Coalition was last in government from 2013 to 2022. The group is led by Peter Dutton, who succeeded Scott Morrison after the 2022 federal election.
The two parties in the Coalition have different geographical voter bases, with the Liberals – the larger party – drawing most of their vote from urban areas and the Nationals operating almost exclusively in rural and regional areas. They occupy a broadly similar place on the right of the political spectrum. The partnership between the two current parties dates back to 1946, shortly after the Liberal Party was formed, and has continued almost uninterrupted since then. The Country Party also maintained similar alliances with the Liberal Party's predecessors, the United Australia Party and Nationalist Party, and similar parties at state level. The first such federal arrangement was formed in 1923, as a solution to the hung parliament that resulted from the 1922 federal election.
The Liberals and Nationals maintain separate organisational wings and separate parliamentary parties, but co-operate in various ways determined by a mixture of formal agreements and informal conventions. There is a single Coalition frontbench, both in government and in opposition, with each party receiving a proportionate number of positions. By convention, the leader of the Liberal Party serves as the overall leader, serving as prime minister when the Coalition is in government and leader of the opposition when the Coalition is in opposition. The leader of the National Party becomes the deputy prime minister during periods of Coalition government. The two parties co-operate on their federal election campaigns, run joint Senate tickets in most states, and generally avoid running candidates against each other in the House of Representatives.
A merger of the Liberals and Nationals has been suggested on a number of occasions, but has never become a serious proposition. The relationship between the two parties varies at state and territory level. The situation in New South Wales and Victoria broadly mirrors that at federal level, while in Western Australia the parties are much more independent of each other. In the Northern Territory the territorial parties merged in 1974 to form the Country Liberal Party (CLP), and in 2008 the Queensland state-level parties merged, forming the Liberal National Party of Queensland (LNP). LNP and CLP members elected to federal parliament do not form separate parliamentary parties, joining either the Liberals or Nationals. In South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT, the Nationals have no sitting MPs and little or no organisational presence.
History
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The origins of the Coalition date back to the 1922 federal election, when the Nationalist Party, the main middle-class non-Labor party of the time, lost the absolute majority it had held since its formation in 1917. The Nationalists could only stay in office with the support of the two-year-old Country Party. It soon became apparent that a confidence and supply agreement would not be enough to keep the Nationalists in office.
However, Country Party leader Earle Page had never trusted the Nationalist Prime Minister, Billy Hughes. Indeed, the Country Party had been formed in part due to discontent with Hughes' rural policy. Page not only let it be known that he would not serve under Hughes, but demanded Hughes' resignation before he would even consider coalition talks. Hughes resigned, and Page then entered negotiations with the new Nationalist leader, Stanley Bruce. The Country Party's terms were unusually stiff for a prospective junior partner in a Westminster system (and especially so for a relatively new party) – five seats in an 11-member cabinet, as well as the Treasurer's post and second rank in the ministry for Page. Nonetheless, Bruce agreed rather than force a new election. Since then, the leader of the Country Party, which evolved into the National Party, has ranked second in nearly all non-Labor governments, a status formalised in 1967 when the post of Deputy Prime Minister was formally created to denote Country leader John McEwen's status as the number-two man in the government.
The Nationalist–Country Coalition was reelected twice, and continued in office until its defeat in 1929.
The Country Party and the Nationalists' successor party, the United Australia Party, fought the 1931 federal election with a joint Senate ticket, though they ran separate House tickets. The UAP came up only four seats short of a majority in its own right. The Emergency Committee of South Australia, which stood for the UAP and Country Party in South Australia, joined the UAP party room, giving the UAP enough support to rule alone. However, the parties once again joined in a full Coalition government following the 1934 federal election.
After the death of Prime Minister Joseph Lyons in April 1939, Page was appointed as his successor on an interim basis, pending the new election of a new UAP leader. Despite Page's misgivings, the UAP elected Robert Menzies – who was known to dislike the Country Party. Page subsequently made a vitriolic speech in parliament attacking Menzies's character, and withdrew his party from the coalition – the most recent occasion on which the coalition has been broken while in government. However, a number of Page's colleagues disagreed with his stance, and he resigned as leader in September 1939. He was replaced by Archie Cameron, and after months of negotiations the coalition was revived in March 1940, with five Country MPs joining the second Menzies ministry.
After losing eight seats at the 1940 federal election, the Coalition was plunged into minority government for the first time in its history. Archie Cameron was an immediate victim of the election result, being replaced by Arthur Fadden and later defecting to the UAP. Menzies increasingly struggled to balance his management of Australia's war effort with domestic concerns, and his party began to rebel against him. However, the UAP was bereft of leadership despite having been in power for a decade. With this in mind, in August 1941 the Coalition collectively decided that Fadden and Menzies should swap positions, with Menzies becoming Minister for Defence Co-ordination and Fadden becoming prime minister. It was the first and only occasion on which the Coalition was led by the leader of the junior party. However, the Fadden government only lasted a few months before losing a confidence motion and being replaced by the Labor Party in the form of the Curtin government.
After the demise of the Fadden government, the Coalition voted to continue on under his leadership in opposition. Menzies had opposed this, and resigned as UAP leader, to be replaced by the ageing Billy Hughes. Up until the 1943 election, the Coalition effectively operated as a single unit, with separate party meetings being extremely rare. However, the landslide defeat it suffered – under Fadden as opposition leader – led to an immediate change in strategy. The UAP voted to break off its ties with the Country Party in opposition, and re-elected Menzies as its leader. This is the most recent occasion on which the senior partner in the Coalition has opted to withdraw.
The UAP was folded into the Liberal Party in 1945, with Menzies as leader. In the lead-up to the 1946 federal election, Menzies renewed the Coalition with the Country Party, which was still led by Fadden. They won the 1949 federal election as a Coalition, and stayed in office for a record 23 years. Since 1946, the Coalition has remained intact with two exceptions, both in opposition. The parties decided not to form a coalition opposition following their defeat in 1972, but went into the 1974 federal election as a Coalition.[7] The Coalition remained together upon entering opposition in 1983 federal election. The Coalition suffered another break, related to the "Joh for Canberra" campaign, from April to August 1987, the rift healing after the 1987 federal election.[8]
The solidity of the Coalition is so strong that when the Liberals won parliamentary majorities in their own right in the 1975, 1977 and 1996 federal elections, the Coalition was retained.
In the 2007 federal election, the Coalition lost to the Labor Party and went into opposition. The Coalition regained office in the 2013 federal election as a majority government. In October 2018, the Coalition went into minority government for the second time in its history, when the seat of Wentworth was won by Independent Kerryn Phelps in the by-election.[9] The by-election was triggered by the resignation of incumbent Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull, who was ousted as Prime Minister and Liberal Party leader during a spill motion earlier in August 2018. The coalition formed majority government again following the 2019 federal election. In the 2022 Australian federal election, the Coalition lost to the Labor Party and returned to opposition.
Suggestions to merge
In March 1973, former Prime Minister William McMahon publicly announced his support for a merger.[10] McMahon reiterated his view after Labor won the 1974 election, and Billy Snedden, his successor as leader of the Liberal Party, also stated that he favoured a merger.[11]
During the 1980s, former Nationals MP Peter Nixon reviewed the party and "concluded it should seriously consider amalgamating with the Liberals".[12] Former Nationals leader Doug Anthony wrote not long afterward, "Any objective and rational National Party member who read this report would have to accept that amalgamation was the only realistic course. Regrettably, there are still too many who don't want to read it and who don't want to face reality, that the role of a specialist party looking after the needs of rural people is in decline."[12] Nationals leader Ian Sinclair publicly rejected calls for a merger, citing the incompatibility of the National Party's conservatism and the "small-l liberal" wing of the Liberal Party.[13]
In July 1989, Senator Fred Chaney, the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, stated his tentative support for a merger, but noted that it could not be led by politicians and should come from the grassroots.[14]
In the wake of their 2007 federal election loss, there was again talk of a merger in 2007 and 2008,[12] as a result of a shrinking National Party vote.[15][16][17] It was argued that the decline in the National vote is linked to a declining rural population, and National Party policies have become increasingly similar to those of the Liberal Party.[18] However no merger took place outside of Queensland.
Electoral organisation
Coalition arrangements are facilitated by Australia's preferential voting systems which enable Liberals and Nationals to compete locally in "three-cornered-contests", with the Australian Labor Party (ALP), while exchanging preferences in elections. Such contests would weaken their prospects under first-past-the-post voting. From time to time, friction is caused by the fact that the Liberal and National candidates are campaigning against each other, without long-term damage to the relationship.
Indeed, the whole point of introducing preferential voting was to allow safe spoiler-free, three-cornered contests. It was a government of the Nationalist Party, a forerunner to the modern Liberal Party which introduced the legislation, following Labor's unexpected win at the 1918 Swan by-election where the conservative vote split. Two months later, the Corangamite by-election held under preferential voting caused the initially leading ALP candidate to lose after some lower-placed candidates' preferences had been distributed.
As a result of variations on the preferential voting system used in every state and territory, the Coalition has been able to thrive, wherever both its member parties have both been active. The preferential voting system has allowed the Liberal and National parties to compete and co-operate at the same time. By contrast, a variation of the preferential system known as optional preferential voting has proven a significant handicap to coalition co-operation in Queensland and New South Wales, because significant numbers of voters do not express all useful preferences.
Nomenclature
Due to a disciplined coalition between the parties and their predecessors being in existence for almost 100 years with only a few brief cessations within a parliamentary system, most commentators and the general public often refer to the Coalition as if it were a single party. Polling and electoral results contain a two-party-preferred (TPP) vote which is based on Labor and the Coalition. The Australian Electoral Commission has distinguished between "traditional" (Coalition/Labor) two-party-preferred (TPP/2PP) contests, and "non-traditional" (Independent, Greens, Liberal vs National) two-candidate-preferred (TCP/2CP) contests. At the 2010 federal election, all eight seats which resulted in a two-candidate-preferred result were re-counted to also express a statistical-only "traditional" two-party-preferred result.[19]
Electorate
As of 2022, the biggest voting blocs of the Coalition are men, the Greatest Generation (people born between 1901–1927), the middle class (as opposed to the working class), who make between A$45,001–A$80,000 per year, and have a non-tertiary qualification or no educational qualification.[20][21] Homeowners vote more for the Coalition than any other party, and the State of Queensland is its biggest electorate by two-party-preferred vote percentage (though by primary vote, Tasmania is the state with the highest Coalition vote).[20]
The Coalition also gathers significant support from Australians in regional, rural and remote areas, whilst lacking significant support in most parts of the capital cities. However, there are regions of capital cities that do still vote for the Coalition; such as the Hills District and Sutherland and most of the Eastern Suburbs and Northern Suburbs of Sydney; some areas of Melbourne's east and northeast; many areas of Brisbane and Perth; and the southern part of Darwin.
Historically, Chinese Australians have voted for the Coalition over Labor,[22] though this has declined in recent years.[23] However, while the Liberal Party lost many federal seats with large Chinese communities in 2022 to Labor (losing Bennelong and Reid in Sydney and Chisholm in Melbourne to Labor and Kooyong in Melbourne to a teal independent, but retaining Banks in Sydney), the New South Wales division of the Liberal Party still hold many state seats with large Chinese communities (such as the Sydney seats of Drummoyne, Epping, Holsworthy, Lane Cove, Miranda, Oatley and Ryde). However, the party has below-average support among Indian[24] and Muslim[25] voters.
Chronology
| Period | Alliance | Member parties | Elections | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1923–1931 | Nationalist–Country Coalition | Nationalist | NP | 1925, 1928, 1929 | |
| Country | CP | ||||
| 1934–1939; 1940–1943 | United Australia–Country Coalition[c] | United Australia | UAP | 1937, 1940, 1943 | |
| Country | CP | ||||
| 1944–present | Liberal–National Coalition | Liberal | LPA | 1946, 1949, 1951, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1958, 1961, 1963, 1964, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1980, 1983, 1984, 1987, 1990, 1993, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2022 | |
| National[d] | NPA | ||||
Federal election results
House of Representatives
| Election | Leader | Votes | % | Seats | ± | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1925 | Stanley Bruce | 1,551,760 | 53.20 | 51 / 75
|
 11
|
Majority Government |
| 1928 | 1,286,208 | 49.56 | 42 / 75
|
 9
|
Majority Government | |
| 1929 | 1,271,619 | 44.17 | 24 / 75
|
18
|
Opposition | |
| 1931 | Joseph Lyons | 1,533,627 | 48.35 | 50 / 75
|
26
|
Majority Government (UAP Only) |
| 1934 | 1,618,946 | 45.58 | 42 / 74
|
8
|
Majority Government | |
| 1937 | 1,774,805 | 49.26 | 44 / 74
|
2
|
Majority Government | |
| 1940 | Robert Menzies | 1,703,185 | 43.93 | 36 / 74
|
8
|
Minority Government (1940–41) |
| Opposition (1941–43) | ||||||
| 1943 | Arthur Fadden | 1,248,506 | 30.45 | 23 / 74
|
13
|
Opposition |
| 1946 | Robert Menzies | 1,706,387 | 39.28 | 26 / 76
|
7
|
Opposition |
| 1949 | 2,314,143 | 50.26 | 74 / 121
|
48
|
Majority Government | |
| 1951 | 2,298,512 | 50.34 | 69 / 121
|
5
|
Majority Government | |
| 1954 | 2,133,979 | 46.82 | 64 / 121
|
5
|
Majority Government | |
| 1955 | 2,093,930 | 47.63 | 75 / 122
|
11
|
Majority Government | |
| 1958 | 2,324,500 | 46.55 | 77 / 122
|
2
|
Majority Government | |
| 1961 | 2,208,213 | 42.09 | 62 / 122
|
15
|
Majority Government | |
| 1963 | 2,520,321 | 46.03 | 72 / 122
|
10
|
Majority Government | |
| 1966 | Harold Holt | 2,853,890 | 49.98 | 82 / 124
|
10
|
Majority Government |
| 1969 | John Gorton | 2,649,219 | 43.33 | 66 / 125
|
16
|
Majority Government |
| 1972 | William McMahon | 2,737,911 | 41.48 | 58 / 125
|
8
|
Opposition |
| 1974 | Billy Snedden | 3,319,220 | 44.91 | 61 / 127
|
3
|
Opposition (1974–75) |
| Caretaker Government (1975) | ||||||
| 1975 | Malcolm Fraser | 4,102,078 | 53.05 | 91 / 127
|
30
|
Majority Government |
| 1977 | 3,811,340 | 48.10 | 86 / 124
|
5
|
Majority Government | |
| 1980 | 3,853,549 | 46.40 | 74 / 125
|
12
|
Majority Government | |
| 1983 | 3,783,595 | 43.57 | 50 / 125
|
24
|
Opposition | |
| 1984 | Andrew Peacock | 3,872,707 | 44.69 | 66 / 148
|
16
|
Opposition |
| 1987 | John Howard | 4,236,238 | 45.91 | 62 / 148
|
4
|
Opposition |
| 1990 | Andrew Peacock | 4,302,127 | 43.46 | 69 / 148
|
7
|
Opposition |
| 1993
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