The
National Party of Australia is an
Australian political
party.
Traditionally representing
rural voters, it
was originally called the
Country Party, but
adopted the name
National Country Party in 1975
and changed to its present name in 1982. Federally, in New South
Wales, and to an extent Victoria, it has generally been the minor
party in the traditional
coalition with the
Liberal Party of Australia in
government and in opposition since the 1940s, and the
UAP/
NPA since the 1920s, against
the
Australian Labor Party.
However, it was the major coalition party in Queensland between
1957 and 2008, when it merged with the junior partner, the
Queensland Division of the Liberal Party of Australia to form the
Liberal National Party - an organisation dominated by ex-Nationals.
Since 2008 under the Senate leadership of
Barnaby Joyce, the party has moved to the
crossbenches and has indicated it will be
voting independently of their Liberal counterparts.
In 2003 the party adopted the name
The Nationals
for campaigning purposes, reflecting common usage, but its legal
name has not changed.
The party's federal parliamentary leader since 3 December 2007,
following the coalition's defeat at the
2007 federal election, is
Warren Truss.
History
The
Country Party was formally founded in 1913 in Western Australia,
and nationally in 1920 from a number of state-based parties such as
the Victorian Farmers
Union (VFU) and the Farmers and Settlers Party of
New South
Wales
. It was formed by small farmers,
particularly wheat-growers, dissatisfied with the economic policies
of the
Nationalist
Party government of
Billy Hughes.
Many returned servicemen from
World War
I had been allocated land grants after the war, and some of
these were former trade unionists who adapted union tactics to the
cause of small farmers.
The VFU won a seat in the
House of Representatives
in 1918, and at the
1919 federal election the
state-based country parties won seats in New South Wales, Victoria
and Western Australia. They also began to win seats in the state
parliaments. In 1920 the Country Party was established as a
national party led by
William
McWilliams from Tasmania. In his first speech as leader,
McWilliams laid out the principles of the new party, stating "we
crave no alliance, we spurn no support but we intend drastic action
to secure closer attention to the needs of primary producers"
McWilliams was deposed as party leader in favour of Dr
Earle Page in April 1921 following instances
where McWilliams voted against the party line. McWilliams would
later leave the Country Party to sit as an Independent.
At the
1922
election, it won enough seats to deny the Nationalists an
overall majority, and became the only realistic coalition partner
for the Nationalists. However, Page let it be known that his party
would not serve under Hughes, and forced his resignation. Page then
entered negotiations with the Nationalists' new leader,
Stanley Bruce, for a coalition government.
However, Page's terms were stiff—five seats in a Cabinet of 11,
including the
Treasurer
portfolio and the second rank in the ministry for himself.
Nonetheless, Bruce readily agreed, and the "Bruce-Page Ministry"
was formed—thus beginning the tradition of the party's leader
ranking second in Coalition cabinets.
Bruce and Page worked effectively together until they were soundly
defeated in
October
1929. However, when the conservative forces were re-organised
in 1931 Page refused to merge the Country Party into the new
United Australia Party (UAP).
As a consequence the Country Party was excluded from government
when the UAP was returned to office with a parliamentary majority
in its own right in early 1932. Page's relationship with the UAP
was much less harmonious than it had been with the Nationalists in
the 1920s. Nonetheless when the UAP lost its parliamentary majority
in 1934 a coalition was patched up.
In 1932, the South Australian state branch, which had fallen victim
to internal divisions, merged with the
Liberal Federation, forming the
Liberal and Country League, a
coalition that lasted until a new division of the Country Party was
established in that state in 1964.
Page remained dominant in the party until 1939 and briefly served
as an interim Prime Minister between the death of
Joseph Lyons and the election of
Robert Menzies as his successor, but Page's
refusal to serve under Menzies led to his resignation as leader.
The coalition was re-formed under
Archie
Cameron in 1940, and continued until October 1941 despite the
election of
Arthur Fadden as leader
after the 1940 Election. Fadden was well regarded within
conservative circles and proved to be a loyal deputy to Menzies in
the difficult circumstances of 1941. When Menzies was forced to
resign as Prime Minister, Fadden briefly replaced him as Prime
Minister (despite the Country Party being the junior partner in the
governing coalition). However, the two independents who had been
propping up the government rejected Fadden's budget and brought the
government down.
Fadden stood down in favour of Labor leader
John Curtin and continued as leader of the
Opposition until the formation of the
Liberal Party of Australia in
1945. After the
1946
election, Fadden resumed his political partnership with Robert
Menzies, though still keen to assert the independence of his party.
Indeed, in the lead up to the
1949 federal election,
Fadden played a key role in the defeat of the Chifley Labor
government, frequently making inflammatory claims about the
"socialist" nature of the Labor Party which Menzies could then
"clarify" or repudiate as he saw fit, thus appearing more
"moderate". In 1949 Arthur Fadden became Treasurer in the second
Menzies government, and remained so until his retirement in 1958.
His successful partnership with Menzies was one of the elements
that sustained the coalition, which remained in office until 1972
(Menzies himself retired in 1966).
Fadden's successor,
Trade
Minister John McEwen, took the then
unusual step of declining to serve as Treasurer, believing he could
better ensure that the interests of Australian primary producers
were safeguarded. Accordingly McEwen personally supervised the
signing of the first post-war trade treaty with Japan, new trade
agreements with New Zealand and Britain, and Australia's first
trade agreement with the USSR (1965). In addition to this he
insisted on developing an all encompassing system of tariff
protection that would encourage the development of those secondary
industries that would "value add" Australia's primary produce. His
success in this endeavour is sometimes dubbed "McEwenism". This was
the period of the Country Party's greatest power, as was
demonstrated in 1962 when McEwen was able to insist that Menzies
sack a Liberal Minister who claimed that Britain's entry into the
European Economic
Community was unlikely to severely impact on the Australian
economy as a whole.
Menzies
retired in 1966 and was succeeded by Harold Holt
. After Holt disappeared in December 1967,
McEwen blocked the succession of
William
McMahon by saying that he and his party would not serve under
him. As a result,
John Gorton became the
new Liberal Prime Minister in January 1968. McEwen was sworn in as
an interim Prime Minister pending the election of the new Liberal
leader. It would be only after McEwen announced his retirement that
MacMahon would be able to successfully challenge Gorton for the
Liberal leadership. McEwen's reputation for political toughness led
to him being nicknamed "Black Jack" by his allies and enemies
alike.
At the
state level from 1957 to 1989 the Country Party under Frank Nicklin and Joh Bjelke-Petersen dominated
governments in Queensland
. It also took part in governments in New
South Wales, Victoria, and Western Australia.
However, successive electoral redistributions after 1964 indicated
that the Country Party was losing ground electorally to the
Liberals as the rural population declined, and the nature of some
parliamentary seats on the urban/rural fringe changed. A proposed
merger with the
Democratic Labor Party
(DLP) under the banner of
"National Alliance" was
rejected when it failed to find favour with voters at the
1974 state
election.
Also in
1974, the Northern
Territory
members of the party joined with its Liberal party
members to form the independent Country Liberal Party. This
party continues to represent both parent parties in that territory.
A separate party, the Joh-inspired NT Nationals, competed in the
1987 election with former Chief Minister
Ian Tuxworth winning his seat of
Barkly by a small margin.
However, this splinter group were not endorsed by the national
executive, and soon disappeared from the political scene.
In 1975 the Country Party changed its name to the National Country
Party as part of a strategy to expand into urban areas. This had
some success in Queensland under Bjelke-Petersen, but nowhere else.
In Western Australia, the party publicly walked out of the
coalition agreement in Western Australia in May 1975, to return in
1976. However, the party split in two over the decision in late
1978, with a new National Party forming and becoming independent,
holding three seats in the Western Australian lower house, while
the National Country Party remained in coalition and also held
three seats. They reconciled after the Burke Labor government came
to power in 1983.
The 1980s were dominated by the feud between Bjelke-Petersen and
the federal party leadership, which led to defeat at the 1987
federal election and the fall of the Nationals in Queensland in
1989. The Nationals experienced difficulties in the late 1990s from
two fronts - firstly from the Liberal Party, who were winning seats
on the basis that the Nationals were not seen to be a sufficiently
separate party, and from the
One Nation
Party riding a swell of rural discontent with many of the
policies such as
multiculturalism
and
gun control
embraced by all of the major parties. The rise of Labor in formerly
safe National-held areas in rural Queensland, particularly on the
coast, has been the biggest threat to the Queensland
Nationals.
State parties
The continued success of the
Australian Labor Party at a state
level has put pressure on the Nationals' links with the Liberal
Party, their traditional coalition partner. In most states, the
Coalition agreement is not in force when the parties are in
opposition, allowing the two parties greater freedom of
action.
Prior to the
2006
Queensland election, Coalition leaders
Lawrence Springborg and
Bob Quinn flirted with the
idea of merging the two parties. Quinn was dumped as Liberal Leader
shortly before the election in favour of embattled
Bruce Flegg, who had made his opposition to any
merger quite clear. Instead the parties renewed their coalition and
agreed to end three-cornered contests.
Other state branches took a different approach. In South Australia,
for the first time in the Nationals' history, the party formed a
coalition with the Labor Party in 2002. Lone state assembly MP
Karlene Maywald took a ministerial
position in the Labor cabinet alongside rural independent
Rory McEwen.
Western Australia's National Party chose to position itself in a
similar way after an acrimonious co-habitation with the Liberals on
the
2005
campaign trail. Unlike its New South Wales and Queensland
counterparts, the WA party had decided to oppose Liberal candidates
in the
2008
election. The party aimed to hold the balance of power in the
state "as an independent conservative party" ready to negotiate
with the Liberals or Labor to form a minority government. After the
election, the Nationals negotiated an agreement to form a
government with the Liberals and an independent MP, though not
described as a "traditional coalition" due to the reduced
cabinet collective
responsibility of National cabinet members.
Western Australia's one-vote-one-value reforms will cut the number
of rural seats in the state assembly to reflect the rural
population level: this, coupled with the Liberals' strength in
country areas has put the Nationals under significant
pressure.
The Nationals were stung in early 2006 when their only Victorian
senator,
Julian McGauran, defected
to the Liberals and created a serious rift between the Nationals
and the Liberals. Several commentators believed that changing
demographics and unfavourable preference deals would demolish the
Nationals at the
state
election that year, however they went on to enjoy considerable
success by winning two extra lower house seats.
Political role
The Nationals see their main role as giving a voice to Australians
who live outside the country's metropolitan areas.
Traditionally, the leader of the National Party serves as
Deputy Prime Minister
when the Coalition is in government. This tradition dates back to
the original formation of the centre-right Coalition.
When the
Liberal Prime Minister Harold Holt died in office, his Country Party deputy John McEwen became Prime Minister for a period
of weeks while the Liberal Party elected a new leader. In
the
Queensland state
parliament, the National Party has historically been the
stronger coalition partner numerically, and under the terms of the
coalition agreement, the
converse arrangement currently applies.
The National Party's support base and membership are closely
associated with the agricultural community. Historically
anti-union, the party has vacillated between state support for
primary industries ("
agrarian socialism") and free agricultural trade and has
opposed tariff protection for Australia's manufacturing and service
industries. This vacillation prompted those opposed to the policies
of the Nationals to joke that its real aim was to "capitalise its
gains and socialise its losses!". It is usually pro-mining,
pro-development, and anti-environmentalist.
The
Nationals hold a larger membership base than either the Liberal or
Labor Parties, although in the larger eastern states its vote is in
decline and its traditional supporters are turning instead to
prominent independents such as Bob
Katter, Tony Windsor and Peter Andren in Federal Parliament and similar
independents in the Parliaments of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria
, many of whom are former members of the National
Party. In fact at the
2004 Federal election,
National Party candidates received fewer first preference votes
than the
Australian Greens.
However, the situation in Western Australia and South Australia,
where the party is more clearly differentiable from the Liberals,
is quite different, with the Nationals narrowly missing out on
winning a second seat in South Australia in 2006 and winning a safe
Liberal seat in Western Australia in 2005.
Demographic changes are not helping, with fewer people living and
employed on the land or in small towns, the continued growth of the
larger provincial centres, and, in some cases, the arrival of
left-leaning "city refugees" in rural areas. The Liberals have also
gained support as the differences between the coalition partners on
a federal level have become invisible. This was highlighted in
January 2006, when Nationals Senator
Julian McGauran defected to the Liberals,
saying that there was "no longer any real distinguishing policy or
philosophical difference".
In Queensland, Nationals leader
Lawrence Springborg advocated merger of
the National and Liberal parties at a state level in order to
present a more effective opposition to the Labor Party. Previously
this plan had been dismissed by the Queensland branch of the
Liberal party, but the idea received in-principle support from the
Liberals. Federal leader
Mark Vaile
stated the Nationals will not merge with the Liberal Party at a
federal level. The plan was opposed by key Queensland Senators
Ron Boswell and
Barnaby Joyce, and was scuttled in 2006. After
suffering defeat in the 2006 Queensland poll, Lawrence Springborg
was replaced by
Jeff Seeney, who
indicated he was not interested in merging with the Liberal Party
until the issue is seriously raised at a Federal level.
Support for the Nationals in the 2006 Victorian state election was
considerable with the party picking up two extra seats in the Lower
House to maintain its total representation of 11 sitting members
(two Upper House seats were lost, mostly due to a change from
preferential to proportional representation). This success can be
attributed to a more assertive National Party image (a
differentation to that of the Liberals) and the growing popularity
of state and federal Nationals identities such as
Barnaby Joyce.
In September 2008,
Barnaby Joyce
replaced CLP Senator and Nationals deputy leader
Nigel Scullion as leader of the Nationals in
the Senate, and stated that his party in the upper house would no
longer necessarily vote with their Liberal counterparts in the
upper house, which opens up another possible avenue for the
Rudd Labor Government to get
legislation through.
Liberal/National merger
Merger plans came to a head in May 2008, when the Queensland state
Liberal Party gave an announcement not to wait for a federal
blueprint but instead to merge immediately. The new party, the
Liberal National
Party, was founded in July 2008.
Historical electoral results
| in the Lower House since
1919 |
| Year |
1919 |
1922 |
1925 |
1928 |
1929 |
1931 |
1934 |
1937 |
1940 |
1943 |
| % |
9.26 |
12.56 |
10.74 |
10.47 |
10.27 |
12.25 |
12.61 |
15.55 |
13.71 |
6.96 |
| House Seats |
11 of 75 |
14 of 75 |
14 of 75 |
13 of 75 |
10 of 75 |
16 of 75 |
14 of 74 |
16 of 74 |
14 of 74 |
7 of 74 |
|
| Year |
1946 |
1949 |
1951 |
1954 |
1955 |
1958 |
1961 |
1963 |
1966 |
1969 |
| % |
10.70 |
10.87 |
9.72 |
8.52 |
7.90 |
9.32 |
8.51 |
8.94 |
9.84 |
8.56 |
| House Seats |
11 of 74 |
19 of 121 |
17 of 121 |
17 of 121 |
18 of 122 |
19 of 122 |
17 of 122 |
20 of 122 |
21 of 124 |
20 of 125 |
|
| Year |
1972 |
1974 |
1975 |
1977 |
1980 |
1983 |
1984 |
1987 |
1990 |
1993 |
| % |
9.44 |
9.96 |
11.25 |
10.01 |
8.97 |
9.21 |
10.63 |
11.50 |
8.42 |
7.17 |
| House Seats |
20 of 125 |
21 of 127 |
23 of 127 |
19 of 124 |
20 of 125 |
17 of 125 |
21 of 148 |
19 of 147 |
14 of 148 |
16 of 148 |
|
| Year |
1996 |
1998 |
2001 |
2004 |
2007 |
| % |
8.21 |
5.29 |
5.61 |
5.89 |
5.49 |
| House Seats |
19 of 148 |
16 of 148 |
13 of 150 |
12 of 150 |
10 of 150 |
Leaders
Current State Parliamentary Leaders
1 In the State of Queensland, the National Party merged with the Liberal Party of Australia to
form the Liberal
National Party in 2008.
2 In the Northern
Territory, the National Party does not field candidates
although they endorce the Country
Liberal Party, as their prefered party in the
Territory.
The National Party does not stand candidates in Tasmania or the
Australian Capital Territory.
Past Premiers
Queensland
Victoria
See also
References
- Nationals won't toe Libs' line: Joyce - SMH
18/9/2008
- Leader Barnaby Joyce still a maverick: The
Australian 18/9/2008
- Barnaby elected Nationals Senate leader: ABC AM
18/9/2008
- Truss wins Nationals leadership
- Neilson, W. (1986) 'McWilliams, William James (1856 - 1929)',
Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 10, Melbourne
University Press, Melbourne.
- Neilson, W. (1986) 'McWilliams, William James (1856 - 1929)',
Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 10, Melbourne
University Press, Melbourne.
- Libs 'involved' in McGauran defection,
The Age, 30
January 2006
-
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/senator-mcgauran-quits-nationals/2006/01/23/1137864841636.html
- Australian elections, Australian election results,
governments and parties in the Australian Government and Politics
Database
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