Nationals Face Uncertain Return to Coalition Fold

In the weeks since the federal election, there's been much speculation about the future of the Coalition agreement. In their soul-searching, it seemed possible the Liberals might pull the pin, given the degree of their electoral losses and their need to rebuild.

Instead, the Nationals, the party that has largely benefited from decades in coalition, announced they'd go it alone .

But it's more of a Clayton's break-up than the real thing. As Nationals Leader David Littleproud told the media, "I'm passionate in the belief that we can bring this back together" and the president of the combined LNP in Queensland, Lawrence Springborg, indicated his optimism about a reconciliation.

So what's the point of calling it off in the hopes of getting back together by the next election? The Nationals have decided to take a calculated risk to push for what they want, but in doing so, they may have played directly into the Liberals' hands.

Why break up?

When the Nationals (as the Country Party) first appeared in the Commonwealth Parliament more than a century ago, their leader William McWilliams said:

we intend to support measures of which we approve and hold ourselves absolutely free to criticise or reject proposals with which we do not agree. Having put our hands to the wheel we set the course of our voyage. There has been no collusion; we crave no alliance; we spurn no support; we have no desire to harass the government, nor do we wish to humiliate the opposition.

Almost immediately, though, the party entered a coalition with a predecessor of the Liberal Party. And the arrangement has suited the agrarian party well.

Being in coalition, effectively supporting Liberal minority government, gave the Nationals an outsized influence on policy. It also gave them shadow ministries (and increased pay packets as a result), as well as the resulting media attention that comes with being in government.

But the election saw a shift in the power balance in the Coalition party room. While the Liberals were crushed, the Nationals lost just one lower house seat to a candidate who was one of them before running as an independent.

At the current count , the Liberals have 18 seats in the House of Representatives, while the Nationals have nine.

So why would the smaller party leave a coalition arrangement?

The issue seems to have been largely focused on energy policy, particularly nuclear policy , the party's brainchild.

Littleproud also mentioned divestiture laws to combat supermarket power and a $20 billion regional Australia fund as policies on which his party would not compromise. Clearly the Nats felt Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and the Liberals did not provide the appropriate guarantees.

How does this play out nationally?

In Queensland, the Liberal and National parties are formally combined as one joint organisation, the Liberal National Party (LNP).

Under the LNP agreement in the state, federal electorates are divvied up between the parties. Whoever holds the seat of Groome, for instance, has to date taken their seat in the Liberal party room.

How long these arrangements hold post-split is yet to be seen. It might make life particularly interesting for MPs helping formulate policy in the Liberal party room who might otherwise be more ideologically aligned with the Nats.

More broadly though, there are ramifications for which candidates can run in each seat.

Under the federal Coalition agreement, wherever there was an incumbent from either the Liberals or the Nationals, the other coalition partner couldn't field a candidate to contest the seat. This largely prevented so-called three-cornered contests in which the Liberals and Nationals would split the vote against Labor. It also prevented the coalition partners from seeking to poach each other's seats.

But that doesn't apply if the sitting member retires, and of course it seems unlikely to apply now that there's no longer a coalition. The Nationals are free to run against the Liberals anywhere in the country and vice versa. This may explain Littleproud's eagerness to leave a reunion before the next election on the table.

The Liberals may see this as an opportunity. They already hold a swag of rural seats and when they win a former National Party seat, the Nationals struggle to get the seat back. Ley's own seat of Farrer, for example, was once held by Nationals Leader Tim Fischer.

Was it a smart move?

Breaking up is something of a gamble from the Nationals.

On the face of it, if the concern was about ensuring nuclear stayed on the agenda, the Nationals have relinquished their political power to keep it there by walking away. There's little incentive for the Liberals to listen to a party that's now part of the crossbench.

There are likely to be two parties sipping champagne today. The first, and most obvious one, is Labor.

Given the Liberals only have 18 lower house seats, Ley is going to have a hard time assembling an effective shadow cabinet and therefore alternative government. The talent pool, even including the party's senators, will be spread thinly.

Ley also spoke in praise of the coalition arrangement, saying the parties were "stronger together".

But longer term, there's also reason for the Liberal Party to be celebrating.

Much has been made about the need for the Liberals to go back to the drawing board to decide what a modern Liberal party should look like. It will likely be easier to reflect and create sorely-needed transformational change without the more conservative Nationals to consider.

If Ley wants to rebuild the party to recapture the inner-city seats they've lost in the last two elections, this is a golden opportunity.

And when it comes to forming government, the Nationals are not the Liberals' only option. It's possible the Liberals look around at some stage and decide they'd rather make up numbers with the Teals, if that suits them strategically.

In theory, they could do what other parties around the world do: form a coalition after an election that they have fought on their own policies.

The Nationals, meanwhile, may look around the parliament and find they don't have any other friends with which to form government.

So while both sides of the sort-of break-up have left their doors firmly open to getting back together, the risk the Nationals run is when they decide they want to move back in, their former partner may have moved on.

Linda Botterill has in the past received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Grains Research and Development Corporation, and Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (now Agrifutures).