From Bruce and Page, to 'Joh for Canberra', to a principled split — the history of the conservative coalition

Australia Broadcast Center

21-05-2025

The strained marriage of the Liberal and National parties has reached breaking point, with the minor party leader David Littleproud announcing his party will split from the Coalition.
It marks a break in a century-long tradition, but it's not the first time tensions have forced the parties apart.
Since the 1920s, the conservative partners have drifted apart and come back together, securing the Nationals an at-times outsized and consistent presence in Australia's federal parliament.
Looking back through the history books perhaps offers some insights as to how this relationship could change today.
The Country Party (predecessor to The Nationals, one of several confusing name changes throughout history) first realised its political power after the 1922 election.
The Nationalists (which would later become the Liberal Party) needed to boost their numbers to form government.
At the time tariffs were high, which until then had protected Australia's manufacturing industry. But it also meant farmers were paying more for things like fuel, fertiliser and labour.
Seeing a chance to meaningfully advocate for his rural constituents, Country Party leader Earle Page negotiated with the Nationalists and eventually became deputy prime minister under Stanley Bruce in 1923.
This was the first formal coalition between the country and city conservative parties, where they maintained their separate identities, but shared the role of government.
"There are many, many rural agrarian protest parties who popped up around the world in the early 20th century, particularly in the wake of World War I," observes Stephen Wilks, an academic research editor in the national centre for biography at the Australian National University.
"Most of them died out … the Country Party (and the Nationals as they are now called) have survived as a viable entity ever since, and that's, I think, partly because the coalition has given them a practical say in government whilst preserving their autonomy."
Everything was going fine until 11 months into their third term of government, when former prime minister William "Billy" Hughes was expelled from the Nationalists in September 1929.
Hughes then convinced another five members of the Nationalists to cross the floor and vote with the opposition Labor Party over an industrial relations bill. It triggered an election that saw the Bruce-Page government heavily defeated — the Nationalist prime minister even lost his own seat.
The result split the historic coalition, but after some time in opposition, the parties reunited once more in 1949.
This marked the start of an enduring force in Australian politics, which has seen the Coalition govern for roughly two-thirds of the last century.
Australia's population shifted throughout the 20th century. In 1911, about 60 per cent were living outside major cities; by 2006 is was roughly 40 per cent.
After the wool industry boomed in the 1950s, demand — and jobs — began to drop off as synthetic fibres entered the market.
Bigger tractors and other machinery were also making agriculture less labour-intensive, and people began to drift from regional communities.
So too did some of the Nationals' voting base.
In the 1970s, the Country Party became the National Country Party, in an effort to address the changing population and rebrand as a party looking out for "the good of all Australians". (It would later drop the "Country" entirely and become known as the National Party, and finally, The Nationals.)
But the often populist, bullish approach by the no-nonsense Nationals over economic reform or regional infrastructure spending, often led to clashes with their urban Liberal colleagues.
There have been several splits at the state level, with Country Party groups in Victoria and Western Australia going their own way or even forming brief alliances with Labor during the 1950s and 1970s.
But the most famous split came in the 1980s, when Queensland's premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen thought he might have a crack at being prime minister himself.
The "Joh for Canberra" push didn't eventuate — by the time the 1987 election rolled around, Bjelke-Petersen was forced to abandon his federal ambitions.
But he did succeed in splitting the coalition apart, and cleared a path for Bob Hawke to beat the up-and-coming Liberal leader John Howard and win a third term in government.
The Nationals and Liberals managed to get the band back together before the next election — a scenario that the current leadership has indicated they very much hope to repeat.
The federal Coalition returned to power in 1996 under John Howard, with late Nationals leader Tim Fischer his deputy.
The marriage survived the tumult of the post-Port Arthur massacre gun reforms and the introduction of GST, helped by the common electoral threat of an ascendant Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party.
The sailing was relatively smooth for the Liberals and Nationals for the following decades.
But regional communities continued to shrink, and workers in high-vis and work boots began flying in and out of dwindling hubs to service a growing coal and iron ore mining industry.
And then in 2016 along came Barnaby Joyce, a climate change sceptic who was steadfast on advocating for the expansion of the fossil fuel industry.
The so-called climate wars followed, as prime ministers came and went at a frequency not witnessed before.
Meanwhile, Joyce became a magnet for scandal, his extramarital affair with former advisor Vicki Campion prompting then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull to institute a "bonk ban".
Turnbull's failure to launch a national energy guarantee — a plan that did not convince the Nationals — and rally the Coalition around a climate policy, was among the factors that led to him being ousted as leader in 2018.
By the 2022 election, the Nationals had finally agreed to join the Liberals in committing to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, just in time for Australia's appearance at the UN climate conference.
After a term marked by scandal, natural disasters and a global pandemic to boot, in 2022 the Scott Morrison-led Coalition lost government.
It was a turning point for the Liberals, who lost several long-held inner-city electorates across the country to independents.
The Nationals didn't lose a seat.
After 2022, Littleproud took over the leadership of the National Party.
The renewable energy rollout across regional Australia was beginning to create tension in some communities as heavy investment saw wind turbines, expanses of solar panels and new transmission lines being built across the country.
The Nationals took it up as a key issue, pushing for nuclear energy as an alternative to renewables.
In 2024, Liberal leader Peter Dutton announced the Coalition's plan to build seven nuclear power plants on the sites of retiring coal stations across the country.
But the policy that Littleproud described as "a vision for regional Australia" struggled to cut through with voters as Labor, the Greens and energy experts questioned the Coalition's costings.
By the 2025 election, nuclear was a liability for the Liberal Party, whose electorates largely support renewables and action on climate change.
In an unexpected Labor landslide, the Coalition lost another 14 seats — including that of opposition leader. It was a bruising defeat, predominantly felt in Liberal seats. (The only seat lost by the Nationals was to the incumbent but newly independent Andrew Gee in Calare, who defected from the Coalition in 2023.)
While the Liberals lost their own leader, Littleproud boasted one of the most decisive margins in the country, and it was Nationals-held seats and regional electorates where the Coalition managed to win over voters (despite some hefty swings towards Labor).
The result put the Liberal-National tensions in the spotlight, and under pressure to reach a coalition agreement with new Liberal leader Sussan Ley, for the first time in more than 50 years, the relationship fractured.
At lunchtime on Tuesday, Littleproud, flanked by his Nationals leadership team Kevin Hogan and Bridget McKenzie, announced that the party would split from the coalition.
"Our party room has got to a position where we will not be re-entering a coalition agreement with the Liberal Party after this election," Littleproud told a crowd of reporters.
"The National Party will sit alone on a principle basis."
Among the sticking points were the $20 billion Regional Australia Future Fund, divestiture powers for supermarkets, universal mobile service and, of course, the controversial nuclear policy.
"The Coalition has only been breached three other times in our history … but, a reasonable request was put to a trusted partner and it was refused," McKenzie told reporters.
Digging their heels in, the Nationals leaders insisted their policy on nuclear was pragmatic.
"We want to see that it is part of a technology-agnostic approach to reducing our emissions and energy grid. You cannot run an economy of the industrial scale the size of Australia on an all-renewables approach," Littleproud declared.
The split is a move that has left political experts "surprised".
"I'm not surprised that there's been a split, but what I am surprised about is that it's been initiated by the National Party," said Linda Botterill, a visiting fellow at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University.
Dr Botterill says for a long time the Nationals have maintained a consistent number of seats, but it's "concentrated".
"They've got a very solid and reliable electoral base … even though they've only got 3.6 per cent of the primary vote. So the question is, is this a real split? Is it a temporary split? Are they just seeing someone else?"
Dr Botterill explains that while in coalition, there has been a tacit agreement that neither party will run a candidate against a sitting member of the other party.
So could the split see the Liberal and National parties cannibalise each other?
Only 3.6 per cent of Australians voted for the National Party in 2025, but in coalition with the Liberals, the Nationals have been able to have a much bigger voice in Australian politics.
And according to Littleproud, the decision to walk away from the coalition is all about having a bigger voice. How effective they'll be while going it alone remains to be seen.
In a lot of ways this stubborn resolve to be free to speak up hasn't changed since William McWilliams first founded the Country Party in 1920.
"We intend to support measures of which we approve, and hold ourselves absolutely free to criticise or reject any proposals with which we do not agree. Having put our hands to the wheel, we set the course of our voyage," he said at the time.
"We are out to secure a fair deal for the man on the land. I know this will not please all my honorable friends, but this is the course we have set ourselves, and we shall steer straight ahead without hesitation, accepting any and every responsibility that may accrue from our actions as a party."