Coalition (Australia) - Present-day Coalition Status

Present-day Coalition Status

The status of the Coalition varies across the Commonwealth and states. Below is the status of each state on a state-by-state basis.

At the federal level, there was until recently a Coalition between the Liberals, Nationals and Country Liberal Party, with the Queensland Liberal National Party participating through their affiliation with the Liberals. This was briefly broken in 1987, but was renewed after the 1987 federal election. In September 2008, Barnaby Joyce became leader of the Nationals in the Senate, with the party moving to the crossbenches. Joyce stated that his party in the upper house would no longer necessarily vote with their Liberal counterparts.

• New South Wales: A Coalition between the Liberal and National parties exists in New South Wales. The Liberal Party is led by Barry O'Farrell and the National Party by Andrew Stoner. It won the 2011 state election in a massive swing. New South Wales is the only state where the coalition has never broken, and yet has also never merged.

• Victoria: A Coalition between the Liberal and National parties exists in Victoria. The Liberal Party is led by Ted Baillieu and the National Party by Peter Ryan. When Ryan became leader of the Nationals shortly after the 1999 election, he briefly terminated the Coalition agreement and went into the 2002 and 2006 elections separately from the Liberals. However, the Coalition agreement was renewed in 2008 and the Victorian Liberal and National parties went into the 2010 election as a Coalition. The Coalition ended up winning the 2010 election with a one-seat margin.

• Queensland: In recent times, Queensland is the only state in which the Nationals have been the stronger coalition partner. The Queensland Liberals broke the Coalition in 1983. At a election held two months later, the Nationals under Joh Bjelke-Petersen came up one seat short of a majority, but later gained a majority when two Liberal MLAs crossed the floor to the Nationals. The Nationals then governed in their own right until 1989, but governed in Coalition under Rob Borbidge from 1996 to 1998. In 2008, the parties agreed to merge, forming the Liberal National Party, which is affiliated with the Liberal Party. The LNP won an overwhelming majority government in the 2012 state election under the leadership of Campbell Newman. At the federal level, LNP MP Warren Truss is the federal leader of the Nationals, and four other LNP MPs sit with the Nationals in the House. Barnaby Joyce, the Senate leader of the Nationals, is an LNP member, and one other LNP Senator sits with the Nationals as well. There is an informal agreement within the LNP as to which party room LNP members will sit with. Members who were are re-elected to parliament remain in the same party, whereas members who win seats from the ALP that previously belonged to the coalition will sit with the previous member's party. An amicable division of seats was decided upon for new seats or seats that have never been won by the coalition.

• Western Australia: The National Party of Western Australia was in Coalition with the state Liberal government from 1993 to 2001 (see Hendy Cowan), but the Coalition was subsequently broken. In 2008, the Liberals, Nationals, and an independent MP formed the Government after the 2008 election, but this is not characterised as a "traditional coalition", with limited cabinet collective responsibility for National cabinet members. The Leader of the Liberals in Western Australia is Premier Colin Barnett and the Nationals Leader is Brendon Grylls. Tony Crook was elected as the WA Nationals candidate for the seat of O'Connor at the 2010 federal election. Although some reports initially counted Crook as a National MP, and thus part of the Coalition, Crook sits as a crossbencher.

• South Australia: The two parties merged to form the Liberal and Country League in 1932. This in turn joined the Liberal party in 1973, and a separate Country Party (later Nationals SA) emerged, which has only ever had two representatives: Peter Blacker from 1973 to 1993, and Karlene Maywald from 1997 to 2010. From 2004 to 2010, Maywald was a Minister in the Rann Labor Government, before losing her seat at the 2010 South Australian state election, thereby informally creating a coalition between the ALP and the National Party at South Australia's state level of government. The National Party, at the time, rejected the notion that it was in a coalition with Labor at the state level. State National Party President John Venus told journalists, "We (The Nationals) are not in coalition with the Labor Party, we aren't in coalition with the Liberals, we are definitely not in coalition with anyone. We stand alone in South Australia as an independent party." Flinders University political scientist Haydon Manning disagreed, saying that it is "churlish to describe the government as anything but a coalition". The party did not run candidates at the 2010 federal election.

• Tasmania: The National Party is not affiliated in Tasmania, leaving the Liberal Party as the sole coalition member in the state.

• Australian Capital Territory: The National Party is not affiliated in the Australian Capital Territory, leaving the Liberal Party as the sole major non-Labor party in the territory.

• Northern Territory: The two parties' branches in Northern Territory merged in 1975, forming the Country Liberal Party, which maintains full voting rights with the federal National Party, and has observer status with the federal Liberal Party. Federal CLP members are directed by the CLP whether to sit with the federal Liberals or Nationals. CLP Senator Nigel Scullion is the current deputy leader of the federal Nationals, and was the leader of the Nationals in the Senate until Barnaby Joyce took that position in September 2008. The CLP's lone member in the House of Representatives, Natasha Griggs, sits with the Liberals.