| The Coalition | |
|---|---|
| Leader | Tony Abbott MP |
| Deputy Leader | Warren Truss MP |
| Founded | 1922 |
| Headquarters | Cnr Blackall & Macquarie St, Barton ACT 2600 (Liberal) John McEwen House, 7 National Circuit, Barton ACT 2600 (Nationals) |
| Ideology | Conservative liberalism, Liberal conservatism, New Right Agrarianism[1][2] |
| Political position | Centre-right |
| Official colours | Blue and Green |
| House of Representatives |
71 / 150
|
| Senate |
34 / 76
|
| Politics of Australia Political parties Elections |
|
The Coalition in Australian politics refers to a group of centre-right parties that has existed in the form of a coalition agreement (on and off) since 1922. The Coalition partners are the Liberal Party of Australia (or its predecessors before 1945) and the National Party of Australia (known as the Australian Country Party from 1921 to 1975 and the National Country Party of Australia from 1975 to 1982). The Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory and the Liberal National Party in Queensland are their equivalents in those states, while the National Party of Western Australia and The Nationals South Australia are not in any form of coalition and are separate parties. There is no National Party in the ACT or Tasmania. The Coalition's main rival for government is the centre-left Australian Labor Party.
The Liberal leader usually becomes the Prime Minister or Premier, while the Nationals leader usually becomes the Deputy Prime Minister or Deputy Premier, if the parties win government. In modern times, Queensland was the only state where this system worked in reverse, as Queensland was the only state where the National Party was the stronger coalition partner (Victoria had Country-party dominated coalitions from the 1920s to the 1950s). However, the Queensland coalition parties merged in 2008, meaning that former party affiliations had no real effect.
Contents |
| Coalition Member Parties | |
|---|---|
| Liberal Party of Australia | |
| Liberal National Party of Queensland | |
| National Party of Australia | |
| Country Liberal Party (NT) | |
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.[3] 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.[4][5][6]
| Coalition Lower House Seats (and endorsed parties) |
|
|---|---|
| NSW Parliament |
69 / 93
|
| Vic Parliament |
45 / 88
|
| QLD Parliament |
34 / 89
|
| WA Parliament |
29 / 59
|
| SA Parliament |
18 / 47
|
| Tas Parliament |
10 / 25
|
| ACT Parliament |
6 / 17
|
| NT Parliament |
11 / 25
|
Coalition arrangements are facilitated by Australia's preferential voting systems which enable Liberals and Nationals to compete locally while exchanging preferences in elections, thereby avoiding "three-cornered-contests", usually with the Australian Labor Party (ALP), which 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, usually without undue 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 forerunner to the modern Liberal party that introduced the necessary legislation, after Labor won the 1918 Swan by-election after the conservative vote was split in two. Two months later, a 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 cooperate 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 don't express all useful preferences.
Merger plans came to a head in May 2008, when the Queensland state Liberal Party announced that they would not wait for a federal merger blueprint, but would merge as soon as possible. The new party, the "Liberal-National Party", has a self-imposed deadline of late July for party registration.[13] Candidates for the new Liberal National party contested the 2010 Australian Federal Election, with previously-elected members of parliament retaining their affiliation until their next election.
Due to a disciplined coalition between the parties and their predecessors in existance for almost 100 years with only a few brief cessations and the peception of a two-party parliamentary system, most commentators and the general public often refer to The Coalition as 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 two-party-preferred result.[14]
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