The Nationals South Australia

The Nationals SA are a sub-division of the National Party of Australia. First contesting the 1965 state election, the party has only held two seats at alternating periods; Peter Blacker (1973-1993) in Flinders and Karlene Maywald (1997-2010) in Chaffey.

History

As the Liberal and Country League (the predecessor to the South Australian Liberal Party of Australia) descended from a historical merger from an earlier Country Party, the SA Nationals are not as dominant in rural areas as their eastern state counterparts. Karlene Maywald has been the MP for Chaffey since 1997 and The National SA's parliamentary leader. She was re-elected at the 2002 and 2006 state elections (three other candidates were fielded in Flinders, Finniss, and MacKillop), announcing that she would support whichever party won government, which happened to be a landslide to the Australian Labor Party. Maywald became a minister in the first term of the Rann government. and signed an agreement with Mike Rann and the Australian Labor Party for reserving the right to not vote with the government, whilst at the same time becoming the Minister for the River Murray amongst other portfolios to the benefit of her constituency. Positions accepted were Minister for the River Murray, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Small Business, and later Minister for Water Security.^[1] This informal ALP-NAT coalition (the first since 1935) caused uproar, with Christopher Pyne calling for Maywald's expulsion from the Nationals and Patrick Secker calling for a corruption enquiry in to the appointment - neither eventuated.^[2] The party did not run candidates at the 2010 federal election.

References

External links

• Homepage
• About Us
• Karlene Maywald
• 2004 ALP-NAT agreement
• Other 2006 candidates