1 month ago
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Opinion
February 1, 2026 — 12:10pm
February 1, 2026 — 12:10pm
While it is widely expected that David Littleproud will be re-elected as the leader of the National Party on Monday, it seems much less likely that the Coalition will be reformed, at least in the short term.
Yet both Littleproud and Liberal Party leader Sussan Ley – as well as their internal rivals – know perfectly well that there can be no future non-Labor government that is not a coalition. It is a political fact as certain as the laws of arithmetic. That has been true for more than a century – ever since the Country Party’s original federal leader, Earle Page, formed the first coalition government with Stanley Melbourne Bruce following the 1922 election. It is no less true today.
It is an equally undeniable electoral fact that there will be no future non-Labor government unless the Liberal Party significantly improves its performance in the capital cities. Whereas the National Party has enjoyed steady success in its regional heartlands, the Liberal Party has, ever since Tony Abbott’s landslide victory in 2013, been on a sharply downward trajectory in its traditional urban base.
Not counting Solomon in the Northern Territory (where the non-Labor parties operate as the Country Liberal Party, but sit with the Nationals in Canberra), the National Party has not lost a House of Representatives seat to Labor since 2007. (The four seats it lost in the Ruddslide of that year were all subsequently won back.) Although three of the four subsequent elections saw big swings to Labor, the National Party held every one of its lower house seats, while the Liberals lost 17 in 2016, another 18 in 2022, and a yet further 13 last year (as well as the Aston by-election in 2023).
In those instances where the National Party has lost seats, it has been to rural independents (Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor – both subsequently won back) or because of defections to the cross bench (Bob Katter, Andrew Gee and, most spectacularly, Barnaby Joyce).
You don’t need Antony Green to tell you that until a Liberal revival takes place in the capital cities, there will be Labor federal governments.
While the National Party’s numbers in regional Australia have remained relatively steady, the Liberal Party’s performance in metropolitan Australia has never been so weak. Today, it holds only eight of the 89 seats the Australian Electoral Commission classifies as “metropolitan”: just four in Sydney, two in Melbourne, one in Brisbane and one in Perth. The once-Liberal seats include both its traditional heartland seats lost to teals and independents, and the swinging seats, typically in the middle and outer suburbs, where elections are won and lost – all of which are today held by Labor. You don’t need Antony Green to tell you that until a Liberal revival takes place in the capital cities, there will be Labor federal governments for as far as the eye can see.
There is a third political truth which is undeniable: that disunity is death. “If you can’t govern yourselves, you can’t govern the country” is the most lethal attack line in politics – because it is true.
Why, then, has Littleproud chosen to weaken further the already chronically weak non-Labor side of politics by fracturing the Coalition for the second time in eight months? And why has he done so when he knows perfectly well that a coalition is the sine qua non of any future non-Labor government?
The reality is that the National Party, for all its electoral stability, rests upon a shrinking electoral base. In politics, demography is destiny. The proportion of regional seats in the House of Representatives continues to diminish as the population relativities shift remorselessly towards the capital cities. The electoral dominance of urban Australia will be further accelerated if, as I expect, the Albanese government this year decides to increase the size of the House of Representatives.
Now, a new threat has emerged to that burning platform: the sharp rise in the popularity of Pauline Hanson. While support for One Nation has grown across the board, there is no doubt that its sudden surge is greatest in regional Australia; in particular in the National Party heartland states of Queensland and NSW.
Since last year’s election, commentators have pronounced, with almost metronomic regularity, that the Liberal Party faces “an existential threat”. That observation is both lazy and wrong, because it mistakes weakness for viability. In the capital cities, although the Liberal Party is obviously historically weak, it remains – except in a small number of teal-exposed inner-city electorates – the non-Labor party of choice. Particularly given the high barriers to entry created by compulsory preferential voting, the chances of One Nation achieving a breakthrough in metropolitan Australia are negligible.
That is why those – particularly on the Liberal Party’s right wing – whose solution to the party’s problems is to chase the One Nation vote, are wrong: the electoral contest continues to be – as it always has been – in the suburban marginals, many of them with large multicultural communities, where Barnaby Joyce has no appeal and Pauline Hanson is toxic.
Outside the big cities, the politics are very different. In those smaller, less diverse communities, Hanson’s brand of conservatism – her evocation of an earlier, simpler Australia; her appeal to more traditional social attitudes – resonates strongly.
But that has always been the National Party’s brand too. One Nation, particularly since it has been energised by the recruitment of Joyce, has emerged as a lethal rival for the Nationals’ hitherto strong hold on regional Australia.
To understand the Coalition split, it is necessary to appreciate the extent to which the National Party now feels threatened in its own backyard – and its need to differentiate itself from its erstwhile Coalition partner. Whereas elections are largely won and lost by Liberals in the cities, in regional Australia, an entirely different political battle is in the making. And in that battle, it is not the Liberal Party that is seeking to stare down an existential threat.
George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK, and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general.
