Ginger Group (Queensland)

The ginger group, in Queensland politics was a group of Liberal Party of Australia MLAs during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, who despite nominally being a part of the government, were opposed to some of the policies of their senior coalition partner, the National Party of Australia. Initially a small informal grouping within the Liberal Party, the group came to wield greater and greater power within the Liberal partyroom, culminating in Terry White's successful leadership challenge in 1983, and the party's subsequent defeat and loss of influence at the 1983 election.

After the Second World War, the politics of the Australian state of Queensland was dominated by the Australian Labor Party and the Country Party. In Queensland, the rural-urban divide has historically been less pronounced than in other states. While the Liberal Party and its predecessors have long been the dominant partner in the non-Labor Coalition, in Queensland the Country Party was the dominant partner from 1936 onwards when the joint Country and Progressive National Party was split into separate parties matching the federal Country and United Australia, later Liberal, parties.

From 1949, an electoral malapportionment meant that regional areas held significantly more political power in the Legislative Assembly than their populations would have suggested. This arrangement initially benefited the Labor Party, whose power base was historically in the provincial cities. However, the Labor government imploded in 1957, allowing the Country-Liberal Coalition to win power. The new Country Party premier, Frank Nicklin, immediately tweaked the electoral system to favour his own party. The Liberals, whose base was concentrated in and around the state capital, Brisbane, were left at a severe disadvantage as before.

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