Liberal National Party of Queensland
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Liberal National Party of Queensland
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|---|---|
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| Leader | Tim Nicholls |
| President | Bruce McIver |
| Founded | 2008 |
| Headquarters | Brisbane |
| National affiliation | Liberal/National Coalition |
| Colours | Light blue |
| House of Representatives |
21 / 150
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| Senate |
5 / 76
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| Parliament of Queensland |
41 / 89
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| Website | |
| www |
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The Liberal National Party (LNP) is a conservative political party in Queensland, Australia. It was formed in 2008 by a merger of the Queensland divisions of the Liberal Party of Australia and the National Party of Australia. At a federal level and in most other states the two parties remain distinct and operate as a more or less permanent Coalition. The LNP is a full member (i.e. affiliated branch) of the Liberal Party, and has observer status within the National Party.
After suffering defeat at its first election in 2009 the LNP won government for the first time at the 2012 election, winning 78 out of 89 seats, a record majority in the unicameral Parliament of Queensland. Campbell Newman became the first LNP Premier of Queensland. The Newman Government was subsequently defeated by the opposition Labor Party at the 2015 election.
Prior to the merger the National Party and Liberal Party had found themselves in frequent competition with one another for seats in Queensland since the 1970s. The Liberal Party (and its predecessors) and the National Party (formerly the Country Party and National Country Party) have been in a coalition at the federal level for all but a few years since 1923. In most parts of Australia the Liberal Party is the larger party, concentrated in urban areas, with the Nationals a junior partner operating exclusively in rural and regional areas. Competition between the two is thus minimised as the two attempt to win more seats combined than the Australian Labor Party.
However, Queensland is Australia's most decentralised state; the urban-rural divide is not as pronounced in Queensland as in the rest of Australia. In other states, 60% or more of the population lives in and around the state's capital city. In Queensland only around 45% of the population lives in the Brisbane area, with a greater portion of the state's population distributed in regional cities like Rockhampton, Townsville, Mackay, Gladstone and Cairns, as well as in rural areas. These are areas where the National Party is stronger than the Liberal Party. As a result, the Country/National Party had more seats than the Liberal Party and its predecessors, and had been the senior partner in the non-Labor Coalition since 1924. The formation of the LNP was actually the third attempt to unite the non-Labor side in Queensland. In 1925, the United Party — the Queensland branch of the urban-based Nationalist Party — and the Country Party merged as the Country and Progressive National Party. This party won government in 1929 under former Queensland Country leader Arthur Edward Moore, but was defeated in 1932 and split apart in 1936. In 1941, the Queensland divisions of the United Australia Party and Country Party merged as the Country-National Party, under Frank Nicklin of the Country side. However, this merger only lasted until 1944.
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