Meanwhile, in South Australia, the one National in parliament has a seat at Labor's cabinet table.
Sooner or later the Nationals are going to have to decide on a consistent national approach. If they don't, their various divisions will be picked off one by one.
Philosophically the Nationals used to be the party of the agrarian socialist, a collection of farmers opposed to trade unions and progressive social views but also uncomfortable about the free trade agenda that harmed the competitiveness of Australia's agricultural industry when competing in the global market.
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The decision to band with the Liberal Party has always been a lesser of evils. Doing battle with the growing free trade tendencies of Liberals is preferable to trying to overcome the stranglehold the trade union movement has over the Labor Party.
But some Nationals are starting to wonder if the things that bind them to the Liberal Party aren't also the things that are eroding their voter base.
Any strategy adopted in the coming years needs to recognise the perception in the bush that the Liberal Party pushes the Nationals around. For that reason, the Nationals should, as a matter of policy and priority, drop out of the Coalition whenever they lose government. In Opposition they could then define themselves on their own terms, as they did in WA, and give themselves greater bargaining power when the conservative side of politics returns to government.
Such a strategy is not without its risks. Liberals do from time to time win government without the support of the Nationals. Were that to happen again, the Nationals risk being left on the cross-benches indefinitely. And optional preferential voting in NSW makes a non-coalition in Opposition risky where three-cornered contests are concerned.
But the survival of the Nationals is anything but certain, and merging is only an option if they are prepared to be forgotten over time.
The newly constructed Liberal National Party in Queensland, a mistaken course of action if ever there was one, would do well to remember the merger of The Daily Telegraph and The Mirror newspapers in Sydney. They came together under the masthead The Daily Telegraph Mirror.
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Today it is known as The Daily Telegraph.
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