National Party of Australia

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National Party of Australia
Leader	Mark Vaile
Founded	1922 (as The Country Party)
Headquarters	John McEwen House 7 National Circuit BARTON ACT 2600
Political Ideology	Conservatism
International Affiliation	International Democrat Union
Website	National Party of Australia
See also	Politics of Australia Political parties Elections

The National Party of Australia is an Australian conservative political party, which claims to represent rural voters. It was originally called the Country Party, but adopted the name National Country Party in 1975 and changed to its present name in 1982. It has been the minor party in stable coalitions with the Liberal Party of Australia both federally and in most states, both in government and in opposition since the 1940s. In 2003 the party adopted the name The Nationals for campaigning purposes, reflecting common usage, but its legal name has not changed.

[edit] History

The Country Party was formally founded in 1913 in Western Australia, and nationally in 1922 from a number of state-based parties such as the Victorian Farmers Union (VFU) and the Farmers and Settlers Party of New South Wales (NSW). It was formed by small farmers, particularly wheat-growers, dissatisfied with the economic policies of the Nationalist Party government of Billy Hughes. Many returned servicemen from World War I had been allocated land grants after the war, and some of these were former trade unionists who adapted union tactics to the cause of small farmers.

The VFU won a seat in the House of Representatives in 1918, and at the 1919 federal elections the state-based country parties won seats in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia. They also began to win seats in the state parliaments. At the 1922 election the Country Party was established as a national party led by Dr Earle Page of Grafton, NSW. It won enough seats to deny the Nationalists an overall majority. They demanded the resignation of Hughes as their price for supporting a Nationalist government. Page then became Treasurer in the government of Stanley Bruce. Bruce and Page worked effectively together until the electoral defeat of the coalition parties in October 1929. However, when the conservative forces were re-organised in 1931 Page refused to take the Country Party into the new United Australia Party (UAP). As a consequence the Country Party was excluded from government when the UAP was returned to office with a parliamentary majority in its own right in early 1932. Page's relationship with the UAP was much less harmonious than it had been with the Nationalists in the 1920s. Nonetheless when the UAP lost its parliamentary majority in 1934 a coalition was patched up.

In 1932, the South Australian state branch, which had fallen victim to internal divisions, merged with the Liberal Federation, forming the Liberal and Country League, a coalition that lasted until a new division of the Country Party was established in that state in 1964.

John McEwen House, The National Party's headquarters in Canberra

Page remained dominant in the party until 1939, when his refusal to serve under Robert Menzies led to his resignation as leader. The coalition was re-formed under Archie Cameron in 1940, and continued until October 1941 despite the election of Arthur Fadden as leader after the 1940 Election. Fadden was well regarded within conservative circles and proved to be a loyal deputy to Menzies in the difficult circumstances of 1941. When Menzies was forced to resign as Prime Minister. Fadden briefly replaced him as Prime Minister (despite the Country Party being the junior partner in the governing coalition) before giving way to John Curtin in October 1941. Fadden continued as leader of the Opposition until the formation of the Liberal Party of Australia in 1945. After the 1946 elections, Fadden resumed his political partnership with Robert Menzies, though still keen to assert the independence of his party. Indeed, in the lead up to the 1949 Election, Fadden played a key role in the defeat of the Chifley Labor government, frequently making inflammatory claims about the "socialist" nature of the Labor Party which Menzies could then "clarify" or repudiate as he saw fit, thus appearing more "moderate". In 1949 Arthur Fadden became Treasurer in the second Menzies government,and remained so until his retirement in 1958. His successful partnership with Menzies was one of the elements that sustained the coalition, which remained in office until 1972 (Menzies himself retired in 1966).

Fadden's successor, John McEwen, took the then unusual step of declining to serve as Treasurer, electing instead to remain Trade Minister. In this role he ensured that the interests of Australian primary producers were safeguarded. Accordingly McEwen personally supervised the signing of the first post-war trade treaty with Japan, new trade agreements with New Zealand and Britain, and Australia's first trade agreement with the USSR (1965). In addition to this he insisted on developing an all encompassing system of tariff protection that would encourage the development of those secondary industries that would "value add" Australia's primary produce. His success in this endeavour is sometimes dubbed "McEwenism". This was the period of the Country Party's greatest power, as was demonstrated in 1962 when McEwen was able to insist that Menzies sack a Liberal Minister who claimed that Britain's entry into the EEC was unlikely to severely impact on the Australian economy as a whole. After the disappearance of Harold Holt in December 1967, McEwen was able to veto the succession of William McMahon, as a result of which John Gorton became the new Liberal Prime Minister in January 1968. In the interim, McEwen was sworn in as Prime Minister on a caretaker basis pending the election of the new Liberal leader. It would be only after McEwen announced his retirement that MacMahon would be able to successfully challenge Gorton for the Liberal leadership. McEwen's reputation for political toughness led to him being nicknamed "Black Jack" by his allies and enemies alike.

At the state level from 1957 to 1989 the Country Party under Frank Nicklin and Joh Bjelke-Petersen dominated governments in Queensland. It also took part in governments in New South Wales, Victoria, and Western Australia.

However, successive electoral redistributions after 1964 indicated that the Country Party was losing ground electorally to the Liberals as the rural population declined, and the nature of some parliamentary seats on the urban/rural fringe changed. A proposed merger with the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) under the banner of "National Alliance" was rejected when it failed to find favour with voters at the Western Australia state elections of 1974.

Also in 1974, the Northern Territory members of the party joined with its Liberal party members to form the independent Country Liberal Party. This party continues to represent both parent parties in that territory. A separate party, the Joh-inspired NT Nationals, competed in the 1987 election with former Chief Minister Ian Tuxworth winning his seat of Barkly by a small margin. However, this splinter group were not endorsed by the national executive, and soon disappeared from the political scene.

In 1975 the Country Party changed its name to the National Country Party as part of a strategy to expand into urban areas. This had some success in Queensland under Bjelke-Petersen, but nowhere else. In Western Australia, the party publicly walked out of the coalition agreement in Western Australia in May 1975, to return in 1976. However, the party split in two over the decision in late 1978, with a new National Party forming and becoming independent, holding three seats in the Western Australian lower house, while the National Country Party remained in coalition and also held three seats. They reconciled after the Burke Labor government came to power in 1983.

The 1980s were dominated by the feud between Bjelke-Petersen and the federal party leadership, which led to defeat at the 1987 federal election and the fall of the Nationals in Queensland in 1989. The Nationals experienced difficulties in the late 1990s from two fronts - firstly from the Liberal Party, who were winning seats on the basis that the Nationals were not seen to be a sufficiently separate party, and from the One Nation Party, especially in Queensland, who gained a considerable share of the vote from conservative rural people who were tired of major parties and their failure to address real problems in their local communities. The rise of Labor in formerly safe National-held areas in rural Queensland, particularly on the coast, has been the biggest threat to the Queensland Nationals.

With the rise to power of the Australian Labor Party in all states between 1999 and 2002 and the continuing failure of the Liberal Party to gain traction at state level, the Nationals were forced to be more pragmatic about their own future, leaving the coalition in every state except New South Wales. However, the Queensland coalition reformed shortly before the 2006 election in that state. In 2002, for the first time in the Nationals' history, it formed a coalition with the Labor Party in South Australia, with lone MP Karlene Maywald taking a ministerial position in the Labor Cabinet alongside rural independent Rory McEwen. In Western Australia, where the Liberals presently hold more rural seats than urban ones, the Nationals have become an independent party with centrist views, including support of gay civil unions and greater welfare and government support in country towns, and managed to win a safe Liberal-held seat at the 2005 election, while losing one of their own on the retirement of the local member.

[edit] Political role

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page.

Liberal-National coalition governments have traditionally given the position of Deputy Premier or Deputy Prime Minister to the leader of the National Party in that parliament. The current federal leader, Mark Vaile, is Deputy Prime Minister to John Howard and when Liberal Prime Minister Harold Holt died in office, his Country Party deputy John McEwen became Prime Minister for a period of weeks while the Liberal Party elected a new leader. In the Queensland state parliament, the National Party has historically been the stronger coalition partner numerically, and under the terms of the coalition agreement, the converse arrangement currently applies.

The National Party's support base and membership are closely associated with the agricultural community. Historically anti-union, the party has vacillated between state support for primary industries ("agrarian socialism") and free agricultural trade and has opposed tariff protection for Australia's manufacturing and service industries. This vacillation prompted those opposed to the politices of the Nationals to joke that its real aim was to "capitalise its gains and socialise its losses!". It is usually pro-mining, pro-development, and anti-environmentalist.

The Nationals hold a larger membership base than either the Liberal or Labor Parties, although in the larger eastern states its vote is in decline and its traditional supporters are turning instead to prominent independents such as Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Peter Andren in Federal Parliament and similar independents in the Parliaments of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, many of whom are former members of the National Party. In fact at the 2004 Federal election, National Party candidates received fewer first preference votes than the Australian Greens. However, the situation in Western Australia and South Australia, where the party is more clearly differentiable from the Liberals, is quite different, with the Nationals narrowly missing out on winning a second seat in South Australia in 2006 and winning a safe Liberal seat in Western Australia in 2005.

Demographic changes are not helping, with fewer people living and employed on the land or in small towns, the continued growth of the larger provincial centres, and, in some cases, the arrival of left-leaning "city refugees" in rural areas. The Liberals have also gained support as the differences between the coalition partners on a federal level have become invisible. This was highlighted in January 2006, when Nationals Senator Julian McGauran defected to the Liberals, saying that there was "no longer any real distinguishing policy or philosophical difference" [1].

In Queensland, Nationals leader Lawrence Springborg advocated merger of the National and Liberal parties at a state level in order to present a more effective opposition to the Labor Party. Previously this plan had been dismissed by the Queensland branch of the Liberal party, but the idea received in-principle support from the Liberals. Federal leader Mark Vaile stated the Nationals will not merge with the Liberal Party at a federal level. The plan was opposed by key Queensland Senators Ron Boswell and Barnaby Joyce, and was scuttled in 2006. After suffering defeat in the 2006 Queensland poll, Lawrence Springborg was replaced by Jeff Seeney, who has indicated he is not interested in merging with the Liberal Party until the issue is seriously raised at a Federal level.

Support for the Nationals in the 2006 Victorian state election was considerable with the party picking up two extra seats in the Lower House to boost its total representation to 11 sitting members. This success can be attributed to a more assertive National Party image (a differentation to that of the Liberals) and the growing popularity of state and federal Nationals identities such as Barnaby Joyce.

[edit] Leaders

• William James McWilliams 1920-21
• Sir Earle Page 1921-39
• Archie Cameron 1939-40
• Sir Arthur Fadden 1940-58
• Sir John McEwen 1958-71
• Doug Anthony 1971-84
• Ian Sinclair 1984-89
• Charles Blunt 1989-90
• Tim Fischer 1990-99
• John Anderson 1999-2005
• Mark Vaile from 2005

[edit] Deputy Leaders

• John McEwen
• Doug Anthony
• Ian Sinclair
• Bruce Lloyd
• John Anderson 1993-1999
• Mark Vaile 1999-2005
• Warren Truss 2005-

[edit] Current National Party State Parliamentary Leaders

• Brendon Grylls (Western Australia) 2005-
• Karlene Maywald (South Australia) 1997-
• Peter Ryan (Victoria) 1999-
• Jeff Seeney (Queensland) 2006-
• Andrew Stoner (New South Wales) 2003-

The National Party does not stand candidates at state level in Tasmania or the Australian Capital Territory, and supports Country Liberal Party candidates in the Northern Territory.

[edit] Past Premiers

[edit] Queensland

• Frank Nicklin
• Jack Pizzey - 17 January 1968 to 31 July 1968.
• Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen - 8 August 1968 to 1 December 1987
• Mike Ahern - December 1987 to September 1989.
• Russell Cooper - 25 September 1989 to 7 December 1989.
• Rob Borbidge - February, 1996 - 1998

[edit] Victoria

• John Allan 18 November 1924 - 20 May 1927
• Albert Dunstan
• John McDonald

[edit] External links

• Official website