Long-term patterns of coalition-building at state and federal level in Australia

Abstract

Australian politics has featured relatively stable conservative coalitions at both national and sub-national (state) level since the advent of the modern two-party system in the 1940s. However, the configuration of those coalitions varies greatly from state to state. While the larger Liberal Party and the rural-based National Party (formerly the Country Party) have shared power in each of the conservative national governments since the Second World War, differences in history, geography and industrial development in a country as large as Australia have produced considerable sub-national differences. The variations in the status of the rural-based party in particular show no signs of disappearing. This is in part due to the federal nature of the parties. State-controlled parties produce some degree of congruence between the two levels of government while retaining variation in the arrangements between states. For example, the National Party is comparatively weak in some states while stronger in the largest states of New South Wales and Victoria, strengths and weaknesses reflected at both state and federal levels. In the National Party’s historically strongest state of Queensland the two parties have combined to form the Liberal National Party (LNP), making arrangements at the federal level even more complicated since LNP MPs can caucus with either of the federal parties.