The Liberal National Party of Queensland (LNP) is a major conservative political party in Queensland, Australia. It was formed on 26 July 2008 by a merger of the Queensland divisions of the Liberal and National parties. In other states, the two parties remain separate and distinct, in a Coalition, or the Nationals do not contest elections. Federal LNP parliamentarians sit in the party room of either the Liberals or the Nationals, depending on which federal party their seat has been allocated to by the LNP. The LNP is a division of the Liberal Party of Australia and an affiliate of the National Party of Australia.
After suffering defeat at its first election in 2009, the LNP entered 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 Labor Party at the 2015 election. Since 1989, the LNP and its predecessor parties have been in government for just 5 years. The party returned to power at the 2024 Queensland state election, unseating the three-term Labor government led by then-Premier Steven Miles.
Contents
History
Background
From the 1970s, the Queensland divisions of the National Party and Liberal Party had found themselves in frequent competition with one another for seats in Queensland. 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 the second most decentralised state in Australia (after Tasmania). Like most state capitals in Australia, Brisbane is far and away Queensland's largest urban centre; it has more than double the population of the next largest urbanised area, the Gold Coast, and is five times as large as the third-largest, the Sunshine Coast. However, only around 45% of the state's population lives in the Brisbane area. Unlike the rest of Australia, a larger portion of Queensland's population is distributed either in regional cities like Toowoomba, Rockhampton, Townsville, Mackay, Gladstone and Cairns, or in rural areas. As such, 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.
Historically, the Country/National Party was stronger in these regional centres than the Liberals. As a result, the Nationals had more seats than the Liberals and their predecessors, and had been the senior partner in the non-Labor Coalition since 1924. This division into urban, regional and rural areas was, for most of the twentieth century, reflected in a system of malapportionment that made it easier for rural-based parties to win more seats in Parliament.
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 Country Party 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 Organisation, under Frank Nicklin, also of the Country side. However, this merger only lasted until 1944.
Formation of the Liberal National Party
On 30 May 2008, an agreement in principle to merge was established between the Queensland divisions of the Liberal and National parties. A plebiscite of members of each party was then conducted with a large majority of respondents favouring the proposed merger.
The agreement in principle and a draft constitution were considered by separate meetings of the parties held over 26–27 July 2008, and the LNP was created on 26 July 2008. The inaugural conference of the LNP was held following the adoption of the constitution. The two parties had been meeting in adjoining rooms of the Sofitel Hotel in Brisbane. The wall between the two meetings was removed after both parties approved the merger, and the inaugural conference of the newly merged party began soon afterward.
After the July 2008 merger, the party had 25 members in the Legislative Assembly: 17 originally elected as Nationals, 8 originally elected as Liberals. National Party leader Lawrence Springborg became the merged party's first leader, and remained as Leader of the Opposition. Liberal Party leader Mark McArdle became Deputy Leader of the new party, and remained Deputy Leader of the Opposition. While the new party was dominated by former Nationals, its president acquired full voting rights with the federal Liberals and observer status with the federal Nationals.
The LNP fought its first election as a unified party at the 2009 state election. It managed an eight-seat swing and finished one percentage point behind Labor on the two-party-preferred vote (with optional preference voting). However, it came up 11 seats short of forming government mainly due to winning only six seats in Brisbane. Springborg resigned as leader, later becoming deputy leader under his successor, John-Paul Langbroek. Langbroek is from the Liberal side of the merger, and his election marked the first time since 1925 that the non-Labor side in Queensland had been led by someone aligned federally with the Liberals or their predecessors.
Federal Queensland Liberal and National federal representatives and senators remained affiliated to their respective parties until after the 2010 Federal Election, with senators retaining their affiliation until the new Senate sat in July 2011.
Function at a federal level
The party has in the past supplied a former Deputy Prime Minister; former federal Nationals leader Warren Truss, Deputy Prime Minister in the Abbott Government, was a member of the LNP.
In February 2022, before the 21 May 2022 federal election, out of 29 LNP federal MPs and Senators, 21 sat with the Liberals while eight sat with the Nationals. The eight LNP MPs and Senators who sat with the Nationals were:
The Hon. David Littleproud MP
George Christensen MP (Christensen left LNP and Joined One Nation in 2022)
Michelle Landry MP
Ken O'Dowd MP
The Hon. Keith Pitt MP
Llew O'Brien MP (who was briefly unaffiliated with either federal party in 2020)
Senator The Hon. Matt Canavan
Senator Susan McDonald
The affiliation of newly elected members is covered by the following informal agreement:
Members who gain a seat where the sitting member was not from the LNP will affiliate based on the last LNP member who held the seat.
For example, if an LNP candidate defeats a Greens sitting member and the seat's most recent LNP member sat with the Liberal, then the new member will affiliate with the Liberals.
A division of seats was decided upon for new seats or seats that have never been won by the Coalition.
Electoral performance
Leadership
Leaders
The list of leaders are as such: