Liberal–National Coalition

The Liberal–National Coalition, commonly known as the Coalition or the LNP, is an alliance of conservative and centre-right to right-wing political parties in Australia. Its primary members are the Liberal Party of Australia and the National Party of Australia (previously known as the Country Party and the National Country Party). It is one of the two major parties in Australian politics, its main rival being the Australian Labor Party. The Coalition was last in government federally from 2013 to 2022.

The Coalition has existed in some form since 1923, initially involving the Liberal Party's predecessors, the Nationalist Party and United Australia Party. It has historically been a stable alignment for long periods in both government and opposition, including at three elections where the Liberal Party won enough seats to govern in its own right. The stability between the parties (and their predecessors) has been punctuated by seven breaks in the agreement, including the 1931, 1934 and 1987 federal elections, which the parties contested separately. Its longest iteration spanned 38 years after its reestablishment in 1987, which was followed by its shortest iteration of under a year after the eight-day split in the aftermath of the 2025 election, which itself was brought to an end on 22 January 2026 after the National Party again left the union. The Coalition reunited on 8 February 2026.

The Liberal and National parties have different geographical voter bases, with the Liberals—the senior party—drawing most of their vote from urban areas, and the Nationals operating almost exclusively in rural and regional areas. They occupy a broadly similar place on the right of the political spectrum. The Liberals and Nationals maintain separate organisational wings and separate parliamentary parties, but have cooperated in various ways determined by a mixture of formal agreements and informal conventions. There is a single Coalition frontbench, both in government and in opposition, with each party receiving a proportionate number of positions. By convention, the leader of the Liberal Party serves as the overall leader, serving as prime minister when the Coalition was in government and leader of the opposition when the Coalition was in opposition. The leader of the National Party became the deputy prime minister during periods of Coalition government. The two parties cooperated on their federal election campaigns, ran joint Senate tickets in New South Wales and Victoria, and generally avoided running candidates against each other in the House of Representatives.

A merger of the Liberals and Nationals has been suggested on several occasions, but has never become a serious proposition at the federal level. The relationship between the two parties varies at state and territory levels. The situation in New South Wales and Victoria broadly mirrors the previous status quo at the federal level with both parties in coalition, while in Western Australia the parties are independent of each other. In the Northern Territory the territorial parties merged in 1974 to form the Country Liberal Party (CLP), and in 2008 the Queensland state-level parties merged, forming the Liberal National Party of Queensland (LNP). LNP and CLP members elected to federal parliament do not form separate parliamentary parties. CLP members may choose to sit in either the Liberal or National party rooms, while an LNP member must sit in the party room associated with their seat. In South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, the Nationals have no sitting MPs and little or no organisational presence.