The meteoric rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party this year, which I predicted in The Spectator Australia last July, is a blueprint that the National Party should seriously consider.
If the Federal Coalition was a genuine coalition, then it would be conservative, not Labor-lite. The Coalition arrangement for the next three years would have been the worst of all worlds, with the Labor-lite Liberals running the show despite being outnumbered by the conservative Liberals plus National Party politicians.
It’s what you get when you have the Liberal Party room with its numerically greater wet faction voting for their person rather than acknowledging the reality that the conservatives have the numbers when the Libs and Nats are combined in a Coalition.
Like Reform UK, the Nationals are a conservative party with the guts to stand up for what it believes in: Nuclear energy (not intermittent energy), abolishing Net ‘stupid’ Zero, and no males in women’s sports and toilets.
So, rather than have another three years of vanilla from a risk-averse Coalition, we will have a party, which has experience in government, espousing conservative values, thereby giving voters a genuine choice.
Having a champion of conservatism shouting from the rooftops will also help frame debates in the public’s eye. Rather than being too shy or embarrassed to talk about the positives of nuclear energy, the self-flagellation and stupidity of Net Zero and intermittent energy, and the outrage of having males in women’s sports and toilets, we will have a party trying to drive the agenda around these 80-20 issues.
The National Party isn’t called the Regional Party or the Bush Party. It can be a ‘national party’. Why not have National Party candidates in outer metropolitan seats in the 2028 Federal Election? It couldn’t be any worse than the Liberal Party being given a free pass to run there in the 2025 Federal Election with its cowardly and timid approach.
I am convinced that the National Party’s conservative perspective would go down very well with up to a third of the electors out here in Australia’s peri-urban areas.
The Nationals have a respected brand that could help it evolve into a party of regional Australia and outer-suburban Australia. One Nation might have some great policies, but it has a stigma attached to its brand.
Surely the National Party could attract some high-quality outer-metropolitan candidates whose politics are to the right of the Labor-lite Liberals, but who would never stand for One Nation?
A disciplined preference flow between the Libs and the Nats would surely get one or the other across the line in many peri-urban seats.
Should the Libs and Nats end up with a combined 76 seats, then the Nats could demand its non-negotiables post-election. No more vanilla, instead some real conservatism in government. To have a Coalition government, you don’t have to have a coalition before an election. You simply need one after the national vote.
Why can’t, long term, the Liberals be left to challenge Labor in inner-metro seats, the Nats and Liberals with a disciplined preference flow giving voters a genuine choice in outer-metro seats, and the Nats fighting for seats in regional Australia?
Why couldn’t we, in peri-urban seats, get to the point of the Nats and Libs having a primary vote greater than the Greens and Labor combined?
The Nats are the third biggest party in Australia and therefore demand some media attention. Before now, it has had to churn out Liberal talking points in the interests of collective Coalition responsibility. Freed of these shackles, the Nats can change the agenda, drive the narrative, and champion issues that everyday Australians believe, but have been too afraid to say.
Angela Newhouse stood for the Liberal Party in the outer-metro seat of Point Cook in the 2022 Victorian Election. She travelled to Clacton to campaign for Reform UK’s Nigel Farage in the 2024 UK Election.
