What is lnp in australian politics?

The Liberal Party of Australia is a centre-right political party in Australia.[21] The party is one of the two major parties in Australian politics, the other being the Australian Labor Party. The Liberal Party was founded in 1944 as the successor to the United Australia Party,[22] and has since become one of the most successful political parties in Australia's history.

The Liberal Party is the dominant partner in the Coalition with the National Party of Australia. At the federal level, the Liberal Party has been in coalition with the National Party (under various names) since 1949.[23] The Coalition was most recently in power from the 2013 federal election to the 2022 federal election, forming the Abbott (2013–2015), Turnbull (2015–2018) and Morrison (2018–2022) governments. The current party leader is Peter Dutton, who replaced former Prime Minister Scott Morrison as leader after the Coalition's defeat at the 2022 federal election.

The Liberal Party has a federal structure, with autonomous divisions in all six states and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). The Country Liberal Party (CLP) of the Northern Territory is an affiliate.[24] Both the CLP and the Liberal National Party (LNP), the Queensland state division, were formed through mergers of the local Liberal and National parties. At state and territory level, the Liberal Party is in office in only one state: Tasmania, as of 2014. The party is in opposition in the states of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia, and in both the ACT and Northern Territory.

The party's ideology has been referred to as conservative,[25] liberal-conservative,[26] conservative-liberal,[27] and classical liberal.[28] The Liberal Party tends to promote economic liberalism, and social conservatism.[29] Two past leaders of the party, Sir Robert Menzies and John Howard, are Australia's two longest-serving Prime Ministers.

The Liberals' immediate predecessor was the United Australia Party (UAP). More broadly, the Liberal Party's ideological ancestry stretched back to the anti-Labor groupings in the first Commonwealth parliaments. The Commonwealth Liberal Party was a fusion of the Free Trade (Anti-socialist) Party and the Protectionist Party in 1909 by the second prime minister, Alfred Deakin, in response to Labor's growing electoral prominence. The Commonwealth Liberal Party merged with several Labor dissidents (including Billy Hughes) to form the Nationalist Party of Australia in 1917. That party, in turn, merged with Labor dissidents to form the UAP in 1931.

The UAP had been formed as a new conservative alliance in 1931, with Labor defector Joseph Lyons as its leader. The stance of Lyons and other Labor rebels against the more radical proposals of the Labor movement to deal the Great Depression had attracted the support of prominent Australian conservatives.[30] With Australia still suffering the effects of the Great Depression, the newly formed party won a landslide victory at the 1931 Election, and the Lyons government went on to win three consecutive elections. It largely avoided Keynesian pump-priming and pursued a more conservative fiscal policy of debt reduction and balanced budgets as a means of stewarding Australia out of the Depression. Lyons' death in 1939 saw Robert Menzies assume the Prime Ministership on the eve of war. Menzies served as Prime Minister from 1939 to 1941 but resigned as leader of the minority World War II government amidst an unworkable parliamentary majority. The UAP, led by Billy Hughes, disintegrated after suffering a heavy defeat in the 1943 election. In New South Wales, the party merged with the Commonwealth Party to form the Democratic Party,[31] In Queensland the state party was absorbed into the Queensland People's Party.[32]

From 1942 onward Menzies had maintained his public profile with his series of "The Forgotten People" radio talks—similar to Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fireside chats" of the 1930s—in which he spoke of the middle class as the "backbone of Australia" but as nevertheless having been "taken for granted" by political parties.[33][34]

Menzies called a conference of conservative parties and other groups opposed to the ruling Australian Labor Party, which met in Canberra on 13 October 1944 and again in Albury, New South Wales in December 1944.[6][7][8] Outlining his vision for a new political movement, Menzies said:

The formation of the party was formally announced at Sydney Town Hall on 31 August 1945.[8] It took the name "Liberal" in honour of the old Commonwealth Liberal Party. The new party was dominated by the remains of the old UAP; with few exceptions, the UAP party room became the Liberal Party room. The Australian Women's National League, a powerful conservative women's organisation, also merged with the new party. A conservative youth group Menzies had set up, the Young Nationalists, was also merged into the new party. It became the nucleus of the Liberal Party's youth division, the Young Liberals. By September 1945 there were more than 90,000 members, many of whom had not previously been members of any political party.[8]

In New South Wales, the New South Wales division of the Liberal Party replaced the Liberal Democratic Party and Democratic Party between January and April 1945.[36][37] In Queensland, the Queensland People's Party did not become part of the Liberal Party until July 1949, when it became the Queensland division of the Liberal Party.

After an initial loss to Labor at the 1946 election, Menzies led the Liberals to victory at the 1949 election, and the party stayed in office for a record 23 years— the longest unbroken run ever in government at the federal level. Australia experienced prolonged economic growth during the post-war boom period of the Menzies government (1949–1966) and Menzies fulfilled his promises at the 1949 election to end rationing of butter, tea and petrol and provided a five-shilling endowment for first-born children, as well as for others.[38] While himself an unashamed anglophile, Menzies' government concluded a number of major defence and trade treaties that set Australia on its post-war trajectory out of Britain's orbit; opened up Australia to multi-ethnic immigration; and instigated important legal reforms regarding Aboriginal Australians.

Menzies was strongly opposed to Labor's plans to nationalise the Australian banking system and, following victory at the 1949 election, secured a double dissolution election for April 1951, after the Labor-controlled Senate rejected his banking legislation. The Liberal-Country Coalition was returned with control of the Senate. The Government was re-elected again at the 1954 election; the formation of the anti-Communist Democratic Labor Party (DLP) and the consequent split in the Australian Labor Party early in 1955 helped the Liberals to secure another victory in December 1955. John McEwen replaced Arthur Fadden as leader of the Country Party in March 1958 and the Menzies-McEwen Coalition was returned again at elections in November 1958—their third victory against Labor's H. V. Evatt. The Coalition was narrowly returned against Labor's Arthur Calwell in the December 1961 election, in the midst of a credit squeeze. Menzies stood for office for the last time at the November 1963 election, again defeating Calwell, with the Coalition winning back its losses in the House of Representatives. Menzies went on to resign from parliament on 26 January 1966.[39]

Menzies came to power the year the Communist Party of Australia had led a coal strike to improve pit miners' working conditions. That same year Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb, and Mao Zedong led the Chinese Communist Party to power in China; a year later came the invasion of South Korea by Communist North Korea. Anti-communism was a key political issue of the 1950s and 1960s.[40] Menzies was firmly anti-Communist; he committed troops to the Korean War and attempted to ban the Communist Party of Australia in an unsuccessful referendum during the course of that war. The Labor Party split over concerns about the influence of the Communist Party over the Trade Union movement, leading to the foundation of the breakaway Democratic Labor Party whose preferences supported the Liberal and Country parties.[41]

In 1951, during the early stages of the Cold War, Menzies spoke of the possibility of a looming third world war. The Menzies government entered Australia's first formal military alliance outside of the British Commonwealth with the signing of the ANZUS Treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States in San Francisco in 1951. External Affairs Minister Percy Spender had put forward the proposal to work along similar lines to the NATO Alliance. The Treaty declared that any attack on one of the three parties in the Pacific area would be viewed as a threat to each, and that the common danger would be met in accordance with each nation's constitutional processes. In 1954, the Menzies government signed the South East Asia Collective Defence Treaty (SEATO) as a South East Asian counterpart to NATO. That same year, Soviet diplomat Vladimir Petrov and his wife defected from the Soviet embassy in Canberra, revealing evidence of Russian spying activities; Menzies called a Royal Commission to investigate.[42]

In 1956, a committee headed by Sir Keith Murray was established to inquire into the financial plight of Australia's universities, and Menzies injected funds into the sector under conditions which preserved the autonomy of universities.

Menzies continued the expanded immigration program established under Chifley, and took important steps towards dismantling the White Australia Policy. In the early-1950s, external affairs minister Percy Spender helped to establish the Colombo Plan for providing economic aid to underdeveloped nations in Australia's region. Under that scheme many future Asian leaders studied in Australia.[43] In 1958, the government replaced the Immigration Act's arbitrarily applied European language dictation test with an entry permit system, that reflected economic and skills criteria.[44][45] In 1962, Menzies' Commonwealth Electoral Act provided that all Indigenous Australians should have the right to enrol and vote at federal elections (prior to this, indigenous people in Queensland, Western Australia and some in the Northern Territory had been excluded from voting unless they were ex-servicemen).[46] In 1949, the Liberals appointed Dame Enid Lyons as the first woman to serve in an Australian Cabinet. Menzies remained a staunch supporter of links to the monarchy and British Commonwealth but formalised an alliance with the United States and concluded the Agreement on Commerce between Australia and Japan which was signed in July 1957 and launched post-war trade with Japan, beginning a growth of Australian exports of coal, iron ore and mineral resources that would steadily climb until Japan became Australia's largest trading partner.

Menzies retired in 1966 as Australia's longest-serving Prime Minister.

Harold Holt replaced the retiring Robert Menzies in 1966 and the Holt government went on to win 82 seats to Labor's 41 at the 1966 election.[47] Holt remained Prime Minister until 19 December 1967, when he was declared presumed dead two days after disappearing in rough surf in which he had gone for a swim. His body has never been found.

Holt increased Australian commitment to the growing War in Vietnam, which met with some public opposition. His government oversaw conversion to decimal currency. Holt faced Britain's withdrawal from Asia by visiting and hosting many Asian leaders and by expanding ties to the United States, hosting the first visit to Australia by an American president, his friend Lyndon B. Johnson. Holt's government introduced the Migration Act 1966, which effectively dismantled the White Australia Policy and increased access to non-European migrants, including refugees fleeing the Vietnam War. Holt also called the 1967 Referendum which removed the discriminatory clause in the Australian Constitution which excluded Aboriginal Australians from being counted in the census – the referendum was one of the few to be overwhelmingly endorsed by the Australian electorate (over 90% voted "Yes"). By the end of 1967, the Liberals' initially popular support for the war in Vietnam was causing increasing public protest.[48]

The Liberals chose John Gorton to replace Holt. Gorton, a former World War II Royal Australian Air Force pilot, with a battle scarred face, said he was "Australian to the bootheels" and had a personal style which often affronted some conservatives.

The Gorton government increased funding for the arts, setting up the Australian Council for the Arts, the Australian Film Development Corporation and the National Film and Television Training School. The Gorton government passed legislation establishing equal pay for men and women and increased pensions, allowances and education scholarships, as well as providing free health care to 250,000 of the nation's poor (but not universal health care). Gorton's government kept Australia in the Vietnam War but stopped replacing troops at the end of 1970.[49]

Gorton maintained good relations with the United States and Britain, but pursued closer ties with Asia. The Gorton government experienced a decline in voter support at the 1969 election. State Liberal leaders saw his policies as too centralist, while other Liberals didn't like his personal behaviour. In 1971, Defence Minister Malcolm Fraser, resigned and said Gorton was "not fit to hold the great office of Prime Minister". In a vote on the leadership the Liberal Party split 50/50, and although this was insufficient to remove him as the leader, Gorton decided this was also insufficient support for him, and he resigned.[49]

Former treasurer William McMahon replaced Gorton as Prime Minister. Gorton remained a front bencher but relations with Fraser remained strained.

The economy was weakening. McMahon maintained Australia's diminishing commitment to Vietnam and criticised Opposition leader, Gough Whitlam, for visiting Communist China in 1972—only to have the US President Richard Nixon announce a planned visit soon after.[50]

During McMahon's period in office, Neville Bonner joined the Senate and became the first Indigenous Australian in the Australian Parliament.[51] Bonner was chosen by the Liberal Party to fill a Senate vacancy in 1971 and celebrated his maiden parliamentary speech with a boomerang throwing display on the lawns of Parliament. Bonner went on to win election at the 1972 election and served as a Liberal Senator for 12 years. He worked on Indigenous and social welfare issues and proved an independent minded Senator, often crossing the floor on Parliamentary votes.[52]

The McMahon government ended when Gough Whitlam led the Australian Labor Party out of its 23-year period in Opposition at the 1972 election. Following Whitlam's victory, John Gorton played a further role in reform by introducing a Parliamentary motion from Opposition supporting the legalisation of same-gender sexual relations.

Billy Snedden led the party against Whitlam in the 1974 federal election, which saw a return of the Labor government. When Malcolm Fraser won the Liberal Party leadership from Snedden in 1975, Gorton walked out of the Party Room.[53]

Following the 1974–75 Loans Affair, the Malcolm Fraser-led Liberal-Country Party Coalition argued that the Whitlam government was incompetent and so delayed passage of the Government's money bills in the Senate, until the government would promise a new election. Whitlam refused, yet Fraser insisted, leading to the divisive 1975 Australian constitutional crisis. The deadlock came to an end when the Whitlam government was controversially dismissed by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr on 11 November 1975 and Fraser was installed as caretaker Prime Minister, pending an election. Fraser won in a landslide at the resulting 1975 election.

Fraser maintained some of the social reforms of the Whitlam era, while seeking increased fiscal restraint. His majority included the first Aboriginal federal parliamentarian, Neville Bonner, and in 1976, Parliament passed the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976, which, while limited to the Northern Territory, affirmed "inalienable" freehold title to some traditional lands. The Fraser government also established the multicultural broadcaster SBS,[54] accepted Vietnamese refugees, opposed minority white rule in apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia and opposed Soviet expansionism, but Liberal minister Don Chipp split off from the party to form a new centrist-social liberal party, the Australian Democrats in 1977.

The Liberals under Fraser won substantial majorities at the 1977 and 1980 elections, but a significant program of economic reform was never pursued. By 1983, the Australian economy was suffering with the early 1980s recession and amidst the effects of a severe drought. Fraser had promoted "states' rights" and his government refused to use Commonwealth powers to stop the construction of the Franklin Dam in Tasmania in 1982.[55] The Liberal Party lost to the Bob Hawke-led Australian Labor Party in the 1983 election.[56]

A period of division for the Liberals followed, with former Treasurer John Howard competing with former Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock for supremacy. The Australian economy was facing the early 1990s recession. Unemployment reached 11.4% in 1992. Under Dr John Hewson, in November 1991, the opposition launched the 650-page Fightback! policy document—a radical collection of "dry", economic liberal measures including the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax (GST), various changes to Medicare including the abolition of bulk billing for non-concession holders, the introduction of a nine-month limit on unemployment benefits, various changes to industrial relations including the abolition of awards, a $13 billion personal income tax cut directed at middle and upper income earners, $10 billion in government spending cuts, the abolition of state payroll taxes and the privatisation of a large number of government owned enterprises − representing the start of a very different future direction to the keynesian economic policies practised by previous Liberal/National Coalition governments. The 15 percent GST was the centerpiece of the policy document. Through 1992, Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating mounted a campaign against the Fightback package, and particularly against the GST, which he described as an attack on the working class in that it shifted the tax burden from direct taxation of the wealthy to indirect taxation as a broad-based consumption tax. Pressure group activity and public opinion was relentless, which led Hewson to exempt food from the proposed GST—leading to questions surrounding the complexity of what food was and wasn't to be exempt from the GST. Hewson's difficulty in explaining this to the electorate was exemplified in the infamous birthday cake interview, considered by some as a turning point in the election campaign. Keating won a record fifth consecutive Labor term at the 1993 election. A number of the proposals were later adopted into law in some form, to a small extent during the Keating Labor government, and to a larger extent during the Howard Liberal government (most famously the GST), while unemployment benefits and bulk billing were re-targeted for a time by the Abbott Liberal government.

Labor's Paul Keating lost the 1996 Election to the Liberals' John Howard. The Liberals had been in Opposition for 13 years.[57] With John Howard as Prime Minister, Peter Costello as Treasurer and Alexander Downer as Foreign Minister, the Howard government remained in power until their electoral defeat to Kevin Rudd in 2007.

Howard generally framed the Liberals as being conservative on social policy, debt reduction and matters like maintaining Commonwealth links and the American Alliance but his premiership saw booming trade with Asia and expanding multiethnic immigration. His government concluded the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement with the Bush Administration in 2004.[51]

Howard differed from his Labor predecessor Paul Keating in that he supported traditional Australian institutions like the Monarchy in Australia, the commemoration of ANZAC Day and the design of the Australian flag, but like Keating he pursued privatisation of public utilities and the introduction of a broad based consumption tax (although Keating had dropped support for a GST by the time of his 1993 election victory). Howard's premiership coincided with Al Qaeda's 11 September attacks on the United States. The Howard government invoked the ANZUS treaty in response to the attacks and supported America's campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the 2004 Federal elections the party strengthened its majority in the Lower House and, with its coalition partners, became the first federal government in twenty years to gain an absolute majority in the Senate. This control of both houses permitted their passing of legislation without the need to negotiate with independents or minor parties, exemplified by industrial relations legislation known as WorkChoices, a wide-ranging effort to increase deregulation of industrial laws in Australia.

In 2005, Howard reflected on his government's cultural and foreign policy outlook in oft repeated terms:[58]

The 2007 federal election saw the defeat of the Howard federal government, and the Liberal Party was in opposition throughout Australia at the state and federal level; the highest Liberal office-holder at the time was Lord Mayor of Brisbane Campbell Newman. This ended after the 2008 Western Australian state election, when Colin Barnett became Premier of that state.

At the state level, the Liberals have been dominant for long periods in all states except Queensland, where they have always held fewer seats than the National party. The Liberals were in power in Victoria from 1955 to 1982. Jeff Kennett led the party back to office in that state in 1992, and remained Premier until 1999.

In South Australia, initially a Liberal and Country Party affiliated party, the Liberal and Country League (LCL), mostly led by Premier of South Australia Tom Playford, was in power from the 1933 election to the 1965 election, though with assistance from an electoral malapportionment, or gerrymander, known as the Playmander. The LCL's Steele Hall governed for one term from the 1968 election to the 1970 election and during this time began the process of dismantling the Playmander. David Tonkin, as leader of the South Australian Division of the Liberal Party of Australia, became Premier at the 1979 election for one term, losing office at the 1982 election. The Liberals returned to power at the 1993 election, led by Premiers Dean Brown, John Olsen and Rob Kerin through two terms, until their defeat at the 2002 election. They remained in opposition for 16 years, under a record five Opposition Leaders, until Steven Marshall led the party to victory in 2018.

The dual aligned Country Liberal Party governed the Northern Territory from 1978 to 2001.

The party has held office in Western Australia intermittently since 1947. Liberal Richard Court was Premier of the state for most of the 1990s.

In New South Wales, the Liberal Party has not been in office as much as its Labor rival, and just three leaders have led the party from opposition to government in that state: Sir Robert Askin, who was premier from 1965 to 1975, Nick Greiner, who came to office in 1988 and resigned in 1992, and Barry O'Farrell who led the party out of 16 years in opposition in 2011.

The Liberal Party does not officially contest most local government elections, although many members do run for office in local government as independents. An exception is the Brisbane City Council, where both Sallyanne Atkinson and Campbell Newman have been elected Lord Mayor of Brisbane.[59]

Following the 2007 federal election, Dr Brendan Nelson was elected leader by the Parliamentary Liberal Party. On 16 September 2008, in a second contest following a spill motion, Nelson lost the leadership to Malcolm Turnbull.[60] On 1 December 2009, a subsequent leadership election saw Turnbull lose the leadership to Tony Abbott by 42 votes to 41 on the second ballot.[61] Abbott led the party to the 2010 federal election, which saw an increase in the Liberal Party vote and resulted in the first hung parliament since the 1940 election.[62]

Through 2010, the party remained in opposition at the Tasmanian and South Australian state elections and achieved state government in Victoria. In March 2011, the New South Wales Liberal-National Coalition led by Barry O'Farrell won government with the largest election victory in post-war Australian history at the State Election.[63] In Queensland, the Liberal and National parties merged in 2008 to form the new Liberal National Party of Queensland (registered as the Queensland Division of the Liberal Party of Australia). In March 2012, the new party achieved Government in an historic landslide, led by former Brisbane Lord Mayor, Campbell Newman.[64]

In March 2013, the Western Australian Liberal-National government won re-election, and Tony Abbott led the party to government at the 2013 Australian Federal Election.

The party won government in Tasmania in 2014 and lost their fourth election in a row at the South Australian election. However, the Victorian Liberal-National government, now led by Denis Napthine, became the first one term government in Victoria in 60 years. Similarly, just two months later, the Liberal National government in Queensland was defeated just three years after its historic landslide victory. The New South Wales Liberal-National Coalition, however, managed to win re-election in March 2015. In 2016 the Federal Liberals narrowly won re-election in July 2016 while the Liberal-affiliated Country Liberals suffered a historic defeat in the Northern Territory and Canberra Liberals lost their fifth election in a row in October 2016. The Liberals fared little better in 2017 with the Barnett-led Liberal-National government in Western Australia also suffered a landslide defeat in March.

Turnbull's time in office saw tensions between Moderate and Conservative factions within the Liberal Party.[65]

On 21 August 2018 after a week of mounting pressure on Turnbull's leadership over his handling of energy policy and election strategy, the prime minister used the regular party-room meeting to spill the party leadership in an attempt to head off a growing conservative-led move against him by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton.[citation needed] Turnbull survived the challenge, winning 48 votes to Dutton's 35. A further spill was called by Turnbull, in which he declined to stand and the leadership of the party was decided in favour of Treasurer Scott Morrison, over Dutton.[citation needed]

In August 2018, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton unsuccessfully challenged Turnbull for the leadership of the Liberal Party. Leadership tension continued, and the party voted to hold a second leadership ballot on 24 August, with Turnbull choosing not to stand. In that ballot, Morrison was seen as a compromise candidate and defeated both Dutton and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to become leader of the Liberal Party. He was sworn in as prime minister by the governor-general later that day. Morrison went on to lead the Coalition to an unexpected victory in the 2019 election.

In the 2022 election, the Liberal Party lost control of the Australian Parliament.[67] During the election, which also saw Morrison resign as Liberal Leader and Liberal Deputy Leader Josh Frydenberg lose his seat in Parliament, the Liberal Party lost what was determined to be the most significant number of seats since the Party's creation in 1944.[68][67] The departure of Morrison and Frydenberg's defeat made recent Leader of the House and Minister for Defence Peter Dutton the only viable candidate to become the next Liberal Party leader.[69][70]

As of 2021, the Liberal Party currently consists of three broad factional groupings: a moderate wing, a centre-right wing and a right wing, led by Simon Birmingham, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton respectively.[71]

The Liberal Party generally advocates conservative policies[16] including economic liberalism. Historically, the party has supported a higher degree of economic protectionism and interventionism than it has in recent decades. However, from its foundation the party has identified itself as an anti-socialist grouping of liberals and conservatives.[12] Strong opposition to socialism and communism in Australia and abroad was one of its founding principles. The party's founder and longest-serving leader Robert Menzies envisaged that Australia's middle class would form its main constituency.

Towards the end of his term as Prime Minister of Australia and in a final address to the Liberal Party Federal Council in 1964, Menzies spoke of the "Liberal Creed" as follows:

Soon after the election of the Howard government the new Prime Minister John Howard, who was to become the second-longest serving Liberal Prime Minister, spoke of his interpretation of the "Liberal Tradition" in a Robert Menzies Lecture in 1996:

Until the 2022 election, the Liberals were in electoral terms largely the party of the middle class (whom Menzies, in the era of the party's formation called "The forgotten people"), though such class-based voting patterns are no longer as clear as they once were. In the 1970s a left-wing middle class emerged that no longer voted Liberal.[73] One effect of this was the success of a breakaway party, the Australian Democrats, founded in 1977 by former Liberal minister Don Chipp and members of minor liberal parties. During the prime ministership of John Howard, the Liberals did increasingly well among socially conservative working-class voters.[74] Until 2022 the Liberal Party's key support base remained the upper-middle classes— in 2010, 16 of the 20 richest federal electorates were held by the Liberals, most of which were safe seats.[75] Following the 2022 election, 16 of the 20 poorest seats in Australia were held by the Liberal Party, while it held only five of the 20 wealthiest electorates.[76] In country areas they either compete with or have a truce with the Nationals, depending on various factors.

Menzies was an ardent constitutional monarchist, who supported the monarchy in Australia and links to the Commonwealth of Nations. Today the party is divided on the question of republicanism, with some (such as former leader Scott Morrison) being monarchists, while others (such as his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull) are republicans. The Menzies government formalised Australia's alliance with the United States in 1951 and the party has remained a strong supporter of the mutual defence treaty.

Domestically, Menzies presided over a fairly regulated economy in which utilities were publicly owned, and commercial activity was highly regulated through centralised wage-fixing and high tariff protection. Liberal leaders from Menzies to Malcolm Fraser generally maintained Australia's high tariff levels. At that time the Liberals' coalition partner, the Country Party, the older of the two in the coalition (now known as the "National Party"), had considerable influence over the government's economic policies. It was not until the late 1970s and through their period out of power federally in the 1980s that the party came to be influenced by what was known as the "New Right"—a conservative liberal group who advocated market deregulation, privatisation of public utilities, reductions in the size of government programs and tax cuts.

Socially, while liberty and freedom of enterprise form the basis of its beliefs, elements of the party include both what is termed "small-l liberalism" and social conservatism. Historically, Liberal governments have been responsible for the carriage of a number of notable "socially liberal" reforms, including the opening of Australia to multiethnic immigration under Menzies and Harold Holt; Holt's 1967 Referendum on Aboriginal Rights;[77] John Gorton's support for cinema and the arts;[78] selection of the first Aboriginal Senator, Neville Bonner, in 1971;[79] and Malcolm Fraser's Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976. A West Australian Liberal, Ken Wyatt, became the first Indigenous Australian elected to the House of Representatives in 2010.[80] He become the first Aboriginal frontbencher in federal parliament in 2015, and the first Aboriginal appointed as an Australian Government Minister in 2017. On 6 April 2023 he resigned his membership of the Liberal Party over its stance on the Voice.

The Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison, stated the following in his 2019 victory speech;[81]

The Liberal Party is a member of the International Democrat Union and the Asia Pacific Democrat Union.[82]

The Liberal Party's organisation is dominated by the six state divisions, reflecting the party's original commitment to a federalised system of government (a commitment which was strongly maintained by all Liberal governments bar the Gorton government until 1983, but was to a large extent abandoned by the Howard government, which showed strong centralising tendencies). Menzies deliberately created a weak national party machine and strong state divisions. Party policy is made almost entirely by the parliamentary parties, not by the party's rank-and-file members, although Liberal party members do have a degree of influence over party policy.[83]

The Liberal Party's basic organisational unit is the branch, which consists of party members in a particular locality. For each electorate there is a conference—notionally above the branches—which coordinates campaigning in the electorate and regularly communicates with the member (or candidate) for the electorate. As there are three levels of government in Australia, each branch elects delegates to a local, state, and federal conference.[83]

All the branches in an Australian state are grouped into a Division. The ruling body for the Division is a State Council. There is also one Federal Council which represents the entire organisational Liberal Party in Australia. Branch executives are delegates to the Councils ex-officio and additional delegates are elected by branches, depending on their size.[83]

Preselection of electoral candidates is performed by a special electoral college convened for the purpose. Membership of the electoral college consists of head office delegates, branch officers, and elected delegates from branches.[83]

For a brief period between 27 October 2020 (appointment of Elizabeth Lee as leader of Canberra Liberals) and 12 November 2020 (resignation of Deb Frecklington as leader of the LNP), five Liberal Party state and territory divisions were led by women, the highest number in Liberal Party history.[84] The leaders were:

For the 2015–2016 financial year, the top ten disclosed donors to the Liberal Party were: Paul Marks (Nimrod resources) ($1,300,000), Pratt Holdings ($790,000), Hong Kong Kingson Investment Company ($710,000), Aus Gold Mining Group ($410,000), Village Roadshow ($325,000), Waratah Group ($300,000), Walker Corporation ($225,000), Australian Gypsum Industries ($196,000), National Automotive Leasing and Salary Packaging Association ($177,000) and Westfield Corporation ($150,000).[85][86]

The Liberal Party also receives undisclosed funding through several methods, such as "associated entities". Cormack Foundation,[87] Eight by Five, Free Enterprise Foundation, Federal Forum and Northern Sydney Conservative forum are entities which have been used to funnel donations to the Liberal Party without disclosing the source.[88][89][90]

The party is one of the two major parties in Australian politics, the other being the Australian Labor Party. The Liberal Party was founded in 1944 as the successor to the United Australia Party, and has since become one of the most successful political parties in Australia's history.

The Liberal National Party of Queensland (LNP) is a major political party in Queensland, Australia. It was formed in 2008 by a merger of the Queensland divisions of the Liberal Party and the National Party. At a federal level and in most other states, the two parties remain distinct and operate as a Coalition. The LNP is a division of the Liberal Party of Australia, and an affiliate of the National Party of Australia.[10]

After suffering defeat at its first election in 2009 the LNP won 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 the 1970s, the Queensland branches/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 Australia's most decentralised state. 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 Queensland Country 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 of the Country side.[11] However, this merger only lasted until 1944.[12]

During the 1970s, the Country Party began running candidates in the more urbanised south-east corner of the state, including the Brisbane area, in direct competition with the Liberals. This was part of a larger strategy by the federal party to expand its base outside of rural areas — reflected in successive name changes to the National Country Party in 1975 and the National Party in 1982. The state party had actually changed its name to the National Party in 1974 as part of its effort to broaden its reach.

After more than a decade of increasingly fraught relations, the Liberals pulled out of the Coalition in 1983. The Nationals came up one seat short of a majority in their own right in the election held later that year. The Nationals then persuaded two Liberals to defect to them, and governed alone until their defeat in 1989.

In 1992 the electoral system was changed to Optional Preferential Voting, meaning that three-cornered contests between Liberal, National and Labor candidates became much more likely to see Labor candidates win. The other change in 1992 was the end of the old zonal electoral system for the Legislative Assembly, the sole chamber of the state's parliament. As a result, 40 of the 89 seats—almost half of the seats in the legislature—were now based in Brisbane. The Liberals and Nationals signed a renewed Coalition agreement in November 1992, two months after Labor easily won a second term. However, it was all but impossible to win a majority government without a substantial base in Brisbane, something that was difficult for the Coalition to do since the Nationals were the senior partner. Brisbane's increased share of the legislature made it politically difficult to win even a minority government without winning a significant share of the capital's seats. Labor was in government for all but three years from 1989 to 2012 in large part because it won at least 30 seats in greater Brisbane at every election. Even when it was briefly consigned to opposition by the Rob Borbidge-led Coalition from 1996 to 1998, Labor still won 31 seats in Brisbane.[13]

The 1995 state election proved just how difficult it was for the Coalition to win during this time. While it actually won a slim majority of the two-party vote, much of that margin was wasted on landslides in the Nationals' heartland. As mentioned above, Labor won 31 seats in Brisbane, allowing it to eke out a one-seat majority. The Labor majority was lost altogether a few months later in a by-election, but the Coalition was only able to form a minority government by a margin of one seat with the support of independent Liz Cunningham. This underscored how difficult the 1992 reforms made it to form even a minority government without a substantial base in Brisbane. The situation became worse with the emergence of other forces on the right such as Pauline Hanson's One Nation and the City Country Alliance, and the advocacy by the Labor Party under Peter Beattie starting in 2001 of a "just vote 1" strategy that caused non-Labor preferences to exhaust instead of leaking to other non-Labor candidates. By the turn of the millennium, many members of both parties felt that a merger would reduce harmful competition between non-Labor candidates and to increase the chances of winning seats in Brisbane from Labor.

The Queensland Liberals and Nationals had contested separately for the Senate in federal elections until the 2007 election, when they ran a join Senate ticket for the first time in 30 years.[14]

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.[15]

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.[15] 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.[16]

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.[13][17] 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.[18]

Bruce McIver oversaw the Liberal–National party merger as president, which saw the Queensland Nationals, with their long history of social conservatism, amalgamate with the Queensland branch of the more socially progressive Liberal Party. McIver's time as National Party president coincided with the demotion of members who did not share his socially conservative views. After then parliamentary leader Jeff Seeney disagreed with McIver's opposition to stem-cell research and criticised McIver's email seeking to instruct politicians on how they should exercise their conscience vote, he was soon deposed from the leadership.[19] This led to speculation in the Courier Mail that the Queensland Nationals had been "hijacked by the Christian Right", drawing parallels to similar developments in certain parts of the United States.[20]

On 22 March 2011, Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman announced that he would seek preselection for the Brisbane-area seat of Ashgrove, a seat with a 7.1 percent Labor majority, and if successful, would challenge Langbroek for the party leadership. Newman, like Langbroek, is from the Liberal side of the merger. Langbroek and Springborg resigned as leader and deputy leader hours later. Under normal circumstances, an LNP MP from a safe seat would have resigned so Newman could get into the chamber via a by-election. However, a by-election could not be arranged.[13] To solve this problem, former Nationals leader Jeff Seeney, who was elected deputy leader at the same time Newman was formally elected leader, became interim parliamentary leader (and hence Leader of the Opposition) while Newman led the party into the 24 March 2012 state election. Seeney agreed to cede the parliamentary leader's post to Newman if he was elected to parliament.[21]

The 2012 state election saw Newman lead the LNP to a landslide victory. The LNP scored a 14.5 percent swing from Labor, just short of 50 percent of the primary vote, and won an additional 44 seats. In the process, the LNP took all but three seats in the Brisbane metropolitan area, in some cases on swings of 10 percent or more. Overall, the LNP won 78 seats to Labor's seven, the largest majority government in Queensland history. Newman won Ashgrove on a swing of 12.7 percent, almost double what he needed to take the seat off Labor. He was sworn in as premier two days later, heading the state's first non-Labor majority government in 23 years.

The LNP appeared to be positioned to win a second term at the 31 January 2015 state election, albeit with a reduced majority. However, in a shock result that had not been foreseen by any commentators, let alone either party, the LNP suffered a 12 percent swing and lost its majority. Labor took 31 seats off the LNP, and came within one seat of rebounding from only nine seats at dissolution to an outright majority. One of the LNP casualties was Newman, who became just the second Queensland premier since Federation to lose his own seat. He immediately announced his retirement from politics, and Springborg was elected his successor on 7 February with Langbroek as his deputy. Although Springborg initially harboured hopes of forming a minority government, this ended when Labor formed a minority government with the support of the lone independent in the chamber.

On 6 May 2016, Tim Nicholls, who is from the Liberal side of the merger, successfully challenged Springborg for the leadership of the party, winning the ballot 22 votes to 19. Deb Frecklington, the member for the ancestrally National seat of Nanango (the seat of former Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen), was elected deputy leader.[22] Nicholls led the party to defeat at the November 2017 state election. The LNP actually suffered a three-seat swing, allowing Labor to win government in its own right. Nicholls subsequently stepped down as party leader.[23] Frecklington was elevated to the leadership position at a party-room meeting on 12 December 2017, with Tim Mander selected as deputy leader.[24]

Under Frecklington's leadership, the LNP was heavily defeated at the 2020 state election, in which it only managed to win five seats in Brisbane. Frecklington initially planned to stay on as leader, but on 2 November announced that she would call a leadership spill which she would not contest.[25] David Crisafulli, the member for the Gold Coast seat of Broadwater, was elected LNP leader on 12 November 2020, with Toowoomba-area MP David Janetzki as his deputy.[26]

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 of 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 affiliation of newly elected members is covered by the following informal agreement:

In practice, most LNP MPs from Brisbane and the Gold Coast sit with the Liberals, while those from country seats usually sit with the Nationals.

The party has considered forming a separate party room in the Federal Parliament (i.e., separate from the federal Nationals who are formed by NSW and Victorian members). As a separate party the LNP would be the second largest party of the Coalition and would theoretically have a claim to the Deputy Prime Minister's post in any Coalition government.[28]

Llew O'Brien sat with the Nationals until 10 February 2020. He has since opted to sit within the Coalition party room, but not with the Nationals or Liberals, following his call for a leadership spill against Michael McCormack the week before. O'Brien rejoined the federal Nationals parliamentary party in December 2020.

After the 2022 election, Peter Dutton of the outer Brisbane seat of Dickson became federal leader of the Liberals while David Littleproud of the regional Queensland seat of Maranoa became federal leader of the Nationals. This is the first time that LNP MPs have been federal leaders of both respective federal Coalition partners.

The list of leaders are as such: