Will Prescott: Why Australia’s centre-right is having an identity crisis
Trust is earned, not demanded.
William Prescott is a researcher at Bright Blue.
Last week, the National Party Leader, David Littleproud, announced he was withdrawing his Party from its longstanding coalition with Australia’s main centre-right party, the Liberals, for the second time since last year’s disastrous election loss. With the Australian centre-right parties now divided and losing ground and under siege from both their left and right, the only winner is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party.
Since its unexpectedly large defeat at last May’s federal election, the Coalition has struggled to overcome the centre-right’s deep structural problems. Reduced to just 43 seats in the 150-member House of Representatives, the Coalition parties were all but wiped out in the major cities that most Australians call home. However, it held on more strongly in rural areas, with the more conservative, country-based National Party holding onto all of its 15 lower-house seats.
The increased relative strength of the National Party, which suddenly found itself holding more than a third of the Coalition’s total 43 seats, compared to just over a quarter after the 2022 election, immediately made itself felt. Amidst fears that the Liberals would shift to the left to win back former heartland inner-city seats, the Nationals announced in late May 2025 that they would not renew the Coalition agreement.
While the blowback was considerable, and the Nationals returned to the Coalition just over a week later, the underlying tensions remained. Ultimately, at least on the climate issue, the Nationals got their way in November last year, when Liberal Leader Sussan Ley officially ditched her Party’s 2050 net zero target.
More recently, the Nationals’ intransigence arises from a fear that their vote share is being increasingly cannibalised by Pauline Hanson’s right-populist One Nation party. An on-and-off-again feature of the Australian political landscape, Hanson’s core platform, which has barely changed since her political emergence in the mid-1990s, centres around drastically reducing immigration and a hostility to multiculturalism.
Concerningly, from a centre-right perspective, One Nation has surpassed the now-dissolved Coalition in opinion polls. According to a January 2026 Newspoll — generally considered the most trustworthy Australian pollster — One Nation’s vote share stood at 22 per cent, just ahead of the Coalition’s lamentable 21 per cent. This is up from just 6.4 per cent of the vote at last year’s election.
Especially worryingly for the Nationals, the evidence suggests that One Nation’s support is most concentrated in the same regional and rural areas that are home to many of the Coalition’s surviving MPs and Senators. Reflecting Hanson’s potential appeal to disaffected rural voters, …
Trust is earned, not demanded.
William Prescott is a researcher at Bright Blue.
Last week, the National Party Leader, David Littleproud, announced he was withdrawing his Party from its longstanding coalition with Australia’s main centre-right party, the Liberals, for the second time since last year’s disastrous election loss. With the Australian centre-right parties now divided and losing ground and under siege from both their left and right, the only winner is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party.
Since its unexpectedly large defeat at last May’s federal election, the Coalition has struggled to overcome the centre-right’s deep structural problems. Reduced to just 43 seats in the 150-member House of Representatives, the Coalition parties were all but wiped out in the major cities that most Australians call home. However, it held on more strongly in rural areas, with the more conservative, country-based National Party holding onto all of its 15 lower-house seats.
The increased relative strength of the National Party, which suddenly found itself holding more than a third of the Coalition’s total 43 seats, compared to just over a quarter after the 2022 election, immediately made itself felt. Amidst fears that the Liberals would shift to the left to win back former heartland inner-city seats, the Nationals announced in late May 2025 that they would not renew the Coalition agreement.
While the blowback was considerable, and the Nationals returned to the Coalition just over a week later, the underlying tensions remained. Ultimately, at least on the climate issue, the Nationals got their way in November last year, when Liberal Leader Sussan Ley officially ditched her Party’s 2050 net zero target.
More recently, the Nationals’ intransigence arises from a fear that their vote share is being increasingly cannibalised by Pauline Hanson’s right-populist One Nation party. An on-and-off-again feature of the Australian political landscape, Hanson’s core platform, which has barely changed since her political emergence in the mid-1990s, centres around drastically reducing immigration and a hostility to multiculturalism.
Concerningly, from a centre-right perspective, One Nation has surpassed the now-dissolved Coalition in opinion polls. According to a January 2026 Newspoll — generally considered the most trustworthy Australian pollster — One Nation’s vote share stood at 22 per cent, just ahead of the Coalition’s lamentable 21 per cent. This is up from just 6.4 per cent of the vote at last year’s election.
Especially worryingly for the Nationals, the evidence suggests that One Nation’s support is most concentrated in the same regional and rural areas that are home to many of the Coalition’s surviving MPs and Senators. Reflecting Hanson’s potential appeal to disaffected rural voters, …
Will Prescott: Why Australia’s centre-right is having an identity crisis
Trust is earned, not demanded.
William Prescott is a researcher at Bright Blue.
Last week, the National Party Leader, David Littleproud, announced he was withdrawing his Party from its longstanding coalition with Australia’s main centre-right party, the Liberals, for the second time since last year’s disastrous election loss. With the Australian centre-right parties now divided and losing ground and under siege from both their left and right, the only winner is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party.
Since its unexpectedly large defeat at last May’s federal election, the Coalition has struggled to overcome the centre-right’s deep structural problems. Reduced to just 43 seats in the 150-member House of Representatives, the Coalition parties were all but wiped out in the major cities that most Australians call home. However, it held on more strongly in rural areas, with the more conservative, country-based National Party holding onto all of its 15 lower-house seats.
The increased relative strength of the National Party, which suddenly found itself holding more than a third of the Coalition’s total 43 seats, compared to just over a quarter after the 2022 election, immediately made itself felt. Amidst fears that the Liberals would shift to the left to win back former heartland inner-city seats, the Nationals announced in late May 2025 that they would not renew the Coalition agreement.
While the blowback was considerable, and the Nationals returned to the Coalition just over a week later, the underlying tensions remained. Ultimately, at least on the climate issue, the Nationals got their way in November last year, when Liberal Leader Sussan Ley officially ditched her Party’s 2050 net zero target.
More recently, the Nationals’ intransigence arises from a fear that their vote share is being increasingly cannibalised by Pauline Hanson’s right-populist One Nation party. An on-and-off-again feature of the Australian political landscape, Hanson’s core platform, which has barely changed since her political emergence in the mid-1990s, centres around drastically reducing immigration and a hostility to multiculturalism.
Concerningly, from a centre-right perspective, One Nation has surpassed the now-dissolved Coalition in opinion polls. According to a January 2026 Newspoll — generally considered the most trustworthy Australian pollster — One Nation’s vote share stood at 22 per cent, just ahead of the Coalition’s lamentable 21 per cent. This is up from just 6.4 per cent of the vote at last year’s election.
Especially worryingly for the Nationals, the evidence suggests that One Nation’s support is most concentrated in the same regional and rural areas that are home to many of the Coalition’s surviving MPs and Senators. Reflecting Hanson’s potential appeal to disaffected rural voters, …
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