The Liberal Party needs to call time on its stale, unhealthy relationship with the National Party.

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Let's face it: it's always been a marriage of convenience, a vehicle for grabbing the benefits which come from holding government rather than a true meeting of minds. In recent years the federal Coalition has more resembled a marriage where the partners stay together for the sake of the children or the tax advantages, but where the love has long since dried up.

At the heart of the problem is the fact that the National Party is a party of vested interests, whereas the Liberal Party cannot afford to be. The metamorphosis in the 1970s/1980s from the Country Party to the National Party was intended to free the party from its image as an agrarian power bloc, but the transformation never followed the name change.

Except to some extent in the Queensland Parliament, it never made the transition to representing urban Australians. It is still the Country Party in all but name.

While the Liberal Party has a historic association with the business sector, it is far less wedded to that sector than is, say, the Labor Party to the trade union movement. Of the three major parties in the House of Representatives, the Liberal Party is the one least the hostage to an obvious vested interest, the one best able to claim to advocate for the nation as a whole - at least in theory.

Being handcuffed to the party of agrarianism does nothing for the Liberal Party's capacity to speak to a broader Australia. On issues such as net zero by 2050, the need to compromise with the narrower preoccupations of the Nationals has damaged the Liberals, both in perception and in reality.

Ironically, the long-standing, almost mechanistic alliance with the Nationals seems to have hindered the Liberal Party's........

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