By returning to Coalition with a declining National Party, the Liberals have doubled down on policies and demographics that alienate urban voters and younger Australians.

Last Sunday, the Liberals had the chance to break free. But they blew it. They went back into a destructive, dog-wagging relationship, beguiled by an unnecessary feeling of being so dependent on the Nationals that they could never win office without them.

But the Nationals have long been in chronic decline disguised by big occasions when they have held their own against anti-conservative swings: in 1972, 1983, 2007, 2022, and 2025. In those elections the Liberals got hammered and the Nationals kept their seats. It gave an illusion of a permanent, impenetrable and reliable swag of seats for the conservatives.

But between those elections, when there was no change of government and not much to see, the Nationals lost a seat here and there in an unnoticeable small-drip decline.

Overall, the Nationals have fallen from 19 seats in a 123-seat House (15.5 per cent of the seats) in 1949 to 10 seats in a 150-seat House in 2025 (6.7 per cent of the seats). It is a huge fall.

The reasons the Nationals are headed for the endangered-species list is because their habitat (old, white, rural, narrow-minded) is shrinking.

Australia has become more urban and cosmopolitan. The rural rump has contracted but is still strong in the areas it has contracted to – retaining the illusion of a vital element to any centre-right government.

Oddly enough, the big supporters of having a coalition, Liberal Leader Sussan Ley, and prospective leader Angus Taylor, should be more alert to the drag the Nationals........

© Pearls and Irritations