Source: The Canberra Times

The marriage of convenience between the Liberal and National parties in Queensland will face a strong test at next year's state election.

Will both parties keep their vows or revert to their historical tantrums and back-biting? Watching the new couple intently from the sidelines will be federal MPs of both parties, keen to know the implications for any federal merger.

The issue was very much on the minds of those Coalition MPs who met in Canberra this week for a mid- winter pow-wow and pep talk. The state merger has immediate ramifications for federal Coalition MPs from Queensland.

They have been made members of the new Liberal National Party, which doesn't exist in Canberra. Which room will they use for meetings? The broad view is that the MPs will continue to attend meetings of the Liberal or National Parties, respectively. However, renegade National Barnaby Joyce floated the idea of paying a special visit to the Liberal Party meeting when a leadership ballot is about to take place.

He would have the right to do that, because the LNP is to become a division of the federal Liberal Party. But the 45-page constitution says it is also affiliated to the Nationals. Go figure. The Queensland Liberals were bitterly split over the merger.

State president Mal Brough, a Coalition minister who lost his seat in last year's federal election, knew his party was about to be swamped by the much larger National Party.

Lawrence Springborg, as the leader of the larger party, was to become parliamentary leader. Federal Liberal leader Brendan Nelson was in favour of the merger in principle but grew uneasy as the time approached.

He wanted a Liberal to be state president, for balance, despite knowing that party officers were going to be elected, so he tried to stall the merger until he got his way. The Nats said no way, insisting on their nominee, Bruce McIver. Brough called an emergency meeting of the Liberal state council on the Thursday night to try to defer the convention called to vote on the merger.

He didn't reckon with the passion held by some Liberals to consummate the union. Put simply, they were desperate, kindled by a long stint in opposition.

They went to the Supreme Court and obtained a ruling to allow the convention to proceed. But Brough, as president, was forced to formally declare open the convention that he had opposed.

Then he left the building, quickly. In Queensland, the Liberals have been a hapless band run by a succession of hopeless leaders for years. They have let down the conservative side, with the result the Coalition has been in power in Queensland for just two years in the past two decades.

Opposition is tough and some fail the test. A party might think continually changing leaders is a cure to its woes, but the wider community sees a rabble that can't show loyalty to a leader.

After damaging cycles of this syndrome, the majority of the Queensland Liberal Party membership accepted that their desperate situation required drastic action.

The deal was done last Saturday, prompting McIver to launch into a flowery speech peppered with analogies to Neil Armstrong's ''one giant leap'' and to a ''new culture in politics''. ''[Today] is the birth of a new era of sensible, pragmatic politics,'' he told the cheering throng.

If this prediction is realised, Queensland will benefit from a strong opposition, and the merger idea might catch on in other states. The 45-page constitution of the LNP says the first place on the party's Senate ticket for the next federal election will be given to Liberal Senator George Brandis.

He will be followed by three current Senators Joyce and Liberals Brett Mason and Russell Trood. Because Trood is unlikely to win the fourth spot, he will be given the first casual vacancy.

Professor Brian Costar from the Swinburne University of Technology predicts moderate Liberals will be driven out. The LNP will be entitled to send representatives to the Liberal federal executive.

''They will be ex-Nationals or the right wing of the Liberal Party who supported this merger,'' he says. Costar questions whether Liberals who were bitterly opposed will try to stop the merger on a technicality.

''My mischievous suggestion is I wonder if somebody a malcontent or should I say Mal-content might object to the Liberal National Party's attempt to gain federal party registration with the Australian Electoral Commission on the grounds that its name is too similar to two pre- existing parties. Certainly any person in Queensland could object on the grounds that it is confusing.''

He does not think a federal merger of the Liberal and National Parties is likely. ''It would cause more trouble than benefit,'' he says. ''Nats in NSW will never countenance it, and the same goes for Victoria, so how are you going to get a federal merger if two of your major states are saying they don't want it? ''If they do it, they would leave themselves open to sporadic attacks by independents.

When we had this [merger] debate in the 1980s, people used to say if the two parties merged, there would be a splinter Country Party. I was sceptical about that then but not after having seen Pauline Hanson. Hanson might be gone but Hansonism is still there in parts of rural Australia. If you antagonised them by getting into bed with a bunch of limp-wristed Liberals that's the way they regard them they'll be off.''

On behalf of the federal party, Nelson is cautiously talking up the merger. ''[This] means that we will be able to work as a team in seeing that we will displace [Premier] Anna Bligh and the Queensland Government at the next election.

I'm on the record, as you know only too well, as believing that it is in the broader interests of the non-Labor side of politics for there to be a merger of our two parties. I will be doing everything that I possibly can to cooperate with seamlessly getting the Liberal National Party of Queensland into the Liberal Party of Australia family.''

A national merger of the two parties could go ahead only if the National Party really wanted it. As the junior party on the federal scene, it would have to volunteer to be subsumed into what would presumably be called the Federal LNP.

Former Nationals leader John Anderson is in favour of a national merger because his party has an extremely serious problem of shrinking support. The Nationals commissioned him to write a report as the key element of a review into the party's future.

''A 'do nothing' scenario is a recipe for a slow declining death, possibly with a rapid end like the Democrats had,'' Anderson says. ''Without radical surgery, the party will die. It has to get realistic.'' A key factor in the decline of the Nationals' support base has been the exodus of people from rural communities.

The party now has just 13 federal MPs and Senators, the smallest team ever. A succession of party leaders have favoured amalgamation with the Liberals, although their views often emerged only after their time as leaders.

On the Liberal side, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Nick Minchin is a long-time devotee of a federal merger of the two conservative forces. His view was strengthened by the defeat of the Howard government last year.

''While at the parliamentary level we have a very good coalition, it is difficult to justify continuing to have two separate party organisations with the expense that involves and the competition for funds and resources that involves,'' he says.''We would be better able to compete with the Labor Party if we were to combine our two party organisations and gain the inherent additional strength.

The pertinent facts are of course that our side of politics is out of office everywhere in Australia and we have a declining membership base and increasing difficulty raising money from the corporate sector. We face a formidable political machine in the modern Labor Party which is focused on almost entirely on gaining and holding office.''

Minchin says the next move is up to the National Party. ''In a sense the ball's in the National Party's court. I'm sure if they were formally to approach us, our door would be open to discuss how a merger might be put in place. ''I think we'd both be strengthened by being one.

The Queenslanders have been mugged by that reality and I think ultimately it should and will happen at a federal level but when will be a function of the impetus within both organisations to advance it.

''People will want to watch and assess how the Queensland merger goes and how they do at the next state election.

Assuming it is a successful merger and they do reasonably at the state election, I think that will add to the momentum for a merger at the federal level.'' Ross Peake is National Affairs Editor.