The 2008 merger of the Liberal and National parties of Queensland to form the Liberal National Party (Queensland) initially had little impact outside the Sunshine State.

Dismissed perhaps as Queensland exceptionalism, John Howard, was against the idea and insisted it should not be replicated at the federal level.

The merger was pragmatic and it made sense for the main non-Labor parties to share resources and have a united strategy. But within it all, the L in the LNP has eroded to the point where, at times, it is invisible. The extent of this identity loss was obscured when the Liberal Party had Sydney-based leaders: Howard then Brendan Nelson, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison.

Peter Dutton was the first Liberal leader to represent a Queensland electorate and the first to be a member of the LNP. Under his watch, the Liberal Party has continued to lose formerly blue-ribbon seats, both to Labor and to community independents, and has been largely wiped out of urban Australia.

One has to wonder, when Dutton spoke about his base and party’s values, what was he thinking about?

Following Anthony Albanese’s narrow victory in 2022 that brought Labor to power, the Nationals were quick to point out that they had largely held their seats and primary vote while the casualties had been moderate Liberals holding urban seats in Sydney and Melbourne. This was used to suggest that more conservative positions, especially on climate change and social issues, was the winning formulae.

The obvious flaw in this logic was that the Coalition’s only path to victory would involve winning back city and suburban seats and reflecting on the reasons they had lost these seats. Emboldened by Donald Trump’s election victory, Dutton convinced himself that there was a silent majority of “quiet Australians” who would be won over by culture wars and that promises to fire public servants somehow substituted for policy.

The strength of the LNP in Queensland seemingly blinded him to the extent to which the Liberal part of the Coalition was losing voters in droves, especially those from the Millennials and Gen Z groups.

At state level, the LNP merger has not, so far at least, resulted in much election success. Its first outing in 2009, under Lawrence Springborg, saw it improve its position but it was soundly beaten by Anna Bligh, despite Labor having been in power since 1989. The LNP finally won in 2012 with Campbell Newman at the helm, only to return to opposition at the next election in 2015. It lost again in 2017 and 2020 before winning the 2024 election.

At federal level, the LNP has performed better. Since its formation, the LNP has always won at least 21 of Queensland’s 30 seats. The 2025 election has exposed weaknesses, however, with the LNP only likely to retain 15. Again, the conservative factions of the party will point to the blue wall that extends over most of regional Queensland, but this obscures the extent to which support for the Liberals has eroded.

The advantage of having separate Liberal and National parties was that it allowed both to foster their own image and identity. In Queensland, especially, the Nationals were able to appeal to populism and push a more resolutely conservative agenda on social issues.

The merger has felt far more like the Liberals joining the party of Joh Bjelke-Petersen than the Nationals joining the party of Robert Menzies.

Far-right figures like George Christensen and Matt Canavan openly attacked their own government when led by Turnbull and even under the more conservative Morrison, over issues such as COVID-19 vaccinations and policies. Whereas, pre-merger, these two might have been dismissed as the Fox News intelligentsia of the Nationals, as LNP members they damaged the Liberal brand, even if they sat in the Nationals party room.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price offers another example of how the merger of conservative parties has helped the Nationals at the expense of the Liberals. Like Queensland’s LNP, the Country Liberal Party of the Northern Territory is the result of a merger between the main non-Labor parties. Even though Price sits in the Nationals party room, she was propelled to prominence by Dutton as a leading campaigner against the Voice referendum. In the 2025 election campaign, she took her prompts from the US, promising to reduce government waste and “ make Australia great again”.

Long gone are the days when this might have only made local news in the Northern Territory. In the digital age, outlandish comments from CLP or LNP backbenchers (or shadow ministers in Price’s case) will be published in online articles and read on smartphones in Sydney, Melbourne and other capital cities. Few will expend much energy asking which party room the provocateur sits in.

I’m certainly not suggesting that the Nationals have a monopoly on far-right populism. South Australian Liberal Senator Alex Antic moves in the same intellectual circles as Canavan and Price, as do many from the National Right faction of the party. Regardless, the formal merger of the Liberals and Nationals in Queensland does appear to have damaged the Liberal side.

What do former Liberal prime ministers Turnbull, Abbott, Howard and Menzies have in common? The Liberal party has lost all of their old seats. Holt, Gorton, and McMahon can be added to the list too, although their seats do not exist anymore; they were based in metropolitan Melbourne which has almost entirely abandoned the Liberals. And, of course, Dutton’s seat of Dickson has been lost.

Historically, the non-Labor forces have always needed to collaborate to gain power. But with a common enemy rather than a common goal, the conservative parties have needed to periodically reinvent themselves, from the Commonwealth Liberals, to the Nationalists, the United Australia Party (not Clive Palmer’s poor imitation) and, since 1944, the Liberal Party.

There is no small irony that the real forgotten people of Australian politics are educated, urban (former) Liberal voters and they have made their dissatisfaction with the party clearly heard by supporting Teal Independents in many formerly safe Liberal seats.

While it may seem dramatic, it may be that a new conservative party needs to be formed, one that takes a measured view of the challenge of climate change (as the UK Conservatives have done), one that openly embraces multiculturalism (like Canada’s Conservatives), one that is not seen as a boys club, one that takes seriously the challenges faced by young Australians and one that is willing to do the hard work of policy formation, rather than appealing to populism for cheap votes.

If not a new party, the Liberals need to rediscover the political centre and reenergise their moderate faction which has too readily ceded the floor to the right. Crucially, Queensland Liberals would do well to consider if the LNP merger has really had any benefit beyond bolstering the Nationals. The damage done in Sydney, Melbourne and even in Brisbane, of blurring the identities of the two parties, will take years to undo.