Liberal–National Coalition
an alliance of Conservative political parties in Australia

The Liberal–National Coalition, commonly known as the Coalition or the LNP, is an alliance of liberal conservative and centre-right political parties in Australia. Its primary members are the Liberal Party of Australia and the National Party of Australia (previously known as the Country Party and the National Country Party). It is one of the two major groupings in Australian politics, and its main rival is the Australian Labor Party. The Coalition was last in government federally from 2013 to 2022.
The Coalition has existed in some form since 1923, initially involving the Liberal Party's predecessors, the Nationalist Party and United Australia Party. It has historically been a stable alignment for long periods in both government and opposition, including at three elections where the Liberal Party won enough seats to govern in its own right. The stability between the parties (and their predecessors) has been punctuated by seven breaks in the agreement, including the 1931, 1934 and 1987 federal elections, which the parties contested separately. Its longest iteration spanned 38 years after its reestablishment in 1987, which was followed by its shortest iteration of under a year after the eight-day split in the aftermath of the 2025 election, which itself was brought to an end on 22 January 2026 after the National Party again left the union. The Coalition reunited on 8 February 2026.
The Liberal and National parties have different geographical voter bases, with the Liberals—the senior party—drawing most of their vote from urban areas, and the Nationals operating almost exclusively in rural and regional areas.
“Liberal–National Coalition” enters the record as an alliance of Conservative political parties in Australia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Liberal, National and Coalition can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1065320. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2013, 2022, 1923 and 1931.
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This entry incorporates text from “Liberal–National Coalition” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.