‘A defeat snatched from jaws of victory’

The 2008 merger of the Liberal and Nationals parties in Queensland should not be revisited in the wake of the party’s third state election loss.

‘“The challenge is to come up with a plan and policy that are fair dinkum for people in the bush and regions but also have what people in southeast Queensland need to see as well’: fomer Premier and LNP leader Campbell Newman. Picture: Annette Dew

The 2008 merger of the Liberal and Nationals parties in Queensland should not be revisited in the wake of the party’s third state election loss, with senior party figures arguing it helped deliver Scott Morrison his miracle election win in 2019.

While the defeat of the Deb Frecklington led LNP-Opposition on Saturday means the conservatives will have governed the state for only three out of 25 years by 2024, former premier Campbell Newman said the merger was a “fundamentally sound concept and it should be made to work”.

“The challenge is to come up with a plan and policy that are fair dinkum for people in the bush and regions but also have what people in southeast Queensland need to see as well.

“And I think that’s eminently doable,” the former LNP leader said. “The LNP merged party issue is certainly not why the LNP lost.

“The LNP can be and has been shown to work and can be made to work again. It has been very successful for the Coalition federally. The LNP has brought home government for the Prime Minister.”

Some party sources told The Australian it was important to make the LNP more dynamic and proposals had been suggested to develop a “regional faction” at a state level that could see its members allocated frontbench positions.

Mr Newman, who led the state in 2012-15, said there was no problem with the LNP structure and the challenge was “the parliamentary team”.

“The parliamentary team has to take accountability for this election loss. They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.”

Mr Newman warned the LNP against complacency in May, saying the party needed to excite Queenslanders with some “big ideas” and take “calculated risks” as Newspoll showed Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk benefiting from her management of the COVID crisis.

Other senior party figures told The Australian there were “zero issues” with the merger, with one saying there was “no one of substance” in the party arguing for the issue to be revisited.

Queensland senator Matt Canavan acknowledged there were differences between the success of the party at a federal and state level that needed to be addressed. “We have to find a way to run a diverse set of campaigns for a diverse state at both state and federal levels.,” he said.

Federal Queensland MP Llew O’Brien — the only non-aligned LNP member in Canberra — also defended the LNP model as a “good one” that was “certainly not a contributing ­factor to this current loss.”