Coalition or merger the two possible models for conservatives, says David Russell

DAVID Russell has hosed down the notion that the conservative merger in Queensland is a model for success in other states.

NATIONALS elder David Russell has hosed down the notion that the conservative merger in Queensland is a model for success in other states or federally.

While the Liberal National Party's crushing victory in the March state election had left Labor "fundamentally broken", there was not at the federal level or in any other state the "irreconcilable conflict" that had driven amalgamation of the conservative parties in Queensland.

In a speech to the Sydney Institute last night, Mr Russell said there were only two possible models for the conservatives: coalition or merger.

The West Australian "experiment" of an alliance between the Liberals and Nationals was increasingly like a coalition and the experience in Queensland in 1983, when the Liberals went their own way and smashed conservative unity for years, showed what would happen to the WA Nats if they walked out.

"At the federal level, the position is even clearer that the Coalition is now more than a marriage of convenience which could be unstitched," he said.

Mr Russell, a QC and expert in tax law, is a past Queensland and federal president of the Nationals and was part of the brains trust that put together the LNP in 2009. This had ended differences over policy and leadership, as well as three-cornered contests with Labor.

But merger in other states would only happen "when the members and supporters of both parties want it to happen and not before".

"The LNP has made it clear that it does not seek to impose Queensland solutions on the rest of the country," Mr Russell said.

"But the LNP experience does demonstrate that those in the National Party who are concerned that the rural and regional voice would be swallowed up in a merged party have overstated concerns which can easily be addressed in the context of the rational planning of a framework for a merged party."

Mr Russell said concern by some federal Liberals that the LNP would follow on from the former Queensland Nationals and focus on state interests to the detriment of the national cause had been allayed.