Queensland Liberal Party
The centre-right in Queensland has a long history of splits and mergers, with much debate over whether to have a single party aiming to cover the whole state or to have distinctive voices for the metropolitan and rural areas.At the time the conservative forces in the parliament were united as the Country-National Organisation but this was under much pressure to split back into separate rural and urban parties which would happen the following year.[6] The Country-National Organisation split up the following year, with the urban section reorganizing as the state branch of the United Australia Party.[14] However both Chandler and Pie had business concerns, as well as the former's continued local government role, that meant they could not devote all their time to leading the party.[5] Relations with the Country Party remained uneasy for much of the next decade through the leaderships of Hiley and then Kenneth Morris and it was not until 1956 that they were firmly settled.[27] However, for much of the first decade in power relations between the two coalition parties held well, helped by a determination to maintain the relation by Premier and Country Party leader Frank Nicklin and a succession of Liberal leaders including Kenneth Morris, Alan Munro, a brief return by Thomas Hiley and Gordon Chalk.[31] Bjelke-Petersen also moved to refine the malapportionment further, now dubbed the "Bjelkemander", which reinforced the Country Party's superior position.[33] There was little electoral change in the 1969 and 1972 state elections, but in the next few years the Country Party became increasingly assertive, changing its name to the "National Party" (a name adopted by its federal counterpart in 1982), standing in more urban seats and increasingly taking on the federal Whitlam government as part of greater assertiveness.Most Ginger Group MPs were "small-l liberals" who were not at home with the strongly conservative bent of the Bjelke-Petersen government.Soon two Liberals, Brian Austin and Don Lane, switched to the Nationals in return for cabinet posts, supplying them with a majority in their own right.Angus Innes became leader in 1988 as the National government was in decline, but proved unable to make any headway in the 1989 election which saw Labor take power for the first time in over thirty years.The new Labor government of Wayne Goss dismantled the "Bjelkemander" and as a result Brisbane now elected nearly half the state parliament.Furthermore, the preferential voting system was changed to optional preferencing, making it harder for the Nationals and Liberals to contest the same seats without risking loss to Labor.These changes would have the effect of altering the relationship between the two parties as the Nationals could no longer seek government in their own right but the Liberals initially instead sought to achieve senior status.[46] However the coalition faced a strong threat from the rise of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party that challenged on issues such as multiculturalism, gun ownership and native title.[48] The election also saw the Liberals poll more votes than the Nationals for the first time in over a quarter of a century despite the latter winning more seats and this outcome would recur for the next decade.[52] John-Paul Langbroek, from the Liberal side of the merger, took over the leadership following the resignation of founding leader Lawrence Springborg.