National Party of Australia

The National Party of Australia, also known as The Nationals or The Nats, is an Australian political party. Traditionally representing graziers, farmers, and rural voters generally, it began as the Australian Country Party in 1920 at a federal level. It later adopted the name National Country Party in 1975, before taking its current name in 1982.

Federally, and in New South Wales, and to an extent in Victoria and historically in Western Australia, it has in government been the minor party in a centre-right Coalition with the Liberal Party of Australia, and its leader has usually served as Deputy Prime Minister. In Opposition the Coalition was usually maintained, but even otherwise the party still generally continued to work in co-operation with the Liberal Party of Australia (as had their predecessors the Nationalist Party of Australia and United Australia Party). In Queensland, Tasmania & the Northern Territory, however, the Country Party (later National Party) was the senior coalition party between 1925 and 1992, after which it merged in that state with the junior Liberal Party of Australia to form the Liberal National Party (LNP). Despite taking a conservative position socially, the National Party has long pursued agrarian socialist economic policies. Ensuring support for farmers, either through government grants and subsidies or through community appeals, is a major focus of National Party policy. According to Ian McAllister, the National Party is the only remaining agrarian socialist party from the "wave of agrarian socialist parties set up around the Western world in the 1920s".