What a marriage this will be. Those in the church will be sharply divided. On one side will be clever types in Zegna suits with an array of BMWs waiting to whisk them to the reception. On the other side of the church will be a bunch of hayseeds dressed in RM Williams’ clobber with horses and buggies tied up to a hitching rail. And here comes the bride, a heavily pregnant lass if somewhat rebarbative (which explains the lack of suitors) with ingrained asteism typical of people unaware of life outside the cities. Enter the groom; a yokel who sees marriage as the only way to get the keys to the castle. It’s a somewhat risky maneuver because the castle is protected by a mad redhead monk. The bride’s father is against this union. It would have been a ‘shotgun wedding’ but due to the lack of weapons all the bride’s father can do is stamp his feet. Will the pastor vomit at the thought of joining the ‘happy’ couple?

Where will the couple go for the honeymoon? Hey, we know the answer to that question. It will be Rome, Paris, Vienna, London, New York and Brussels, all at taxpayers’ expense of course. What will the baby look like? Please…I’m trying to eat lunch.

I have heard it said that watching BB is bad. I am sure that watching Australian politics is even worse.

This is the last but one step on an evolutionary sequence that started with the end of the Joh era when greater Queensland formed the dominant cultural and political influence over the urban south east.

It is an implicit recognition by the National's core opinion makers that the rural based product cannot be sold to the million extra voters who haved moved to the state since 1988. But it also represents the last acceptable instance of the self delusion that they can somehow "please" the urban voter and continue to represent their core constituency.

If the merger succeeds then they will achieve government but on terms that squander the interests of rural queenslanders. If it fails then there will be no other place for the nationals to go but back to their community.

Either way, it will become increasingly apparent to their regional voters, that there is no future for them within the existing state entity.

A "country" Party within an urban dominated state entity was always going to be a ticket to nowhere and it is surprising that it has lasted so long. The Americans and Canadians recognised this long ago and used their state boundaries to ensure that specific communities of interest had representation of their own choosing.

Interestingly, their conservative party has just one name but it enables a wide range of policy options between states, to the extent that a Democrat from one state can be more conservative than a Republican from another, and vice versa.

Looks like Father Howard has annulled the marriage before it could even be consumated. No same sex marriage under him!

The marriage would only spawn a new lot of independant members from regional areas.

Sorry Lawrence your up the creek looking for a paddle.

I was reading your post, Perseus, and was suprised it took you so long to propose more states.

Well, the merger is not going ahead... the coalition should focus on winning power, then either abolishing the optional preferential vote, or allowing a party to distribute preferences as they wish of people from whom they receive the first vote. Until that happens, three-party contests will harm the conservatives.

Yes, DFXK, it seems everyone recognises that optional preference voting is a serious watering down of the principle of compulsory voting and all agree that this variation was designed and implemented to favour the current government.

In that sense it is no better than the original gerrymander that so enlivened the left. For while the gerrymander created a system where some votes were of less value than others, this system allows the voter to cast a vote of less value. And, surprise, surprise, both systems were implemented by Labor governments in a state with only one chamber.

Before the inevitable formation of new states based on distinct communities of interest, the Libs and Nats could do a lot more to help themselves. They could start by allocating contested seats on the basis of the total branch membership of each party in each electorate. In this way they would operate in the same way as the factions do in the ALP. It may produce the odd outbreak of branch stacking but, ultimately, it is the numbers that make the decision and the party with the least members will know exactly what it must do if it wants to get it's favoured candidate up.

Obviously, the membership rules would need to be aligned so the Libs could not rort the numbers with members residing in HongKong and elsewhere in the way a certain rather ordinary MP gained his preselection.

Finacially and politically bankrupt---what a wonderful way to accurately describe the bride and groom in this unfortunately stalled marriage.
The Reception would have been a hoot.
I love the Qulnd. Nat's. A gift that just keeps on giving.

When all the sneering and jeering is finished there will be one inescapable fact remaining.

When a large and distinct minority community of interest within an existing political entity cannot, even in the face of culpable governance, reasonably or realistically aspire to see a party of their own choice elected to govern that entity then that minority owes it to their own children to exit that political entity and form a new state of their own within the Commonwealth.

The biggest test at the next state election is faced by the urban community, especially in the South East corner. For if their bigotry and bias against the party elected by the overwhelming majority of rural Queenslanders is so great that they can re-elect a party that covered up the manslaughter of hospital patients then they will send the clearest message possible that the bush has no future under their majority.

It is as simple as that.

Perseus, what will we call this new State or Territory ?
How about Whingerville?
Keep on giving you Qulnd. Nats.

Paul, an insightful and substantial article. Many thanks.

I think what the other posters here ignore are some fundamental realities.

1. Queensland needs a viable, competitive, electable conservative Opposition. As I remember from your lectures at UQ, Paul - much of the genius of Beattie in his early political years manifested itself in the hard work he did with the late Denis Murphy to rebuild the Queensland ALP during the 1970s, to also create a viable, competitive Labor Opposition. This made the polity healthier.

2. To make this happens, the Coalition overwhelmingly needs to gain seats in SE Queensland. There won't be another conservative government while Labor holds Broadwater or Indooroopilly.

3. For good or bad, I don't think the urbanised voters of SE Queensland will wear another National Party premier (willingly). Population growth and interstate migration in the SE corner has given the state a critical mass of 2.5 million people with more cosmopolitan values, which means the next conservative premier will need to have a sympathetic, urban-orientated outlook.

4. Consequently, the Coalition will find it hard to lure voters in the SE Corner while its leader is a rural-orientated National Party member. Why would a swinging voter in a metro seat, in the white heat of a general election campaign (as opposed to a byelection) be sufficiently tolerant of the rural-and-regional bias of the National Party, and confident they will understand concerns beyond this sectional base, even if the local candidate is a Liberal?

The problem therefore, is curious - I don't think there will be a conservative win unless the Liberals predominate. But Liberals won't be able to gather the seats up to predominate while a National leads the Opposition. However, unless the Liberals and Nationals are intertwined at all levels in a very tight arrangement, voters won't buy them as a credible alternative.

Once "New Liberals" were bedded down as a brand, SE Queensland could then vote confidently for a urban-friendly conservatives brand again. I suspect that was the theory anyway...

But it wasn't going to work (at least not this time) because of a few things.

1. The Queensland Liberals have a lot of people in it with scar tissues from the bruising Lib-Nat fights of the 70s and 80s (you know who you are). Admittedly, if I were older, and still lived in Queensland, I'd quite possibly be one of them. They can't ever forgive the Nationals, or forget. But thankfully, I'm NOT one of them, it's 2006, I'd like to see a conservative government again, and I'm more interested in doing what is necessary to secure this change of government than arcane arguments about who did what to whom in 1983, or whatever.

2. The Queensland Nationals have two competing agendas: Building up Springborg as urban-friendly (essential for the whole Coalition) and trying to keep Barnaby on board, and, so it is rumoured, bringing former Nationals back to the fold. You can do one or the other. But not both at the same time.

3. The PM has understandably decided he'd rather keep the Howard brand doing well at a federal level in Queensland, than risk the inevitable change and flux which the "New Liberals" would have brought, even if it increased the chances of the QLD ALP losing.

4. I think there is a rather cosy consenus in southern-orientated, Australian conservative politics which would be threatened by a large, new, more assertive conservative voice in a growing state like Queensland. Already there are more federal Coalition MPs and Senators from Queensland than Victoria - but the idea of this bloc exercising the clout these numbers mean, is a threat to the NSW/VIC/SA status quo. Maybe there is some logic to it - a full-throttle Queensland conservative (urban or rural) might go down like a bucket of cold sick with the more supposedly delicate threads of Liberalism in Neutral Bay, Kew or Burnside. But who really knows?

In the end though, I think whatever impedes a change of government in Queensland is a bad thing. The question is: was the Scott-Parer idea a help or hindrance?

So do I take it, Alexander, that you agree with my assessment that the only way that regional voters can ever get a government of their choosing is to form new states?

Are we simply seeing the replacement of one gerrymander with another? Each one creating a disaffected, disenfranchised constituency that will poison the polity for another generation?

If conservative federal voters in SEQld cannot bring themselves to vote for any alternate State Government led by a National then what right do they have in insisting on denying National voters their right to a separate government of their own?