This article includes a list ofgeneral references, butit lacks sufficient correspondinginline citations. Please help toimprove this article byintroducing more precise citations.(April 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

TheNationalist Party, also known as theNational Party, was anAustralian political party. It was formed in February 1917 from a merger between theLiberal Party and theNational Labor Party, the latter formed byPrime MinisterBilly Hughes and his supporters after the1916 Labor Party split overWorld War I conscription. The Nationalist Party was established as a 'united' non-Labor opposition that had remained a political trend once the Labor party established itself in federal politics. The party was in government (from 1923 in coalition with theCountry Party) until electoral defeat in 1929. From that time it was the main opposition to the Labor Party until it merged with pro-Joseph Lyons Labor defectors to form theUnited Australia Party (UAP) in 1931. The party is a direct ancestor of theLiberal Party of Australia, the main centre-right party inAustralia.

In October 1915, the Australian prime minister,Andrew Fisher of theAustralian Labor Party, retired;Billy Hughes was chosen unanimously by the Laborcaucus to succeed him. Hughes was a strong supporter of Australia's participation inWorld War I, and after a visit to Britain in 1916, where theMilitary Service Act 1916 had been passed earlier in the year, he became convinced thatconscription was necessary if Australia was to sustain its contribution to the war effort. A majority of his party, most notablyRoman Catholics andtrade union representatives, was opposed to this, especially given the British government's reprisals against the IrishEaster Rising of 1916.

In October, Hughes held aplebiscite to try to gain approval for conscription, but the proposition was narrowly defeated.Daniel Mannix, theCatholic Archbishop of Melbourne, was his main opponent on the conscription issue. The defeat did not deter Hughes, who continued to vigorously argue in favour of conscription. This produced a deep and bitter split within the Australian public, as well as within his own party. The extent to which he engineered this split has been hotly debated ever since, and was even at the time regarded as ironic by many in the Labor movement, given Hughes' violent hostility to earlier Labor dissidents likeJoseph Cook.

On 15 September 1916, theNew South Wales executive of the Political Labour League (the Labor Party organisation at the time) expelled Hughes from the Labor Party. When the parliamentary Labor caucus met on 14 November 1916, lengthy discussions took place until Hughes walked out with 24 other Labor members. The remaining 43 members of the caucus then passed a motion of no confidence in the leadership, effectively expelling Hughes and his allies.

Hughes and his followers rebranded themselves as the "National Labor Party", and continued in office as a minority government with support from Cook and hisCommonwealth Liberal Party. With the war dragging on, Hughes began negotiations with Cook to turn theirconfidence-and-supply agreement into formal party unity. That February, at the urging of the governor-general,Sir Robert Munro Ferguson, the two groups formally merged to form the Nationalist Party, with Hughes as leader and Cook as deputy leader. The new party was dominated by former Liberals, and as such was basically an upper- and middle-class party. However, the presence of many former Labor men—many of whom had been early leaders in that party—allowed the Nationalists to project an image of national unity.

In May 1917, the Nationalistswon a huge electoral victory, and formed what was at the time the biggest majority government sinceFederation. The size of the landslide was magnified by the large number of Labor MPs who followed Hughes into the Nationalist Party. At this election Hughes abandoned his working-class division ofWest Sydney, and was elected forBendigo in Victoria. He had promised to resign if his Government did not win the power to conscript. Asecond plebiscite on conscription was held in December 1917, but the proposition was again defeated, this time by a wider margin. Hughes, after receiving avote of no confidence in his leadership by his party, resigned as prime minister. However, with no alternative candidates available, Ferguson used hisreserve power to immediately re-commission Hughes as prime minister. Hughes was thus able to remain in office while having kept his promise to resign.

Hughes and the Nationalists were reelected almost as easily in1919. They governed on their own until theelections of 1922, when the newly emergedCountry Party gained thebalance of power in theHouse of Representatives. The Nationalists had come up 12 seats short of a majority, and could only realistically hope for support from the Country Party. It was obvious that a confidence-and-supply agreement would not be enough to keep the Nationalists in office. However, the Country Party had never liked Hughes' rural policy, and its leaderEarle Page let it be known that he would not serve under him. Several of the more conservative elements of the Nationalist Party had only tolerated Hughes after the war, suspecting he was still a socialist at heart. Page's demand finally gave them an excuse to dump Hughes, who was forced to resign in January 1923. FormertreasurerStanley Bruce was chosen as leader, and quickly entered into a coalition with the Country Party. The price, however, was high: five seats for the Country Party in cabinet (out of 11), with Page as treasurer and number-two man in the government. Such demands were unheard of for such a young party in a Westminster system. However, Bruce agreed to the terms rather than force another election. This was the start of the traditionalcoalition of non-Labor parties.

With the ouster of Hughes, the Nationalists took on a decidedly more conservative hue. Despite initial concerns that Australians wouldn't readily support the aloof Bruce, the Nationalist-Country Coalition won a great victory inthe federal election of 1925. It was re-elected in1928, though with a significantly reduced mandate. However, only a year later, Hughes led a group of backbenchers tocross the floor on a vote on Bruce's plans to reform the industrial arbitration system. Inthe subsequent election the Coalition was heavily defeated, suffering what was at the time the second-worst defeat of a sitting government since federation. Bruce even lost his own seat, and was succeeded as leader by former attorney-generalJohn Latham.

The Nationalists were never a real force in Australian politics again. The party had spent its entire 12-year existence in government, and was ill-prepared for a role in opposition. In 1931, following negotiations with a group of Labor Party defectors led byJoseph Lyons, the Nationalist Party was absorbed into the newUnited Australia Party. Although the UAP was dominated by former Nationalists, Lyons was chosen as leader rather than Latham. The UAP replaced the Nationalists as the main non-Labor party.

TheWestern Australian branch retained the Nationalist name after the formation of the UAP, and did so until it and most of the major non-Labor parties were folded into the present-dayLiberal Party of Australia.

Around 1929,Robert Menzies, then a member of theVictorian Legislative Council, joined withWilfrid Kent Hughes to form the Young Nationalists Organisation. Menzies was its first president.

The organisation kept its name when its parent party became part of the UAP. Half of the UAP members elected in the1932 Victorian state election were Young Nationalists, almost trebling their parliamentary representation. The premier, SirStanley Argyle, included three of them in his eight-person cabinet, including Menzies as deputy premier.

Later, when Menzies founded theLiberal Party of Australia, he invited delegates from the Young Nationalists to attend. The Young Nationalists followed the UAP into the Liberal Party, and formed the nucleus of the new party's youth wing, theYoung Liberals.

Election	Leader	Votes	%	Seats	+/–	Position	Government
1917	Billy Hughes	1,021,138	54.2	53 / 75	53	1st	Majority
1919	Billy Hughes	860,519	45.0	37 / 75	16	1st	Minority
1922	Billy Hughes	553,920	35.2	26 / 75	11	2nd	Coalition
1925	Stanley Bruce	1,238,397	42.4	37 / 75	11	1st	Coalition
1928	Stanley Bruce	1,014,522	39.0	29 / 75	8	2nd	Coalition
1929	Stanley Bruce	975,979	33.9	14 / 75	15	2nd	Opposition

No.	Leader (birth–death)	Portrait	Electorate	Took office	Left office	Duration of tenure	Prime Minister(term)
1	Billy Hughes (1862–1952)		West Sydney, NSW[b] Bendigo, Vic.[c] North Sydney, NSW[d]	17 February 1917	2 February 1923	5 years and 351 days		Himself (1915–1923)
2	Stanley Bruce (1883–1967)		Flinders, Vic.	3 February 1923	23 October 1929	6 years and 264 days		Himself (1923–1929)
								Scullin (1929–1932)
3	John Latham (1877–1964)		Kooyong, Vic.	20 November 1929	May 1931	1 year and 191 days

• Australian nationalism
• List of political parties in Australia

Notes

Sources

Wikimedia Commons has media related toNationalist Party of Australia.

• Fitzhardinge, L. F. (1983)."William Morris (Billy) Hughes (1862–1952)".Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography,Australian National University.ISBN 978-0-522-84459-7.ISSN 1833-7538.OCLC 70677943. Retrieved18 August 2025.
• Radi, Heather (1979)."Stanley Melbourne Bruce (1883–1967)".Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography,Australian National University.ISBN 978-0-522-84459-7.ISSN 1833-7538.OCLC 70677943. Retrieved18 August 2025.
• Macintyre, Stuart (1986)."Sir John Greig Latham (1877–1964)".Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography,Australian National University.ISBN 978-0-522-84459-7.ISSN 1833-7538.OCLC 70677943. Retrieved18 August 2025.

• Defunct political parties in Australia
• Australian nationalist parties
• Political parties established in 1917
• Political parties disestablished in 1931
• 1917 establishments in Australia
• 1931 disestablishments in Australia

• Harv and Sfn no-target errors
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from November 2019
• Use Australian English from October 2011
• All Wikipedia articles written in Australian English
• Articles lacking in-text citations from April 2017
• All articles lacking in-text citations
• Commons category link is on Wikidata