Senator Matt Canavan’s rise to the Nationals leadership has resulted in an upswell of hope and enthusiasm for the Coalition, particularly in Queensland.

Queensland is one of the few parts of the country where conservatism is surviving.

And yet the moderate faction appears to be trying to reassert control in a rushed federal preselection that has been brought forward by almost 18 months.

This is a potentially huge strategic error.

Submissions were opened two days before Christmas in December of 2025, and the final preselection decision will be held on March 28. I believe this is an inappropriate timeframe that benefits factional politics over the expectation of party members.

This preselection is supposed to be held in (or around) September next year.

By then, many assume the factional power of the party will have shifted away from the moderates.

Despite Matt Canavan standing beside Angus Taylor as the vision for the Coalition’s future, Canavan will be relegated to a potentially unwinnable second spot on the Queensland Senate ticket thanks to the convention left over from the LNP merger.

A Liberal name is put first, then a National, then a Liberal etc. all the way down the ticket.

In an era when the LNP enjoyed major party electoral dominance, the first few spots were considered safe. Having watched the fall-out from the South Australian election and the rise of One Nation, which came second in the primary vote, we can no longer assume Canavan will be safe in the number two spot.

As the Nationals leader, he is a critical piece of the reformation infrastructure. Not only is he a potential Deputy Prime Minister, because of the way the Queensland LNP was merged as a division of the Federal Liberal Party, Canavan could also be a potential future Prime Minister.

Obviously, the membership should be able to put him first and nudge other candidates down the ticket.

There is a critical LNP convention being held in July which will put forward constitutional changes, supported by the Liberal Reform Association, that would allow sensible flexibility and greater membership control over the preselection.

It is our hope that these reforms will pass.

When they do, instead of a mere 300 or so delegates voting in the preselection for the Senate candidates, every party member will be eligible to vote. That would mean 7,000 Queensland conservatives.

This is already likely to give a better result than the delegates, but when the new rules kick in, we would hope to see that LNP membership base grow to 20,000 or 30,000 in Queensland. They would all have voting rights, giving people a say over who they want leading the LNP at the federal election.

Under these conditions, it is my belief that Canavan would win the number one spot in a landslide.

This preselection is the perfect real-world scenario that demonstrates the benefits of the constitutional changes the Liberal Reform Association are proposing for all states.

Never mind that a sensible political party would hold off the preselection anyway, if for no other reason than Matt Canavan deserves to be given breathing room to decide if he wants to seek out a Lower House seat to prepare himself for the role of Deputy Prime Minister (or even Prime Minister).

We, the LNP, also need to talk about One Nation, especially in Queensland, and how its rise is exposing the failings of the current party constitution and the consequences of this both at state and federal levels.

If, as the South Australian election results suggest, the polling regarding One Nation’s ascendancy is indicative of reality, not only is the Crisafulli state government at serious risk, whoever wins the second spot on the federal LNP Senate preselection ticket won’t matter.

At the 2028 election, Queenslanders will be asked to elect six Senators.

Polling doesn’t lie.

This is Pauline Hanson’s home state. Ground zero for the revival. Hanson and at least one or two of her running mates will be elected. This leaves very little room for Labor, the LNP, and the Greens. A very likely final result would be One Nation (two seats), Labor (two seats), LNP (one seat), Greens (one seat).

In that case, if nothing changes and the preselection goes ahead this Saturday, you can kiss Matt Canavan goodbye. The Coalition may win a federal election down the line, but they will do so without the leader of the Nats.

It’s fair to ask if they would even win a federal election without Canavan…

This might be what the moderates want, but is it what conservative members and voters want?

I’ve been involved in Liberal politics in the state for 45 years, and have rarely, if ever, seen it in such a state of disrepair. The machine that is supposed to deliver quality candidates seems determined to see them quietly nudged down the Senate ticket.

The loss of Canavan would be devastating to the Coalition.

Genuine political leadership is a tricky thing to define, but we intuitively recognise it.

There are two crucial identifying factors.

First, do voters identify with and share the ‘values’ of the leader?

Second, do they believe that he/she will fight for those values?

Canavan has these qualities in spades. We know exactly what he thinks on the issues that matter. He gets himself into ideological fights that others are too afraid to watch. Canavan is all heart, but he also has brains. That is why his eventual victory for the National Party leadership is so exciting.

And this is why the coming LNP Senate preselection has to be stopped and rescheduled to sometime next year.

It’s not as if the preselection has been going well anyway. A ‘shambles’ may be a better description, with the party struggling to fill all six spots while capable and excellent candidates were found to be ‘unsuitable’. Give me a break!

Clearly, the LNP is not ready.

No serious mainstream political party can carry on like this and it’s about time these processes were called out for contributing to the embarrassing state of the party at large. This nonsense loses members and loses votes.

We don’t want to see a situation where Premier David Crisafulli gets dragged into the factional power struggle. He has enough to do trying to get the damaged and broken state back into positive territory after Labor left it in a mess, let alone having the LNP further alienating the conservative supporters he will need at the next election.

Regardless, this preselection brings into focus the nightmare state of the LNP. It must be changed.

Seven thousand LNP members in a state the size of Queensland is a travesty. It should be 70,000. The average age of members sits around 74 while fewer than 500 of these members fall in the 25-60 age demographic. These are not the statistics of a mainstream political party. One Nation is rumoured to have roughly ten times the number of members in that vital demographic.

Unless the LNP rejects what is, in my view, the ‘tiny party run by moderate elites’ and starts welcoming culturally conservative members, allowing Canavan, whom they can identify with, to represent them, then the party’s future is bleak.

Conservatives can remain silent and let this happen, or they can start making noise in the ears of their local members and remind them that unless they act to change this, they will be replaced.

Join us at the Liberal Reform Association, and help us change the rules.

In the meantime, this rushed Queensland LNP preselection must be called off.