File talk:Australian Senate (current composition).svg

Coalition Partyrooms

There has been a degree of disagreement about whether the Senate composition diagram should show the Coalition divided between its constituent parties (Liberal, Country Liberal, Liberal National, National) or between its two partyrooms (the Liberals' partyroom and the Nationals' partyroom). I think that this needs to be definitively resolved one way or the other. Personally I believe it should show the 4-party split rather than the 2-partyroom split, for two reasons. Firstly, these senators are in the Senate representing these parties, not the partyrooms, and they are elected with the Liberal National or Country Liberal descriptor against their name on the ballot paper. The ALP also has rigidly separate internal caucuses, but we don't show separate Labor Left and Labor Right groupings on the diagram, because they are all elected to represent Labor. Secondly, precedent. The current House of Representatives diagram shows the LNP separately from the Liberals and Nationals, so why should it be different for the Senate? Furthermore, every Senate diagram (and every Reps diagram) since the formation of the LNP in 2008 has shown the LNP separately, and likewise has shown the CLP separately since its formation in 1975. I think there would, therefore, have to be significantly strong justification to break from this precedent, and I just don't think that such justification exists. Tomiĉo (talk) 00:25, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

The LNP/CLP situation is far from unique but I think we've got the arrangement the wrong way round and need to rehtink them. There's a long history, not just in Australian but in many parliamentary democracies, of members being elected with one set of labels and arrangements in their constituency but using a different label and configuration in parliament, and this often involves local level mergers. The diagrams are about the parliamentary chambers, not about members' election labels, and should show the parliamentary parties as they are actually arranged. There is no LNP parliamentary party in Canberra and the diagram shouldn't be implying otherwise. The more important information about the Coalition is how many are in the Liberal party room and how many are in the Nationals. Timrollpickering (talk) 00:36, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Two-party split is far more relevant than the four-party split. We should always have created these diagrams by how Liberal and National parliamentarians actually sit in parliament, not the ticket which they are elected. Much like how we update the diagram when senators change party. Onetwothreeip (talk) 01:34, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks for starting a discussion Tomiĉo. I think the diagrams should list the parliamentary groups (partyrooms), not the political organisation. There is no LNP partyroom at federal level and no CLP partyroom either. At an organisational level they are equivalent to state branches of the Liberals and Nationals, they are not on the same level. Listing or displaying them separately implies LNP members have more in common with each other than with the rest of the Liberals and Nationals, which isn't correct. It wouldn't make sense to list Warren Truss or Nigel Scullion as an LNP member while at the same time they held leadership positions in the Nationals. Going back in time Archie Cameron was leader of the federal Country Party while being a member of the Liberal and Country League in South Australia. The Parliamentary website is unfortunately inconsistent in how it labels LNP members – the senators are listed as either Liberal or National but the MHRs are listed as LNP. There's an infosheet about political parties in the House of Representatives which states "Liberal National Party candidates elected to the Federal Parliament have continued to sit as Liberals or Nationals". Unfortunately, with election results we don't really have an option as non-incumbent LNP/CLP candidates don't nominate themselves as Liberal or National beforehand. One example where we currently distinguish partyrooms and ballot-paper labels is the "Country Labor" candidates in New South Wales. We don't list them as a separate party as they don't have a separate partyroom. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 01:35, 7 July 2019 (UTC)