Its main opponent is the Australian Labor Party (ALP); the two forces are often regarded as operating in a two-party system.

There is a single Coalition frontbench, both in government and in opposition, with each party receiving a proportionate number of positions.

The situation in New South Wales and Victoria broadly mirrors that at federal level, while in Western Australia the parties are much more independent of each other.

LNP and CLP members elected to federal parliament do not form separate parliamentary parties, joining either the Liberals or Nationals.

However, Country Party leader Earle Page had never trusted the Nationalist Prime Minister, Billy Hughes.

Since then, the leader of the Country Party, which evolved into the National Party, has ranked second in nearly all non-Labor governments, a status formalised in 1967 when the post of Deputy Prime Minister was formally created to denote Country leader John McEwen's status as the number-two man in the government.

After the death of Prime Minister Joseph Lyons in April 1939, Page was appointed as his successor on an interim basis, pending the new election of a new UAP leader.

He was replaced by Archie Cameron, and after months of negotiations the coalition was revived in March 1940, with five Country MPs joining the second Menzies ministry.

After losing eight seats at the 1940 federal election, the Coalition was plunged into minority government for the first time in its history.

Menzies increasingly struggled to balance his management of Australia's war effort with domestic concerns, and his party began to rebel against him.

Up until the 1943 election, the Coalition effectively operated as a single unit, with separate party meetings being extremely rare.

In the lead-up to the 1946 federal election, Menzies renewed the Coalition with the Country Party, which was still led by Fadden.

The Coalition suffered another break, related to the "Joh for Canberra" campaign, from April to August 1987, the rift healing after the 1987 federal election.

In October 2018, the Coalition went into minority government for the second time in its history, when the seat of Wentworth was won by Independent Kerryn Phelps in the by-election.

[10] McMahon reiterated his view after Labor won the 1974 election, and Billy Snedden, his successor as leader of the Liberal Party, also stated that he favoured a merger.

[13] In July 1989, Senator Fred Chaney, the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, stated his tentative support for a merger, but noted that it could not be led by politicians and should come from the grassroots.

[14] In the wake of their 2007 federal election loss, there was again talk of a merger in 2007 and 2008,[12] as a result of a shrinking National Party vote.

Coalition arrangements are facilitated by Australia's preferential voting systems which enable Liberals and Nationals to compete locally in "three-cornered-contests", with the Australian Labor Party (ALP), while exchanging preferences in elections.

As a result of variations on the preferential voting system used in every state and territory, the Coalition has been able to thrive, wherever both its member parties have both been active.

[25] In the 2022 Australian federal election, electorates with a higher concentration of Chinese-Australian voters experienced larger swings against the Coalition compared to other electorates; in the top 15 seats by Chinese ancestry, the swing against the Coalition on a two-party-preferred basis was 6.6 per cent, compared to 3.7 per cent in other seats.

[27] In the 2023 New South Wales state election, the top 10 electorates in terms of Chinese ancestry all saw big swings to Labor.

The LNP won an overwhelming majority government in the 2012 state election under the leadership of former Liberal Campbell Newman, who had taken over from Langbroek a year earlier.

The highest-profile LNP MP of the 2010s was former federal Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss.

[33][34] The revived SA Nationals have never been successful in South Australia, due to the state's highly centralised population (some three-quarters of the population lives in Adelaide) and the Liberals' strong support in rural areas that would tilt National in most of the rest of Australia.

Flinders University political scientist Haydon Manning disagreed, saying that it is "churlish to describe the government as anything but a coalition".

A Tasmania branch of the then-Country Party was formed in 1922 and briefly held the balance of power, but merged with the Nationalists in 1924.

[37] In 2018, Senator Steve Martin, formerly of the Jacqui Lambie Network, joined the Nationals, becoming the party's first federal member from Tasmania in either chamber in 90 years.

The presence of John McEwen, a Victorian, as number-two man in the federal government from 1958 to 1971 (including a brief stint as interim Prime Minister) did little to change this.

[44] The Coalition ended up winning the 2010 election with a one-seat margin under the leadership of Ted Baillieu, who resigned in 2013 and was succeeded by Denis Napthine.

In 2008, the Liberals under Colin Barnett, the Nationals under Brendon Grylls, and independent John Bowler formed a minority government after the 2008 election.