Nationals call on the State Government to not sell the Fremantle Port.

source: news.com.au - joe spagnolo
original title: Joe Spagnolo: WA Liberal, National party have strange relationship 

Nationals call on the State Government
to not sell the Fremantle Port.

Premier Colin Barnett and Nationals leader Terry Redman Source: Supplied

PARTNERS in government, the National and Liberal Parties continue to have a strange relationship indeed.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott will be in Perth next weekend for the WA Liberal Party’s annual conference.

Given the death of longtime Canning MHR Don Randall and the official launch of the Liberal Party’s candidate to contest the by-election later this year, this event will get significant amounts of media coverage.

But also on next weekend is the WA National Party’s state conference. Surely, if you had to bet your house on which conference will get top billing on the 6pm news you would go for the Liberal’s event.

Political Editor Joe Spagnolo Source: News Corp Australia

Senior Liberals tell me they pencilled in this date for the state conference well ahead of the Nationals announcing their date.

But what this “double booking” again highlights is how dysfunctional this marriage of convenience sometimes is.

Why schedule the National and Liberal conferences on the same weekend? Surely you get a better bang for your buck if you hold them a few weeks apart.

The agenda of the National Party conference, the motions to be debated, gives us further insight into how these two conservative parties are on different pages – possibly different planets – when it comes to the aspirations of this government.

Motion No. 1: “That this state convention ... re-affirms the party’s independent political stance as the only party that represents the country regions of Western Australia, now and in the lead-up to the next election.”

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