The Tasmanian Nationals are a political party in the Australian state of Tasmania, aligned with the National Party of Australia. The party is not currently registered with the Tasmanian Electoral Commission, and is not separately registered with the Australian Electoral Commission, unlike the other state branches of the Nationals. The party has a history in Tasmania dating back to 1922, and has previously used the names Country Party, Centre Party, and National Country Party. It has had limited electoral success and has dissolved itself or disappeared on a number of occasions, sometimes for several decades. The party's current iteration was established in 2018, after independent senator Steve Martin joined the Nationals. He is the first member of the party in federal parliament since the 1920s.
For the next few decades there was virtually no Country Party electoral activity in the state bar a single candidacy in Franklin in the 1934 federal election. In 1962 a new Country Party organisation was formed in the state which would last until 1975. It contested the 1964 state election but won no seats. In the run up to the 1969 electionKevin Lyons, a former Liberal turned independent member of the Assembly for Braddon, became the party's leader and reorganised it as the Centre Party. Lyons retained his seat at the election, which resulted in a hung parliament. He threw his support to his former Liberal colleagues, and served as Deputy Premier under Angus Bethune until 1972 when Lyons withdrew support, collapsing the coalition. The Centre Party did not contest the resulting election. The party contested the Senate in the 1974 federal election and then stood for both the Senate and House in the 1975 federal election but had no success. The party disappeared that year.
Later appearances
The party was formed again in 1994 and in 1996 contested the state election, and the federal election in both the House and Senate but once again secured only a small vote with rural interests preferring the Liberals instead. The party was registered federally with the Australian Electoral Commission from October 1995 to April 1998, under the name "National Party of Australia – Tasmania". The party reorganised and registered in the state in 2013 and were subsequently joined by former Labor ministerAllison Ritchie. However disagreements with the federal party over strategy led to the latter distancing itself. Scott Mitchell, the federal director of the Nationals, stated in January 2014 that "we don't want them using our brand and promoting policies that people could see as Nationals' policies". Following poor results in the 2014 state election, some members decided to rename the party, the Tasmania Party. However it was instead deregistered in the state. In May 2018 Steve Martin, a Senator originally elected for the Jacqui Lambie Network who had subsequently been expelled, joined the Nationals, giving them their first federal representative in the state in ninety years. Martin declared he was seeking to relaunch the party in the state. In October 2018, the re-established party held its first state conference in Launceston, which was attended by the party's federal leader Michael McCormack. At the conference, Steve Martin announced that he would stand for re-election at the 2019 federal election and stated that the party hoped to field additional candidates. In January 2019, the party announced it would field a candidate in Bass. The Nationals also contested the seats of Braddon and Lyons. Steve Martin failed in his bid to win election to the Senate, polling just over one percent of the statewide vote. The Nationals performed best in Lyons, where they received 15.7% of the vote, where the Liberal candidate was disendorsed.
