National’s leader David Littleproud will face a leadership challenge next week with Queensland Senator Matt Canavan announcing he’s after the party’s top job.
After announcing his intention to challenge for the leadership Senator Canavan wrote an opinion piece, published in The Australian newspaper, outlining why he believed a leadership change was needed.
He listed the coalition’s failure to overturn Labor’s ban on Western Australia’s live sheep trade as the major significant outcomes of the coalition not being returned to government at last week’s federal election.
He lists environmental regulations, the push for renewable power and the failure of current leaders to effectively explain the benefits of nuclear power as reasons for new leadership being needed.
“We were lectured that we should not speak up because “city” voters would be repelled if we fought for farmers, miners and factory workers. It was hard advice to take given it flew in the face of our successes over the past decade.” Senator Canavan said, commenting on the approach taken during the recent election campaign.
Senator Cananvan also writes that the Australian government needs to develop a plan for encouraging Australians to have more children.
“Our birthrate has collapsed to just 1.5 babies per woman and most do not understand how brutal the maths is. A rough rule of thumb is that the size of your next generation will be your current population multiplied by the birthrate divided by two – although science is moving fast on this, right now only women can have babies.
“Using this calculation, within three generations there will be just 11 million Australians descended from those alive today. In other words, every 100 Australians will have just 40 great-grandchildren. That’s sad because grandkids give the old people I know the most joy.” Senator Canavan wrote.
David Littleproud, who represents the Queensland seat of Maranoa, has been the National party’s leader since the 2022 election when he challenged Barnaby Joyce for the leadership position. He previously served as Deputy Leader under both Joyce and Michael McCormack. Littleproud entered the parliament at the 2016 election.
Matt Cananvan has been a senator since 2013 and served as Minister for Resources and Northern Australia between 2016 and 2020. Prior to entering parliament, he served as the Chief of Staff for Barnaby Joyce. His background is in economics, and he previously worked at the Productivity Commission.
