Queensland senator Matt Canavan has won the vote to become the next leader of the National Party after David Littleproud’s surprise resignation on Tuesday.
Party members elected Victorian MP Darren Chester as deputy leader.
Former deputy leader Kevin Hogan and Senator Bridget McKenzie unsuccessfully contested the leadership.
Canavan said he stood for the role because ‘we are losing our country’.
‘People are losing their standard of living. They’re losing their confidence. We’re losing our relaxed and larrikin nature, and we have to fight back for Australians,” he told a waiting press pack on Wednesday.
‘So all we need to do to revive our great nation is to have more Australian everything. We need to manifest hyper Australia here.
‘We need more Australian babies. We need more Australian humour, more Australian jokes. We need more Australian everything.
‘We don’t need to look overseas for the future.’
Nationals Senator Matt Canavan is the party’s new leader
David Littleproud resigned on Tuesday in an emotional press conference where he said he was too ‘buggered’ to continue
Canavan also fired a warning shot to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.
‘Pauline has been in politics more than double for the time I’ve been. And I struggled to point to a single dam, single road, single hospital, and Pauline Hanson has delivered in Australia,’ he said.
‘I can point to swathes of those things with the work I’ve done with Michelle Landry, Colin Boyce, and others in Central Queensland.
‘That is ultimately what we’re here. here to deliver results. We’re here to make people’s lives better.’
Daily Mail political editor Peter van Onselen warned Canavan would need to learn to play the team game.
‘He has built his name as the guy sticking it to the Libs and quitting the frontbench,’ he said.
‘Unless he honestly thinks quitting the Coalition is a good idea, he has to change.’
Canavan was elected senator in 2014 and was a minister in Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison‘s governments. A trained economist, Canavan previously worked as Barnaby Joyce’s chief-of-staff when he was Agriculture Minister.
He now goes up against his former mentor, who defected to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation earlier this year, as the party surges in the polls – threatening the future of the Nationals.
‘Pauline Hanson won’t fear Matt Canavan, and she’ll have Barnaby Joyce to help explain him to her,’ van Onselen said.
‘But Canavan will likely try and match much of the populism One Nation spruiks.’
Canavan is a rare party leader from the Senate. Traditionally, leaders sit in the House of Representatives.
In Canberra on Tuesday, Littleproud fought back tears as he told reporters he was exhausted after years in the top job and presiding over two traumatic splits in the Coalition.
‘I’m buggered and I’ve had enough,’ he said.
Littleproud will stay in Parliament and plans to recontest his Queensland seat of Maranoa, one of the safest electorates in the country, which he has held since 2016.
He also left open the possibility of returning to the Coalition frontbench under the party’s new leadership.
Van Onselen said: ‘Angus Taylor will be hoping that Canavan can rethink his approach to the Coalition and become constructive rather than destructive.
‘That would mean accepting that the Nationals are the junior partner.
‘But Canavan has a number of red lines, including opposing net zero with a zealotry that won’t help Liberals win back urban electorates.’
Canavan is yet to address the media.
More to come…
