Borbidge urges parties to sit tight

FORMER Queensland Premier Rob Borbidge has urged the LNP not to consider a divorce and split the Liberal and National parties in the wake of the State poll.

LNP elder Vaughan Johnson said yesterday it was a mistake to merge the Liberal and National parties, and the conservatives were paying the price of regional neglect.

Almost a decade on from the merger, the straight talking former MP who served as chief whip in the Newman government revealed it was the wrong move and rural Queensland had paid a heavy price.

“Even though at the time I supported it, I don’t support it now,” he said, adding that LNP and the federal coalition should stop its “bull….” treatment of the regions.

But Mr Borbidge told the Bulletin: “Vaughan is a great friend but I have to disagree. I don’t think anyone on the conservative side of politics wants to go back to three-cornered contests and the bickering and instability that occurred prior to the merger in Queensland.

“That doesn’t mean there are issues,” the former Surfers Paradise MP added.

After the coalition parties were defeated in a state election in the early 1990s, former premier and National leader Mr Borbidge angrily declared “disunity is death in politics’’. Mr Borbidge was furious that Liberal candidates had taken on sitting Nationals in their own seats, including his own in Surfers Paradise.

Mr Borbidge described the “political friendship” with One Nation as toxic for the LNP at the polls in southeast Queensland. The other issue was Labor’s effective campaigning identifying Opposition leader Tim Nicholls with unpopular policies of the Newman Government.