Queensland senator Matt Canavan has been elected the new leader of the Nationals after a party room vote on Wednesday, triumphing over Victorian senator Bridget McKenzie and former deputy leader Kevin Hogan. Victorian MP Darren Chester will be the party's new deputy.
The contest came after Littleproud fronted the media at short notice on Tuesday, accompanied by his wife Amelia, to declare he was stepping down, saying he was "buggered" and didn't have the energy to continue, although he will remain in parliament as the member for his safe Queensland seat of Maranoa.
Consider this: a regional party leader with a safe seat, respected by the sitting opposition leader, and having just resolved a destabilising Coalition split, resigns anyway. The announcement was a shock to almost all of his colleagues, though the Nine newspapers reported Hogan was informed ahead of time, suggesting Littleproud may have had a preferred successor who nonetheless lost the race.
Strip away the talking points and what remains is clear: Littleproud exhausted himself navigating impossible terrain. In May 2025, he announced the Nationals would not renew the coalition agreement with the Liberals over policy, before both parties reunited, and a second split took place in January under his leadership following a dispute over hate speech laws, before the parties got back together again. The mathematics of leading eighteen MPs and senators through two Coalition ruptures, each one threatening the party's identity and standing, evidently took its toll.
Canavan's victory carries genuine strategic weight. Canavan becomes the first Nationals leader to sit in the Senate, an unconventional choice that reflects the party's recent experience with lower house instability. He is a high-profile member of the Nationals' conservative wing, and his election may flag a shift to the right for a party that has already pressured the Liberal Party to scrap net zero emissions and support nuclear energy, with Canavan a long-standing and vociferous proponent of both positions.
Yet questions linger about whether rhetorical aggression solves the Nationals' core problem. Consistently poor polling showing Pauline Hanson's One Nation overtaking the Coalition in voter support has shaken the Nationals, who fear a wipeout at the next federal election, with seats in regional Queensland and NSW considered particularly at risk. In the NSW seat of Farrer, heading to a by-election on 9 May, early polling is brutal: the Liberals sitting at 16 per cent and the Nationals at five per cent, while Michelle Milthorpe, running as a Climate 200-backed independent, polled at 28 per cent and David Farley of Pauline Hanson's One Nation at 26 per cent.
The counter-argument deserves serious consideration: Canavan may lack Littleproud's exhaustion precisely because he has never carried the full weight of the role. Senator Canavan has been a key architect of the Nationals' policy platform over recent years and led its post-election review. He has credibility on energy policy, vocal opposition to Labor's spending, and a reputation for intellectual rigour. If the party does rebuild, it may do so under someone with the stamina Littleproud ran out of.
The Nationals have two years to get themselves up in the polls, with fights ahead against Labor, One Nation, and the teals. Whether that timeline is realistic remains another question entirely.