Australian politics explainer: Robert Menzies and the birth of the Liberal-National coalition

It has become an established fact of Australian politics that when the non-Labor side of politics is in power, the government will be a coalition of the Liberal Party and the National Party. This has been the case for almost 100 years, since the formation of the Country Party in 1920. Even on those occasions when the Liberals have won a House of Representatives majority in their own right, the Coalition has held