Despite there being plenty of rumours of the party's demise throughout its 110 year history, The Nationals WA and State opposition leader Shane Love says, "we're still here, and we're still speaking up for regional WA".
Mr Love's fighting words came in the wake of MP for North West Central, Merome Beard's announcement earlier this week she had resigned from the party and defected to the Liberals WA.
The move is set to have big consequences for the Nationals, as it means the Liberals now hold more seats in parliament and can legitimately stake their claim for the official title as the WA's State opposition.
Speaking to the media on Wednesday outside Parliament House, Liberals WA leader Libby Mettam made no secret of her intention to head into the next election as the alternative Premier, saying she was "ready and willing to lead the opposition".
As part of the State opposition mantle, the Liberals will have more resources allocated to them in the lead up to the 2025 State election.
Despite the Nationals' precarious position, now only holding three seats in the Upper House and the party's former leader and MP for the Central Wheatbelt Mia Davies announcing her intention to retire from politics at the next State election, Mr Love said the two parties would still need to work together to ensure the focus was kept on the Labor government.
"It's still sinking in for us all, what it means and people are asking what's going to happen next so we are going to have to find a path," Mr Love said.
"We will continue to talk to the Liberal party and we will continue to flesh out a course for 2025... it does get more and more pointed as we get closer to that date that we need to have a strong opposition that is capable of removing the Cook government from office."
At the time of writing, Mr Love said a draft letter was being prepared by their party's State president to the Liberals WA "to keep discussions going".
"We are reaching out to them," Mr Love said.
Stating that he was "disappointed" by Ms Beard's decision, Mr Love said he had only been notified of her resignation on Tuesday evening.
"I had a phone call from a journalist a few days prior who was asking about rumours of her move, so I tried to ground truth that with Mem but no response, so I didn't hear anything until 7pm Tuesday night when she sent a Whatsapp message," Mr Love said.
"I've also had a text message from Libby to say that she had spoken to Mem.
"I'm disappointed for the people of the North West Central electorate who supported Mem in her candidacy and did the hard yards, put in the time to stand a pre-poll, journeyed to different booths to help out where needed and put in their own time and money to assist her to become a member of parliament for the Nationals."
Acknowledging the changes in circumstance bring "a different dynamic to the situation" between the two parties, Mr Love said the parties needed to maintain their focus on keeping the government to account, as well as the situation confronting many people in regional WA, which he said was "frankly diabolical".
"This term of government started with the demise of regional representation from the Upper House as a first action of McGowan when he was elected with the majority in both houses," Mr Love said.
"In the time since we've seen the closure of industries, we've been seeing the threat of the closure of the live sheep export industry, and very weak action has been demonstrated from this government in terms of opposition to that.
"The FOI situation that we had, where there was no formal communication apart from perhaps some verbal communication between our Minister for Agriculture and the Federal Agriculture Minister when the live export panel was over here it was just staggering to see that level of neglect for regional WA.
"But when things get tough in the regions, the Nationals are there for them."
The result of the Electoral Redistribution Commission's recent proposal to amalgamate the two seats of North West Central and Moore into one new Mid West seat due to the small number of voters in each electorate, is expected by December 1.
However Mr Love said due to "hundreds and hundreds" of objections being lodged against the proposal, he was hopeful the two seats would remain.
"Once that's determined we will be selecting people that want to stand to represent the National Party and their chosen area in parliament," Mr Love said.
"I'm very confident that we will have good candidates, especially for Central Wheatbelt which is one of those seats which is seen as a traditionally strong National area where I would expect a good field of candidates to emerge."
