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The WA Nationals are taking their fight for electoral survival to the city after the party’s state council agreed to establish its first metro branch in the inner-city seat of Bateman.

The move will raise eyebrows in Liberal Party headquarters given the Nationals in August urged their opposition alliance partner not to run candidates against each other at the 2025 election because it would be a “savage waste of resources”.

Opposition leader Shane Love and Liberal leader Libby Mettam.Credit: Michael Genovese / Peter de Kruijff

After months of negotiations both parties, which currently form an “opposition alliance”, have also failed to reach an agreement on establishing a formal coalition that would see Liberal leader Libby Mettam elevated to opposition leader ahead of the next election.

Nationals party members who live near Batemen first floated the idea of a metro branch at its June state council, which was ratified at its last meeting on October 16.

The branch will be formally established when it meets for the first time at the Palmyra Rugby Club on Wednesday, a memo sent to Nationals Party members obtained by 6PR and WAtoday reveals.

Formal positions of president, vice president, secretary and treasurer will be elected at that meeting which was open to all party members and anyone in their network living in the Bateman area.

The establishment of a branch does not necessarily mean the party will run a candidate in the seat, currently held by Labor’s Kim Giddens, but it significantly increases the chances.

Internally, the Nationals are not ruling out establishing more metro branches and running candidates in them.

The move is partly a ploy to raise the party’s profile ahead of Labor’s upper house electoral changes, which have left the Nationals exposed in the upper house.

Under the move, Labor has abolished the region breakdown in favour of a statewide system similar to the federal Senate, which kills increased regional vote values that bolstered Nationals MP ranks for decades.

The Nationals hope that running candidates in metro seats will translate to more votes for the party in the upper house.

As part of the Nationals’ heads of agreement coalition proposal in August it would stand Nationals leader Shane Love aside for Mettam in return for plum upper house seats that would ensure the Nationals maintain a similar level of representation to what the party has currently.

But this plan appears to be in tatters after the Liberals agreed on a method of selecting the top positions on the upper house ticket at their state conference on the weekend and the Nationals failed to get a mention.

Mettam told 6PR on Monday that she was not worried about not having the formal opposition leader title.

“I’m not distracted by a job title … I’m very much focused on presenting as an alternative government and calling this government to account for the myriad of failures that have happened under their watch,” she said,

“The Nationals have been our partners in opposition and they will be our partners in government and I have no concerns about continuing to have a positive working relationship with the National Party.”

The Nationals declined to comment.

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