LNP leader Tim Nicholls would have been premier of Queensland by now if the Liberal and National Parties had remained separate entities in the sunshine state, former senator Ron Boswell says.
The National Party stalwart said there should be a "very strong debate" about whether the party should split.
"I think Tim Nicholls would have been premier of Queensland now if you had two parties working together, one trying to pick up the bush vote and Tim Nicholls campaigning for the vote in the southeast corner," he told ABC radio on Wednesday.
"There's two different markets and it's best attacked by two different political organisations that can sell to the markets."
He said many rural voters were no longer able to identify with the merged LNP, and that taking the National Party out of the bush left a political vacuum that had been filled by One Nation.
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"What relevance has the LNP got to a guy who works in a sugar mill or an abattoir? He doesn't understand it, it doesn't relate to him, so he looks somewhere else, and unfortunately he looks to One Nation," he said.
Mr Boswell said the LNP's decision to preference One Nation in 49 seats also turned many liberal voters away.
"In this election, a great many moderate liberals said if we've got to have a government that will rely on One Nation I would prefer to go Labor," he said.
"It's been the greatest own goal for the conservative voters to put the Labor party in."
