The Nationals are naval gazing again on their future structure, following devastating defeat in the federal seat of Lyne, but shock wins in key West Australian State seats.

In WA the Nationals now have potential to hold the balance of power, largely because the party cut itself loose from its Coalition partner three years ago and ran a strong stand-alone campaign.

While outspoken Queensland Senator, Barnaby Joyce, was supportive of a merger in Queensland and has previously mooted the idea for the federal party, he is now pointing to the success in Western Australia as a model for the federal Nationals.

His Senate and State colleague, Ron Boswell, says the Queensland merger is working quite well, bar some initial teething problems, but he remains unconvinced that a merger is definitely the right thing to do at a federal level.

Mr Anderson headed up a review of The Nationals following last year's election loss, looking at different options for the party's future.

The report has still not been made public and is being kept under wraps internally. Mr Anderson however, says he feels free now to express his thoughts publicly because he believes them to be in the interest of country people.

"I think we've reached the tipping point where we simply can't command the influence on our own any more and we now need a combined entity where all the country members are as one and speak resolutely for country people together instead of in the discordant way that they do at the moment," Mr Anderson said.

While restricting his remarks to the federal arena, he said it was time to face the reality that farmers don't command enough votes now to have much influence and it seems non-farmers in many rural seats will return Independents if they don't have the option of voting for a party that can provide a Prime Minister.

* Extract from a full report to appear in this week's Fairfax weekly rural newspapers.