Australia's National Party is considering abandoning their federal coalition with the Liberal Party.

Prominent Nationals senator, Barnaby Joyce, has signalled he would support a power shift.

Nationals leader, Warren Truss, says the party's strong polling in the West Australian election has prompted him to contemplate splitting from the Liberals at a national level.

WA Nationals leader Brendan Grylls will meet with state Liberal leader Colin Barnett today in an attempt to form a government after neither Labor or the Liberals won enough seats to take power in Saturday's election.

The news is not so good at the federal level, where the Nationals lost control of Mark Vaile's former seat of Lyne, in WA, in Saturday's by-election.

The former Nationals stronghold was won by independent Rob Oakeshott, who won about 65 per cent of the primary vote.

Senator Joyce, who represents the Queensland Liberal National Party, says the Nationals should pick the most successful model when considering their federal future.

And he described the Lyne loss as a disaster for the party.

"You cannot argue against how the voters judge all this," he said.

"We just have to ... go down the path which is the most likely to succeed, which at this point in time looks like the West Australian model."

Federal Labor wary after defeat

A senior Australian government minister says the poor state election results for the Labor Party will make the prime minister cautious about calling an early election.

Labor's finance minister Lindsay Tanner says the party has suffered a major setback by losing majority government in Western Australia.

The election was called early and Mr Tanner says the result hasn't gone unnoticed.

"I suspect that future premiers, and indeed prime ministers, contemplating early elections will take due notice from the outcomes of the two early elections that have been called over the past few months and that may exercise some influence over their judgment," Mr Tanner said.

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