Will the Libs and Nats kiss and make up? Yes of course they will, because they both need the Coalition to have any sort of political future, but the fact that it’s purely a marriage of convenience is clearer than ever.
Neither of them appear to have learned the lesson from their recent near-death experience (this isn’t America yet – drift to the extreme right without doing anything about real issues at your electoral peril), and the Nationals’ four stated reasons for the divorce don’t make any sense.
1. Nuclear energy? (Aka more coal and gas and less renewables, while nuclear remains firmly over the rainbow, and we all pretend to believe in net zero.) No worries there. The Liberals’ new deputy Ted O’Brien is the chief nuclear apologist in Coalition ranks.
2. A Regional Australia Future Fund? This thought bubble was only concocted by David Littleproud last month. It’s a bit soon for the Nationals to be getting precious about it.
3. Acting on the supermarket duopoly profiting from price gouging? Labor has already pledged to give the ACCC divestiture powers in this regard. The power of big donors make it unlikely that any of the established parties will actually do anything.
4. Regional phone service obligations? Telstra has been responsible for the Universal Service Obligation for voice services in regional areas for many years, and the Coalition had almost as long in government to encourage them to deliver. The fact that data services are lagging behind is largely down to them.
Embarrassing dispute
In the absence of any meaningful vision for Australia, this embarrassing Coalition dispute actually comes down to a petty squabble about titles and salaries.
Five days after the election, the defection of Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to the Liberals meant that the Nationals were officially demoted to minor party status.
Nationals Senate leader and shooting enthusiast Bridget McKenzie faced the loss of travel perks, office space, and staff, with the Nationals also set to lose their shadow ministries and $60,000 apiece if the Coalition split proceeded.
The Northern Rivers’ own Kevin Hogan, now promoted to chief nodding duty at Nationals press conferences after the previous deputy Senator Perin Davey lost her seat, found himself in the same boat.
Since the threatened Coalition break-up, Sussan Ley’s Liberals have been furiously back-pedaling, allowing policy agreements to proceed in broad terms with the Nationals as part of a new Coalition agreement, although the party has not yet had its own opportunity to review what went so disastrously wrong, or consider the broader policy implications.
With the Nationals’ vote largely insulated by cultural reasons, it’s true they didn’t suffer as badly in this election as their Coalition partners, but there is no prospect of them becoming the actual opposition, which is why this is no more than grandstanding on their behalf.
Untenable?
As for the Liberals, Australia’s hopes that new leader Sussan Ley might take her party in a more moderate (electable) direction are already growing fainter. With her back to the glass cliff, and having narrowly won the leadership ballot, her position is dangerously untenable. The knives are reportedly also out for David Littleproud, with the usual suspects jostling for position.
If the gossip emerging from the Liberals can be believed, the Coalition’s drift to the crazy right and the resulting electoral wipe-out of Peter Dutton can largely be laid at the clay feet of Tony Abbott, Peta Credlin and John Howard, all proven electoral failures who inexplicably continue to be listened to by the right side of politics.
The resulting fragmentation of the Coalition is great news for Anthony Albanese, but perhaps not for Australia, which needs a real opposition (ideally anchored to reality) to hold Labor to account.
This week, for example, the government is poised to make a decision with truly global implications, whether or not to approve Woodside’s massive gas expansion on the North West Shelf of WA for forty years.
Alone, this project would generate more carbon emissions than everything else in Australia for more than a decade, contributing to the climate chaos which has already touched most of us.
WA’s Labor government has already given this crazy scheme the green light, and newly minted Environment Minister Murray Watt last week brushed aside the remaining objections from NGOs including Greenpeace and the Climate Council, saying Woodside’s proposal would not significantly impact threatened species or communities.
The prospects for a scientifically sane decision don’t look good, but we can depend on the ongoing Coalition soap opera to provide a useful distraction for all the mining parties whatever happens.
Federal parliament doesn’t return until 22 July. Perhaps there will be a functional opposition by then?
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
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