Why the Coalition breakup is 'weird'

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Hi, Jules and Jez here, and every week on Not Stupid, we unpack the news of the week.

From the stuff that matters to the stories you're obsessed with.

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A trial separation or a full-blown divorce.

The Nationals have dumped the Liberals, but Nationals leader David Littleproud wants to make it clear they could get back together.

Well, maybe.

How much therapy are they going to need though?

It's a seismic change to politics as we know it.

So was it a challenge to Susan Lee and her leadership?

Or is it really about their own internals?

Welcome to politics now.

Hello, I'm Patricia Carvellis.

And I'm David Spears.

And David,

spectacular move.

The Nationals have done what has not happened for a very long time, my friend, and split up with the Liberals.

This was breaking as Fran and I were recording a podcast yesterday.

We gave people a taste of my shock more than anything, actually.

It was just mainly a shock episode.

Now we can go through the details.

The National Party leader, David Littleproud, says it was a principled decision.

Susan Lee labelled the move as disappointing.

But how do you read it?

What is this all about?

Well, I mean, we can go through what's caused this and I think in one sense and then and then come to what it all means and what's going to happen from here because this is fascinating as well on many levels.

What's caused this?

I kind of get the feeling this has been been building for some time and in a way the nuclear policy position they adopted in the last term sort of papered over the differences that are clearly there between some libs and some nats on net zero and how to get there.

I think though in the last

couple of weeks since the election we've clearly seen the Liberals wiped out in metropolitan Australia and the fear for David Littleproud and the Nationals is that this repositioning of the Liberal Party to reconnect with young voters, with women, with the political centre, is what's driving this.

There are the four policies he mentioned,

you know, and people have heard all of that.

Nuclear, of course, is one of them.

But they insisted that the Liberal Party immediately sign up to him.

He talks a lot about these principles, but he didn't have the principle of giving the Liberals some time to actually meet these demands or go through their policy review.

He says he respects they've got to go through their review.

Well, does he really?

Because he's not given them time to go away and work out their position on these demands, but instead wanted them written into the coalition agreement.

But I do think this this is more

in a bigger picture sense about this fear of where the Liberals now go and the Nationals are wanting to draw a line in the sand early and say, no, we're going to stick with our policy positions on these things, including nuclear, regardless of what the Liberals do, hence the split.

What do you reckon?

Well,

I think you're absolutely right.

Long time coming.

Why now?

Well, my view is actually it has a whole lot to do with the internal dynamics of the Nationals and that the internal dynamics of the Nationals have fueled, supercharged, in fact, the split up.

And so David Littleproud has been under enormous amounts of pressure.

We know that because

Matt Canavan, the senator, tried to knock him off.

He wasn't successful, but my mail is that he got more votes than I think David Littleproud expected.

And just on that,

we don't know the votes split.

Nor do many in the National Party.

Speaking to a bunch of Nats yesterday,

there's only two of them, I think, that know, the one who counted the votes and the other who's the scrutineer.

They do check each other's about like the person sitting next to you, but yeah, I don't think all of them know what the split was in the end on that vote.

I think that's right, but I think they're talking about what they think it is.

Right.

Whether that's accurate or not is a whole other story.

But either way,

he's got a part of the party room.

This is this is, you know, Canavan.

That's the pullout of net zero, a bit more of a radical approach, and it is quite much more radical.

David Littleproud

had tried to be more center-right, if you like, if I can use that sort of framing, and now is under enormous pressure.

And I think that is the framework in which I see the muscling up and saying, yeah, we will withdraw.

And they have.

It is, however, shocking on any metric to demand of your,

can I say, senior coalition partner, I think sometimes the Nats forget that they are the junior, but they are your senior coalition partner, that they sign up to policies before they have their own process.

Like to expect that Susan Lee could do that

is bizarre, isn't it?

Yeah,

that's my point.

I just think it is hard to fathom why they couldn't give the Liberals time to go through their process if they respect this process to give them time to do that.

clearly that wasn't the reason clearly as i say this is in my view a fear of where the liberals are going to go now under susan lee to do what they have to do to reconnect with the centre uh and you know we we don't yet know what that's going to mean in terms of you know where they land on net zero where they land on nuclear where they land on a 2035 target which at some point in the coming months anthony albanese you can be sure will bowl up he has to commit to a new 2035 climate target and i suspect he'll put legislation to the parliament as he did did with the 2030 target and the Liberals will be in a jam on what to do.

And so the Nationals are looking at all of this.

They're worried about this Liberal repositioning, this modernising that Susan Lee keeps talking about, the modern Liberal Party.

What does that look like?

We don't yet know, but the Nationals, or at least a majority of them, are fearful of this.

And I think you're right.

David Littleproud clearly was shaken last week by the leadership vote.

And

he's got an eye on that.

And that's why he's backed this move to split.

Not all of them in the Nationals did, though.

This was not unanimous.

There are some that I've spoken to who are deeply worried about where this leaves them.

They can, in the words of one, feel really good about themselves and shout at the clouds about all the policies that they now want to adopt, but they won't have a chance to deliver them for regional Australia because you need the Liberals, you need the coalition to be any chance of being in government.

And that's what they're sacrificing.

And that's the sort of bizarre part of this as well.

They basically told us, we'll get back together.

Well, the Nationals have said, you know, before the next election.

I mean, that's a pretty weird breakup, isn't it?

Where you're like saying, you know, we're probably going to be back together by then.

Well, think about the practical logistics here, right?

And the longer this separation goes on, I think the harder it is to get back together for a number of reasons.

Susan Lee.

As in relationships.

The longer they're apart, the harder it is.

So like Susan Lee,

whenever you're listening to this, it'll either be Thursday afternoon or Friday morning will announce her new liberal shadow ministry, right?

So she now has the ability to appoint all liberals to her front bench, which she will do.

And she'll be able to keep many more of her Liberal Party room happy because they'll get front bench positions and the staff and the pay that go with it.

At what point between now and the next election, if they reunite with the Nationals, does she and can she say to

eight or seven or nine, whatever it is, front benches, her shadow ministers, sorry, you've got to go because we're going to put Kevin Hogan and Bridget McKenzie and David Littleproud back on the shadow front bench.

That becomes very difficult to do.

What about the policy positions they adopt while they're separated?

How do they unwind those?

What about commitments that they make through the course of this term?

What are they worth if they could change once the coalition comes back together again?

So the longer this goes on, I think the harder and harder it is to unscramble the egg.

Absolutely.

And that goes to some of the critique we've heard.

John Howard, former Liberal Prime Minister

of a coalition government, who has pointed out that in 1996 he had such a thumping majority after he defeated Paul Keating and swept to government that he could have actually not used, not had the Nationals in there.

He had the numbers, you know, on his own.

But he included them because that's the concept of the coalition.

And as it turned out, it was a really smart idea, right?

Like a really strong...

period of 11 years that he was at the helm, which is pretty significant for the centre right of this country.

So he's sort of said, you can't do this for a long time.

He's described it as stupid.

You know, that's pretty searing critique.

And what does it do in the meantime?

Well, yeah, it makes it harder to get back together.

But my gosh, let's talk about the other side of this.

Oh, another gift to Anthony Albanese.

He must be like, what?

What gods are shining on me?

Absolutely.

It is remarkable the luck this man is having.

Exactly.

And look, before we get to the government, I think Jim Chalmers, the treasurer, his reaction to this yesterday was right when he said it's a seismic event in Australian politics.

And a seismic event means you do have ripple effects, you have aftershocks, and this is felt.

a lot wider than the epicentre, which is just the Liberals and the Nationals who are the most damaged.

But let's just go through some of the aftershock events, right?

What happens in the National Party?

Now that they're free from the

shackles of the Liberal Party, do they become even more economically and socially conservative, more focused on regional Australia?

Does this widen the fault line between the cities and the country in our political discourse?

If you have...

a party and the Nationals that's even more focused on the regional parts of Australia without any interest in trying to win back metropolitan seats.

What about for the Liberal Party?

Now that they're free from the Nationals, how does Susan Lee

reconcile the moderate and conservative wings of her own party that were deeply divided over the leadership only a week ago?

How do they settle and unite positions on nuclear, net zero, climate targets for 2035 and so on?

Or do we see more splintering within the Liberal Party?

Do they try to get back to the Nationals in a coalition or do they look to new coalitions?

As one said to me, rainbow coalitions with independence.

I mean, these are all sort of unknowns at the moment.

Where this goes for both Conservative parties is a little unclear.

Then we look at Labor and these ripple effects, aftershock effects for them.

You're right.

I can't recall a time when a government has been in a position like this.

I mean, the historians will argue about it, but consider it.

You've got a huge majority in the House.

You've got multiple pathways now in the Senate to pass legislation with the Greens, with the Liberals or with the Nationals.

You've got an opposition that's divided and demoralized in a way that we certainly haven't witnessed in decades.

It's an incredible opportunity to get some serious reform done.

And I think if they're going to stick with, well, we're just going to do what we took to the election.

I mean, you can understand that from a safe political point of view.

But will we look back and say, if they waste this moment, what a lost opportunity to actually take on some difficult reform when they've got this enormous political advantage.

That's absolutely right.

And, you know, so on the government side, huge, you know, moment.

On the opposition side, I mean, like, it is also an incredible,

you can when bad stuff happens to you and clearly what has happened to the coalition you know and some people would say well they made their own you know bed now they're lying in it but when bad stuff happens to you it's an opportunity as well right so you know for a long time since I think Morrison's miracle win which was still a scraping win but he won there's been a sort of decline that we've seen for the Liberals they need to have their own deeper conversations about what they want to be.

I mean, I'm working on these Four Corners, as you know.

There's a lot of talk about Menzies,

but what Menzies' ideas mean in a contemporary Australia, in terms of policy, the people you connect with, the kind of country you want to be, I don't think they have any of those answers, David.

And I think that's really contested in the party room.

It's where the rubber hits the road.

It's where the rubber hits the road.

What would Menzies do on the creation of an environmental protection agency?

It's so good.

The change in the environment laws that we know the government's coming back to.

Murray Watt's been given the task of fixing it this term.

What do the Liberals do now?

They don't have to worry about the Nationals.

What position do they take?

And as I say, the 2035 climate target, what position do they take on that?

There are differing views in the Libs.

That's why I'm just not sure we're at the end of this story just yet in terms of how this is going to shake out and how these aftershocks are going to be felt in both the Liberal Party and the National Party.

Now, David, let's just change the topic if we can.

I want to ask you about the National Press Club, Paul Erickson, the National Director of the Labor Party that ran this splendid campaign 2022 and 2025.

But I think really his high watermark has definitely been the election we've just seen, delivering them so many seats, they probably can't remember which ones they've won.

I'm serious, like, I don't think, I think a fun quiz would be testing Albanese to see if he knows all of the seats he has and the members in them.

Knowing him, he probably might know.

He would.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But you know what I'm saying?

Like, they have so many.

It's an abundance.

94 seats, they reckon.

They reckon they get Corwell, so they reckon they get a chance.

They haven't lost any potentially.

That's right.

Yeah, which hasn't happened for more than 50 years.

I was down there at the press club, just raced back from it.

In fact, Paul Erickson, it was a really interesting speech.

Look, a lot of the points he made do, you know, in hindsight now sound a bit obvious, but they're still interesting.

And he laid out the sort of five reasons, I suppose, why he thinks they won, building Australia's future, the focus on Medicare and doing that three months out from the election, not leaving it until five minutes before the election.

He had a crack at the Libs for leaving policies until so late.

They got up very early with Medicare.

He talked about their ascendancy in the economic debate, that rate cut earlier in the year, a real turning point.

And then building on that, the PM's performance.

He was on his game, Paul Erickson said.

And I think that's right.

And Peter Dutton was the fifth major factor, he said.

His record as a health minister, they used that to a great advantage.

But also his aggression, intolerance, lack of empathy, these were all sort of points that Paul Erickson was making about Peter Dutton's problems in the campaign.

Coming back to the split in the coalition, I thought a really interesting point he made.

He was looking historically at when the coalition used to oppose Medicare for years and years and years.

They opposed Medicare.

It took them way too long to realize that it was actually killing them.

Exactly.

People liked it and they shifted position.

That's decades ago.

And he linked that to their position on energy.

And he said,

the Liberals have taken the imbibed the wrong lesson from Tony Abbott's 2013 win.

They think it was because he was opposing the carbon tax.

In his view, it was because Labor was hopelessly divided, the Rudd Gillard wars and so on.

That's what won Tony Abbott that 2013 election.

Anyway, the Libs are still...

of the view that this climate and energy transition can be fought.

We can bowl up nuclear or oppose net zero.

His view is they're not going to be successful until they drop nuclear, get rid of that, and wake up to what's happening with climate and energy and likened it to their big mistake on Medicare all those decades ago.

That's an interesting comparison.

We'll see, I suppose, in the fullness of time if that's right.

I have spoken to

many senior people in the Liberal Party as I've been working on this story, and a lot of people do say that

as we look at history, there is maybe

a wrong analysis of how Tony Abbott swept to power as well so that on that point

that you know he did win a landslide but yeah against a bitterly divided government that had just rolled so many prime ministers so like context matters people do generally vote governments out because they get kind of tired of them and and they were right to probably get very tired of what they were seeing in the Labour Party at that time.

So it's interesting.

No, I think that's right.

Just look, one other note from Paul Erickson in the question and answer session.

He said about, I don't know, two, three, four times.

So I wrote it out.

I found it interesting.

You know, he was prodded, including by me, a few times with various questions on what should Labor do with this political moment they've got, right?

And

he said press elect me.

Oops.

Sorry.

He didn't actually.

I'll come back to that.

But no,

as a campaign guru, what's your advice?

How do you go about enacting reform, bringing the people with you and so on?

He kept saying Labor needs to stay focused on delivering the agenda we were elected on.

I thought it was interesting because he did say that line a few times.

He seemed to be saying don't go right out beyond what you took to the people, even though

circumstances since the election have really advantaged Labour.

But when I asked him, well,

how do you bring the people with you if you want to go beyond that?

Because there clearly is an appetite for fixing the budget and getting on with some serious reform right now.

And he did say, look, yes,

you've got to bring the people with you.

But that's about all he would say on that.

In terms of his own future, he said he'd make a decision at some point between now and the end of the year on whether he's going to stay on as a professional

campaigner, I suppose, as Secretary of the Labor Party,

or not that he said it in as many words, run for Parliament, but he's not looking, he said, at the by-elections that

might be coming up.

Not that there are any we know of coming up, but there's been speculation about Mark Greyfuss leaving at some point soon after being dumped from cabinet.

But no, he's not looking anytime soon at jumping into Parliament.

He'll make a call between now and the end of the year.

Soon.

It's such a subjective word.

Well, David, I've I've enjoyed myself thoroughly just trying to get my head around what is, I mean, you know, it makes the election seem

like it was a gazillion years ago and was meaningless, all this shenanigans after.

Seriously, I mean, Pika, you and I have covered this stuff for a long time.

I can't recall a period like this.

I mean, the election result and then the couple of weeks that have followed.

Wild.

It's so wild and so interesting and makes this podcast even more worthy.

Thank you, David.

I'll speak to you soon.

Cheers.

And David, of course, will be back on Saturday with Insiders on Background.

I'll be back tomorrow with Fran Kelly twice in a week with me and Fran, and we'll be taking your brilliant questions to the partyroom at abc.net.au.

And you can email the show

and

record your questions.

I will see you tomorrow.

Bye.