Leaky Liberals and Optus email blunders

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Welcome to the party room.

I'm Brett Worthington, joining you from Ngunnawal Country here in Canberra.

And I'm Mel Clark, also right beside you on Ngunnawal Country at Parliament House.

It's certainly the place to be this week because I know in many parts of the country kids went back to school this week.

Some are going back next week.

But I think you know the energy when kids are back at school after holidays.

There's a lot of chaos, a lot of excitement, also a lot of disorganisation.

And I feel like Parliament House in Senate estimates week is a bit like kids coming back to school.

What do you reckon, Brett?

There's real hurry up and wait energy about it.

Bureaucrats kind of here, kind of waiting for their moment on the program, and then it gets delayed after hour after hour after hour.

There's politicians keen to get something for social media clipped up.

There's ministers trying to avoid any level of an answer.

It's quite the week.

There's sort of a nervous energy about the places.

There is definitely a lot of energy, excess energy.

There's a lot of chaos.

There's even a lot of bells ringing for divisions, which is also a bit like school.

I'm not sure if I can drag the analogy out any further, but I think you get my vibe.

Yeah, I think I'll be bringing it down.

Exactly.

So look, I think we need to go through, with Parliament back, what the government has been trying to do this week.

It came to this week with a plan.

It wanted to talk about the housing policies that it had promised in the election.

It wanted to have focus on the bailout for the Glencor Mount Isa mine.

But instead, they've been forced to deal with the unexpected issues, the fallout from the Optus outage, and, of course, the return of ISIS members who've been living in Syria and have come back to Australia.

That agenda's really been forced on the government when it wasn't really what it wanted to focus on this week.

So, let's go through all of that.

And then, of course, we need to look at the opposition because the rolling internal ructions have really continued this week, following following from last week's focus on Andrew Hasties' self-demotion to the backbench.

This week we've seen a lot of leaking of criticism.

We've seen quite a few people pop their heads up and say, look, we need to focus on the job at hand.

It's just robust debate, but also robust debate that everyone needs to play nicely.

There's been a few pull your heads in without saying pull your heads in remarks.

So I want to go through how that's playing out in the Liberal Party and where the Liberals have really focused this week in what has been a bit of a messy week of Parliament.

Well the perfect person to pull it all apart with us is Charles Croucher, Nine News' political editor.

He's here with us in the Parliament House studios.

Charles, lovely to see you.

How are you going?

Have you got the back-to-school vibes?

Oh, very back-to-schooly.

A little truncated by the long weekend here as well.

So it's actually a nice way to get in with just three days of parliamentary sittings plus the estimates, which drags out and makes every day feel like seven.

Well, it really does because for people who don't know, they run late into the night and they've got a schedule outline but it never stays to the schedule well imagine being the azio boss mike burgers one of the most powerful figures in the country you've got a time and then you find out oh sorry we're not going to get to you today well i think some of them secretly hope you get to that

they want to be

released those that are sitting around waiting and waiting and knowing that every second that ticks away is one second they're not on the stand so yeah so but nonetheless while you're waiting to either be grilled or be released, you have to sort of hang around Parliament House waiting for your turn.

You know, there are public servants that work for weeks ahead of estimates hearings to prepare for any possible question they might get asked.

And sometimes they get grilled and sometimes it's all just a bit of a waste of energy.

It's a strange week.

I think the one that was really up in lights as a key part of that was Optus.

Now the most obvious issue that was going to be brought up as part of this week and as much as the Minister's Office tried to prepare to work out what the questions will be, you saw this fiery exchange right from the start.

You had Sarah Hanson-Young from the Greens, Sarah Henderson from the Coalition, little that unites the two typically.

Even David Pocock, the Independent, really going after senior figures in the communications department to find out who knew what and when about this optus outage that's been linked to three deaths.

Can I clarify then?

When did the department first become aware?

On the Friday.

The Friday afternoon at 3.30, we were made aware of.

So can I just say this opening statement is incredibly misleading?

Well, what I'm trying to do, Senator, is

that you're not going to be able to all the information that we have become.

Excuse me, can I just look?

Yeah, so Charles, take us through this because the government has been making the point all the way along that they see this as an optus failure.

The problem is the outage that the Optus network had, and that's where the attention should be.

But what we've seen come out through estimates suggests there's perhaps broader questions about how this was handled on a governance side.

Take us through that.

Perhaps.

I think that the main fault still lies with Optus, and that's clear.

There seems to be the timeline that has emerged, and this is through FOI information and also through estimates that came out is that on Thursday there were two emails sent to what was an old email address from Optus effectively saying there's been an outage that they believe I think the exact wording was around 10

people had been impacted and that they were checking it doing the welfare checks.

Another email five minutes later said effectively that's that's about all that's done.

Now, the issue is A, that information was wrong.

B, the email address was wrong.

So, in the meantime, ACMA began investigating this.

They say that they called Optus and like that 10-figure seems wrong,

but didn't get a response for 24 hours.

The minister's office has been made aware, and they've got ACMA to look at it as well.

And then 24 hours later, that's then when people started to realise quite how bad it was.

And it seems like that's come from

both to ACMA and to Minister Wells' office through a text message from Optus to her chief of staff, effectively saying, we've got a big issue, you need to call me here.

So, yeah, I mean, the opposition has tried to make this about the minister.

It still feels to me largely like an Optus mistake across a few things.

Now, there'll be methods to fix this.

Sarah Hanson-Young made a point that, you know, if you're the watchdog, this is what you should be watching and was sort of directing her anger towards the watchdog itself.

So beyond that, the argument about, you know, whether this was leaked out or came from an FOI, it was an FOI that was submitted for those emails.

The Minister's Office then released them.

That's how it sort of all first came out late last month.

And now we know the full details there.

So I'm just not sure this is the right path to take down it for the opposition.

But at the moment, they're sort of trying for anything they can.

I think you've really nailed it there because, let's face it, the opposition needs an issue to coalesce around.

And we'll talk a little bit about that as we go along.

But there does seem to be a level of unity that this is an attack that they can all get on board with, that they can focus some some attention on the government.

They've really narrowed in on Annika Wells in particular.

They're not saying this is a matter for the Prime Minister.

They're targeting Annika Wells.

And Brett, we've seen that in question time as well.

That's been the strategy.

Keep pressing Annika Wells.

How vulnerable do you think she is?

Even with Optus having a lot to explain here, is she vulnerable in this moment?

Well, there is a...

It sort of emerged again on yesterday's part of estimates about, hang on, was your office notified as part of these emails?

Yes, they went to the wrong department, but your ministerial office was notified.

So why weren't they telling you at least there was an issue until the next day?

I think that the Annika Wells argument, as has been pushed out by the whole of the government, is that...

all of these issues are coming late at the end of the 13 hours of the outage.

That's when it's starting to emerge, that this issue was long absolutely in play, and that's why they think the focus needs to be better placed on Optus, about why those reporting wasn't happening earlier.

But on the question about Annika Wells, I think it's been a fascinating counter to last week.

Last week, coming out of that meeting with Optus, probably mistakenly saying I'm a new minister, was interpreted in a way of people saying, well, you're trying to shift responsibility.

They're in question time, question after question, up there staring down Susan Lee, staring down Melissa McIntosh.

Minister, if Optus and Optus alone is to blame, why did Labor vote against the interests of Australians who just want triple zero to work when their lives are on the line?

We've had a bit of time to look over the proposed amendments by the member for Lindsay and I must say, unfortunately for all of us, they are quite poor.

At best, the amendment is completely redundant.

If I was the Prime Minister, I'd be pretty buoyed by the fact that not only did the minister get up there and keep the pressure on Optus, was willing to throw a punch at the coalition.

When a coalition is seeking the tiniest of cracks, Annika Wells maintained her line throughout the whole debate there.

Certainly not any of this new minister questioning.

Yes, Brett's correct.

It was cross the brief, Minister Wells, and prove that.

And then it was sort of that message that perhaps a mum of young kids from Queensland is not your first target in the future.

I've dealt with nigga monsters in you before.

I've seen Caleb's.

But it's won after the Lions and the Broncos have won everything.

So the government has had to spend nonetheless a lot of time trying to explain its position and its view.

And we've seen a little bit of this when it comes to the issue of returning ISIS brides.

So women who went over to Syria during the reign of the ISIS Caliphate as it existed then.

They've been stuck in

refugee camps effectively

with children, with little ability to return.

Now some of them have made their own way back to Australia with their children.

The opposition has really tried to probe for details on this.

Charles, we haven't heard much from Tony Burke other than when he's had to answer questions in Parliament.

The government doesn't want attention on this.

The opposition does want attention on this.

How is the politics playing out here?

Yeah, the government still hasn't sort of nailed its lines on this either.

It's the one issue where I think there's been a couple of...

interviews, not from Tony Burke, because we haven't heard much from him, but from other ministers and other, we're like, ah, this is just, it's not as clean as they usually are or have become.

The acrobatics to get out of saying anything.

It's painful to be.

Certainly post-election.

And that extends to estimates as well.

The opposition's line of questioning here seems to be correct in that it's not just that they came back.

And I think most people would understand if someone's got an Australian passport and is only an Australian citizen, you know.

You can't stop them from returning.

They have a right to.

We don't leave people stateless, and nor should we.

That's sort of a generally accepted practice.

And

because then you start going down the list of, you know, what crimes do we leave people stateless for?

And it gets to a bad place if there's a bad person in power.

But monitoring, surveying, making sure the ideals of this horrific belief system and organization and sort of bastardisation of a religion that emerged with ISIS is the hard part.

So if they haven't done anything illegal, given that they are not the fighters themselves, but the children or the wives of those fighters,

you can't arrest them, you can't lock them up.

because they haven't broken a law here.

So how do you maintain that level of public safety or level of public comfort while still maintaining the rights that these people do have?

And I think we got a little bit of information more from estimates and say from Tony Burke and the House of Representatives.

So it was confirmed as the week went on that the party of six was two women and four children.

Two of the children were already Australian citizens.

Two were given citizenship by descent.

Can I just jump in on that point, Brett?

Because this is one of the things I think I've said gets my goat before.

And this is another example of it, in that when government ministers have been asked about, well, can you just give us some information about this cohort, they've refused to and said, well, we can't give information.

We can't give information about this.

There's privacy provisions.

We don't discuss cases.

That's not true because if there were truly national security issues, it wouldn't be coming out from public servants in parliamentary hearings.

You are having ministers who are refusing to give information that can and should be made public and it is being left to public servants to detail.

And we saw that when it came to the Nauru deal for deporting people and and we've seen it again in this case, and it bothers me greatly that ministers are refusing to answer questions about information that can and should be made public, and they are leaving public servants to do it under questioning.

Well, but

that's the perfect segue there.

What I found fascinating was in the coalition prosecuting the Optus issue, it meant that all the questions were essentially going to Annika Wells.

Now, unless I missed it at some point, I think Di Lee, the independent from Western Sydney, is the first person to pose the question that goes to Tony Burke.

Will your government give my community in Fowler an absolute guarantee that none of the return ISIS-affiliated women and children will be settled in our community?

And I thank the member for Fowler for raising the issue in the House.

Those opposite have given the impression in the media they were going to, but once they get in here appear for some reason unwilling to raise the issue.

Okay, let's just park the fact that he's one of the most senior government ministers in the cabinet.

He is the manager of government business.

He can determine the parliamentary schedule.

If Tony Burke wanted to make a statement in the House of Representatives, there are no shortage of opportunities.

He also could have said yes to interview requests.

He could have then gone and done

stroll up to the breast calendar.

Yes, if we just park the kind of cute outrage that existed there, it was only there that there was a veiled reference to the confirmation there.

Here was a chance with which the government has now spent three days of putting front benches through tortured interviews, tortured estimates hearings, where the minister finally conceded that, yes, there are six people.

If the government's position is people have returned in the past, governments have supported that in the past from both sides of the political aisle, we have full confidence in the security agencies to both monitor the cohort outside of Australia, but also trust and be assured that when people return to Australia, they're not returning by accident, that there is an awareness of what's going on here.

We learn from estimates that it was in June that this cohort was first flagged with Tony Burke's office by the Federal Police, that then early, about mid-September, they then say, we're expecting this plane, and then here is the date, and then finally confirmed at the end of September that the people have arrived.

The mess that the government has created here is one that's created on its own handling.

It's been a communications issue.

And you feel for the rubbish that have got to sit there and defend the government line when they've got nothing they can say.

Well, yeah, they certainly could have said all the way along, this is not a new phenomenon.

We have had people return, including people who were engaged in fighting, not just the wives and children of, and we monitor them and we have a system in place.

And now that there are a small number of additional people in that category and we have the systems in place to make sure that safety is provided as much as possible.

But that argument hasn't been made, which I find really curious.

Well that's that's the opportunity right because you're right it's not new but to your point Mel that is that that ease of just hiding behind a privacy or a legal issue when perhaps it's not there

that is it could become a problem longer term.

I think it also sits in an environment of a week where you've seen a new federal police commissioner come out and Chrissy Barrett is the first woman to lead the organisation and has made clear that social cohesion is going to be one of her top tier issues that she's going to look to address.

She's setting up some different groups across the country which are going to be focused on working with Five Eyes countries but then also with State Police and really kind of focusing in on what is happening to disrupt levels of social cohesion within the community.

The government's ability to front foot on that message that it's sending gets distracted upon by the fact that you're kind of awkwardly fumbling this other issue which is completely off to the side of what's being talked about here.

So these are the issues that the government has had to spend a lot of time either dealing with or trying not to deal with.

It did want to start this week talking about housing, and it has wanted to make a virtue of the support it is extending to Glencore's operations in Mount Isa.

This is part of the bigger Future Made in Australia agenda that the government over both terms has really wanted to put forward.

It does, I think, if we take a bit of a broader view, mark a really interesting change, the intervention in Glencore that we're seeing in recent years of government willingness to step in for companies that are not profitable in their operations, or parts of their operations are not profitable.

Glencore is certainly a profitable enterprise on the whole.

Its coal operations are very profitable, but its copper refining processes are not.

So, Charles, what do we make of the government's approach to being willing to step in on a range of heavy industries.

Is this a concern about the changing global environment around security of critical minerals and other key resources?

Is it a slightly different perspective post-pandemic of how far we're willing to spend taxpayers' money?

It can be all above as well.

Plus this protection of supply chains in the post-sort of pandemic era when all of a sudden there are companies around the world and countries around the world that are propping up companies.

I mean, Donald Trump's doing it in his own way with some of the bailouts for the agricultural industry, plus the tariffs.

I mean, that's going to require bailouts in the future and will soon.

I expect we'll see more of it.

And it is a lot of money, but also they are industries that Australia effectively needs.

I mean, Andrew Hastie made a big pitch and push about bringing back Australian car manufacturing.

I mean, this was one of the discussions we had 11 years ago with Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott about whether you'd bail out Ford and Holden and keep South Australia building cars.

So, look, it becomes expensive.

Andrew Proban on 9 last night had a great story with the nugget there that there'll be gas reservations will become part of the government's policy, or at least they're looking really seriously at gas reservations in the same way you see in Western Australia that will be directed towards heavy industry.

So there is now an acknowledgement that simply letting the free market run wild in Australia when it comes to manufacturing won't survive.

And I think that that's where it's interesting in that the $3.5 billion you've roughly seen now spent across federal and state governments to prop up smelting and refining.

Now, the industry minister, Tim Ayers, who was up there in Queensland, back here in Canberra today, really trying to talk up this is about sovereign risk and making sure that a future made in Australia domestic agenda can be there, but also protect jobs and ensure you have the capabilities going forward more broadly.

This is a critical industrial capability for Australia and there is global trade imbalances, subsidies in some markets, volatility that is making it an unfair playing field for Australian copper producers in global markets.

However, two elements exist there.

One, China.

The government will not say that one of the headaches that they've got in these sectors is the result of China and subsidising.

There's more obscure language about difficulties in market conditions.

And people who are markets that are subsidised.

Let's go for China heavily subsidising its domestic industry.

The increase of supply that you see coming from China comes at a time then lowers global prices that Australian companies will face.

But in that mix also is the increased electricity prices that these companies are having to pay.

And the coalition will say these bailouts are the result of you government not having smart enough energy policy.

Yeah and Charles is right to point to gas as the key.

Like this is where we will be talking in the coming weeks.

Madeleine King has been trying to delicately walk the line of saying, yes, we need reform here, but investors and countries and companies that we already have deals with, don't worry, we're still a safe destination to engage with in business terms.

At the same time, you then have prominent backbenchers like Ed Husick

coming out, as he did on afternoon briefing this week, to say, we need to stop countries we're selling gas to, then on selling it for cheaper than Australians can buy it or Australian companies or individuals can buy it on the market here.

So I think this is something we can see a lot.

It cuts through a younger audience.

It's one of those issues through people like Pundas Politics and sort of online and social media sites like that that really have honed in on gas being one of those things.

And if you can get it cheap.

DRT, we're not getting enough from our taxation.

It's being unsold from where we are.

They push that message higher.

And if this can be used as a stopgap measure for industry until serious, be it solar, hydro, wind,

nuclear, whatever the solution is, then it's probably worth it to keep those jobs going until, but it can't be forever because it's going to become too expensive, right?

So it is a great way to keep industry in Australia and in regions that need it, but there has to be a solution and an end date, and that's the hardest part of this.

And a fascinating voice in this will be Andrew Hastie on the coalition backbench.

Since we last recorded the party room, he has gone to the backbench, but he's not going quietly.

When it was made clear that I wouldn't have any leadership in that role, I thought it was time for me to depart because...

Essentially, I want to be able to speak about immigration, which I think is a critical issue.

I wondered whether he's got some earplugs.

The seat that he's got in the parliament is right next to one of the loudest Liberal backbenchers, Antoni Grassen.

No stranger to chirping.

Tom and the front bench as well.

No stranger to getting kicked out of the parliament.

As we look now at almost a week on from where Andrew Hastie announced his departure, where is the coalition at in terms of the robust debate or infighting, as others might like to put it, Charles?

It's bad, right?

The news poll that came out at the start of the week was bad and that was taken before Andrew Hastie walked away.

It's bad in a few ways.

I don't think there's some grand strategy here from Andrew Hastie where he's planning to launch a leadership bid on the final week of the year and things like that.

I trust him when he says that's not what's going on.

He wants to guide the policy platform that's being set up.

The problem with that long and drawn out and thorough policy discussion that's going on is it just leaves a vacuum for people to fill and it's going to drag the conversation in the places where Liberal Party voters in particular

get their news

or branch members get their news.

It's going to drag that conversation sort of further away from what seems to be the mainstream and seems to where Susan Lee wants the decisions on nuclear or net zero to land or immigration, even.

So, the other problem that goes further down the track is you've all of a sudden got a lot of prominent public, good communicators on the backbench, and be it, you know, Jane Hume, Sarah Anderson, Jacinta now, Jeb Price, now Andrew Hastie, you know, Tony Passon, the Nationals, you've got Barnaby Joyce and Michael McCormack.

Like, it's a lot of former ministers, shadow ministers, deputy prime ministers that are sitting there with a pretty loud microphone who know how to use it if they want to.

And that can become a problem.

And not many to pick from.

Well,

it's not that exactly right.

Yeah, you can't, you know,

the luxury of having some sitting on the back bench.

But it just means that in the future, if there is a mistake from the opposition leader or if those polls get worse or don't improve, then in 12 months' time, when those formerly safe MPs are now starting to worry about their job, that's when the rumblings can start.

And And I think we have seen quite a few Liberals finding their voice this week, and whether that's been in public forums or in private forums.

We have seen reports of inside the Liberal Party room Mary Aldred expressing her frustration about people leaking.

We have seen leaking comments apparently made by Peter Dutton to the Liberal Party's formal review of their election outcome and criticisms contained within that of Andrew Hastie.

So we're seeing that sort of behind the scenes that there is discussion and discussion going on, be it that becomes a problem, that one, sorry to jump in, but that one out of the review is particularly problematic because if people can't trust in the sanctity of the review, they're going to check what they say when they go in there and you're not going to get the best picture of what went wrong at the last election to fix the next one.

So that's really one that...

Some inside the party room are worried about.

Particularly given that's quite a tighter held forum.

It's not the Liberal Party room where there's lots of people that could conceivably be leaking.

There's only a few people who could have the information of what Peter Dutton said.

And James Patterson was pretty firm on that earlier this week, where he said, I don't know where it's come from, but if this has come from any current politician or their staff, this will not end well for you.

Stop playing these games.

It was a pretty clear line from him.

And James Patterson is one of a few, I think, this week who've taken the opportunity of media interviews to say this needs to stop.

The leaking needs to stop.

A lot of the public bickering about policy needs to stop.

I did enjoy Michael McCormack this week saying, look, people need to realise that policy development is a long and hard game.

His line about policy not being a drive-through Mac is.

Well, it's not a McDonald's drive-through.

People can't just expect that they just turn up at the window and get the policy they want.

It is a slow process.

Let's just hope it's not a slow burn.

Very much

a public rebuke to some playing out the policy debate publicly, which is interesting because he's doing that too.

He is enjoying it.

But we also saw Alex Hawke, who is a key lieutenant of Susan Lee as the leader, manager of opposition business in the house, key factional player, who rarely speaks.

He doesn't give many interviews.

And he came out and said, look,

there are policy debates to be had, but We need to come to decisions.

And when we do, people need to accept if they are on the losing side.

Yeah, there's many times your view doesn't prevail, and how you handle that is the mark of your character and your ability to work in a team environment.

And I think that's a message for everybody.

Quite a big whack from Alex Hawku, who usually makes his interventions privately rather than publicly.

Fairly optimistic, too.

So, where does this leave the opposition as it heads into the tail end of the year?

Has pressure grown on Susan Lee to try and settle on some of these policy issues more quickly, as some are asking?

Or Charles, is she going to try and stay the course of letting a review process take as long as it needs to settle?

I assume so.

You're kind of pot committed now, right?

You've seen off two people

go from the shadow cabinet to the backbench.

You've proven your metal as Susan Lee and that you're happy to let that happen.

Now it is just

stave the hold off is right and like you survive until Christmas.

And then Nancy Pelosi used to always say in the US you've got to win August, which is the summer month.

for Susan Lee you've got to win January and February right you've got to come back with something to show and then who knows what happens next year once you have a policy then you can start selling then

you you're in part relying on government scandal but there always is like that will happen at some point and then you can start making a mark and the only benefit of being at 27 or 28 in the polls is that feasibly it's more likely to go up than down.

You hope so.

Well, if it's clearly not going to go down,

that's over.

Nancy Pelosi was also pretty chill with, say what you want in your local community, because if you win that seat, we stay in the majority.

And I think that for the coalition, in recent years, there's been that comment, the tail has been wagging the dog, which is a focus on the nationals, dictating too much with where the coalition is going.

The conservative rump faction, wing, whatever you want to call them, have been very vocal for the best part of the last five, six years plus.

The moderates, it seems, in this term and increasingly this week, willing to step out and willing to muscle up.

So you've seen Andrew Bragg, Bragg, Mary Aldrich, like you were saying, not wanting the future of their party to be dictated by what they are suggesting is a vocal minority within their party.

That will be a fascinating element to watch how those dynamics play out privately, but then also publicly.

It's high risk.

Absolutely.

Because it could go wrong.

Look at Kemmi Badenock and the Conservatives.

Exactly right.

I couldn't even spell Britain on the chocolate that they were giving out.

But before we go, we know the Prime Minister's heading off on a week's rest next week.

He's then off to Washington after that.

I don't know anything.

He's not getting married, is he, Charles?

I'm assured not.

Assured not.

This is the favourite discussion in the halls of parliament at the moment, but how much weight do you put on that assurance?

Pretty heavily, but I don't know.

It would be a good time to do it.

I also think it would be very hard for anyone to find out when he is.

I think this is going to be fairly tightly guarded.

I think there'll be parts of the government that would be happy if it happened quietly and it disappeared.

They never had to talk about it.

You release a photo, everyone's happy, and there might be a might be a December thing.

All right, everyone, keep an eye on your social media feeds.

Charles Croucher, thank you very much for talking through the very messy week with us on the Party Room.

Questions without notice?

Are there any questions?

Members on my route.

The Prime Minister has the call.

Thanks very much, Mr.

Speaker.

Well, then I give the call to the Honourable, the Leader of the Opposition.

Thank you, Mr.

Speaker.

My question is to the Prime Minister.

The bells are ringing, and that means it's time for question time.

And this week's question comes from Ollie.

Hi, Party Room.

This is Ollie from Tasmania.

After the Liberal Party's poor performance at the election, there was commentary about how Peter Dutton's ability to keep the Liberal Party and Coalition united potentially limited the robust debates needed to build a strong policy platform.

Now, while we don't know what the outcome of the current instability within the Liberal Party and Coalition will be, is the type of seemingly destructive infighting we see unfolding now, the exact thing Peter Dutton was able to avoid, necessary to rebuild the Liberal Party and Coalition.

Would love to know what you think.

Cheers.

Well, that's a really good question, Ollie, because I think it's one that the Liberal Party itself is trying to figure out.

I think you're absolutely right that Peter Dutton was able to keep the party pretty unified.

And that came after a really bruising period in government where we saw the internal battles over things like climate policy, see prime ministers torn down.

It was a key part in the shifts that went from Malcolm Turnbull coming and going from the leadership in Tony Abbott's rise and eventual fall.

So the fact that Peter Dutton did keep the party unified in his period of leadership was something that was seen as a strength of his.

I think there seems to be a fair bit of agreement that the lack of policy development in that period was a real problem at the election.

So the question is, what happens now?

Do you try to keep the party united but perhaps risk not having the battle over the policy that you need to or if you have the policy to battle policy battle can you come through the other side?

Does having the policy battle lead to unity or does having the policy battle lead to division?

My view is the party needs to have the battle and if that's going to be messy and if that's going to be a period of disunity that's a consequence of doing the needful.

I think the policy battle will determine whether or not they can unify.

It will lead to one path or another.

It can lead to a complete breakdown and we've seen that historically with the Labor Party and the split with the DLP over very serious policy differences that ultimately couldn't be bridged and that damaged Labor's success for a fairly long period of time but they were irreconcilable differences that couldn't be papered over with policy fig leaves.

I think the Liberal Party is at that point.

It will need to make a decision.

We'll have a messy period in between and it will either be everyone bucks up and gets behind an agreed position and a way forward, whatever that might be, or there'll have to be a split.

And I think previously we've seen members of the Liberal Party who haven't been able to get on board.

I'm talking about people like Corey Bernardi, who've decided that they can't abide by a compromise position and they want to go and strike it off on their own.

That hasn't been successful.

And it's typically meant a short-lived political career thereafter, once you leave the fold.

And we've seen that with various iterations of Family First as well, seeing that is there a space that's a bit further to the right that can be populated.

It hasn't been successful.

I don't know.

What do you think, Brett?

I think that you've seen more broadly as part of the Susan Lee pitch, as we've talked about here on the podcast, is she's trying to bring a more professional culture to the federal opposition.

So you saw that last week with the charter letters that she sent.

Now, that charter letter led to Andrew Hastie leaving the front bench because he felt that he wasn't being respected appropriately in terms of overseeing immigration policy.

That is a sign that Susan Lee is wanting that clear policy development to come.

I thought the interesting development this week was where Peter Dutton ends up back in the headlines inadvertently because of this leak.

Because of the leaks that we discussed.

Now, if you look into the reporting that it says there, part of Peter Dutton's frustration was leveled at Andrew Hastie and suggests that Andrew Hastie didn't do the policy work.

It opens up the question of, well, if the policy work was done, were you even going to listen and hear it anyway?

Because the broader criticism that was being leveled from other front benches was that policy work was not being taken up by the opposition leader's office and then being put forward.

So there is a heavily contested issue about who was responsible for the lack of policy in the last term.

It was evident during the campaign that it wasn't there.

when you saw it.

How Susan Lee can manage that while also managing everything else, while also finding herself,

you don't want to say embattled, but embattled so soon into her tenure will be one of the great tests here.

And I just think we don't know.

We're so early in the term.

And the polling numbers, it's early.

I don't know of anyone who's thinking about an election right now.

So there will be some calm.

Definitely not me.

I don't want an election.

Very much yet to be seen, Ollie, where the Liberal Party will land here.

But the Liberal Party is, of course, part of the coalition.

And we know some of these big fights are going to be tests not just within the Liberal Party, but the Liberal and National Parties.

I think, just as a final thought from me, one of the really key things for the Liberal Party here in particular, because I think there are are different ways the coalition can manage differences between the Liberal Party and the National Party.

It's much harder the internal issue of having disagreement over major policy issues.

I think what will be key is will be once a policy position comes out as the dominant one with the most support, how those who are on the losing side respond.

Because I think we've seen, and I will put this back in the Tony Abbott camp, because I think he was key to bringing this culture of continuing continuing to fight the battle even when you've lost.

And to some extent Tony Abbott was rewarded by that because even when he was on the losing side of an argument, he would continue to push it and at times he was able to prevail.

But it came at the expense of unity in the party.

And in some ways, it deepened divisions within the party.

But because at times it led to success for Tony Abbott, I think we've seen a culture develop of even if we ultimately put all our cards on the table, we have a vote, we lose the vote, we're in the minority, we still keep chipping away.

That culture of continuing to chip away, I think, is what has led to the position we are now.

So I think the real question of whether the Liberal Party can have its disagreements, but still function successfully as a party and be a party of government will come down to how those who are on the losing side of the debate respond.

All right.

Hopefully, Ollie, that answers your question.

It might not, but there's a lot of unknown in politics, that's for sure.

Well, if you've got a question like Ollie, you can send them our way.

We do love getting them, particularly fond if it comes in a voice note.

You can email them to the partyroom at abc.net.au.

And remember to follow Politics Now on the ABC Listen app so you never miss an episode.

Now, Mel, it's worth noting that as we're recording this, there are reports emerging about a possible first phase of a peace deal between Israel and Hamas being agreed to.

Stay across ABC platforms throughout the day for the latest news on that.

And we will also have more in in the Politics Now feed coming up this weekend.

Insiders on Background with David Spears.

He's going to be speaking to Luke Coleman, the CEO of the Australian Telecommunications Alliance.

I bet they've got a lot to say.

So make sure you listen to that.

And then, of course, Politics Now on Monday with you, Brett.

Provided there's no more quitting of the front bench, we won't have any emergencies.

That's always a possibility, too.

Let's hope it's a quiet weekend.

See you, Mel.

See you, Brett.