Are the Coalition about to split (again)?

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Speaker 1 The rioting was on the wall and over the weekend the Nationals officially ditched net zero emissions by 2050.

Speaker 1 It's a decision that could have a seismic consequence for voters in the metropolitan areas, the cities, Melbourne and Sydney, and it sets a challenge for Susan Lee and the Liberal Party.

Speaker 1 So as the climate wars continue to rage in the coalition, yes, another day, another war, is the party drifting even further away from the sensible centre they said that they'd be targeting?

Speaker 1 Welcome to Politics Now.

Speaker 1 Hi, I'm Patricia Carvellis.

Speaker 2 And I'm Jacob Greber, and here we are again talking about our favourite topic, the National Party and the Coalition.

Speaker 1 Oh, my brain hurts hurts at the sort of repetition of this story, but

Speaker 1 having said that, there is something significant because it's now formal. And I'll explain, my friends.
The Nationals had their big

Speaker 1 national meeting on the weekend, didn't they, Jacob? And they voted officially to dump net zero emissions by 2050.

Speaker 1 Now, anyone who follows, you know, along at home knows that Barnaby Joyce and others have been, and Matt Canavan have been pushing for the party to do this. So then they formally do as a party.

Speaker 1 Then on Sunday, the parliamentary wing of the Nationals meet and formalise that view. So officially, that part of the coalition wants the policy dumped.
Why does it matter, Jacob?

Speaker 1 Like, given we keep talking about the climate wars anyway, why is this significant?

Speaker 2 Because the coalition signed up to net zero. It signed up to it back in late 2021 when Scott Morrison was the Prime Minister.

Speaker 2 It famously did a deal with Barnaby Joyce who extracted a great deal of concessions from the Liberal Party at the time for that support, including we actually don't know to this day the exact dollar amount, but very, very large sums of money for Barnaby's favourite projects.

Speaker 2 dams, roads, inland rails, you name it.

Speaker 2 That is still on the books. That is is still essentially part of the coalition policy platform.
So there's no word on whether any of that gets unraveled now.

Speaker 2 It's very significant for another reason, and I'm sure you'll be keen to talk about it, which is the National Party feels that this is a way for them to reconnect with their base, that people in the bush, quote unquote, are very, very unhappy with the renewables rollout, that they're bearing the biggest burden of it all, and therefore they're trying to reverse the speed at which this is going.

Speaker 2 They want to make it go much more slowly than the government's planning. And then, of course, the problem for the Liberal Party, which is actually

Speaker 2 the main, it's the bigger party of the two.

Speaker 2 It has to make up its own mind and it's just a split on whether to go down this road. There's plenty of people in the Liberal Party like Andrew Hastie

Speaker 2 who are very, very sceptical. There are other people like...

Speaker 2 Angus Taylor who kind of know you have to do something on net zero, but they don't do it with great enthusiasm and they also drag their heels.

Speaker 2 And then you have people who are very much for it, and they tend to be the more urban liberals, and that's the clue there.

Speaker 2 The Liberal Party's worried that if they turn their back on net zero, their opportunity to win metropolitan seats gets harder, harder again.

Speaker 2 So that's the question that Susan Lee as leader has to manage. And we can talk about her too.
But like your take on this, I'd love to hear it.

Speaker 2 But I presume you're looking very much at these teal seats, these battles.

Speaker 1 I am.

Speaker 1 My take on it is the consequences in the metropolitan areas where the Liberals have been already smashed. And if they don't win back, they will continue to live in political exile.
That's the truth.

Speaker 1 There is no pathway back for the Liberal Party to majority government without winning back the cities. Fact.

Speaker 2 Just before I got on the show, I was talking to a Liberal who pointed out to me that if you line up from most marginal and go towards towards the safer end of the spectrum, the top 40 seats that really matter in this country in terms of winning government, you've got to win against this government, which has a 94-seat majority, you need 30-something seats and then some and a buffer.

Speaker 2 So it's about 40 seats, okay? If you start with the most marginal, which is it's a seat like Bradfield, absolutely as marginal as it gets, I think it's like 11 votes or something crazy like that.

Speaker 1 Giselle Kapterian tried to win it, was unsuccessful.

Speaker 2 And you go out to say Wentworth gets you to about the 40 seats. Half of those seats are metropolitan in two cities, Sydney and

Speaker 2 Melbourne. And then a great chunk of the rest are also metropolitan seats in other parts of the country.

Speaker 2 So yeah, the National Party's cheering that it's quote-unquote found its own voice, but to what end?

Speaker 2 Does this mean that they become structurally unable to form government in future? That's a question the Liberals, a lot of Liberals are now asking themselves.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and they have to ask themselves themselves because, you know,

Speaker 1 I don't mean to throw around this word too flippantly, but this is genuinely the crossroads, the existential moment for the Liberal Party about what path they take.

Speaker 1 If they dump net zero by 2050, which can I say... on balance I believe they're more likely to do based on the number of voices I've heard.

Speaker 2 I'd have to concur with you. Yeah, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean I didn't know it would land this way if you'd asked me six months ago.
So it's been six months since the election, six months of Susan Lee's leadership.

Speaker 1 I thought it would be kind of line ball. It was definitely close, but I do think the dump net zero by 2050 is in majority now, my assessment from my calls, but I haven't.

Speaker 2 It's so hard to know, isn't it? But you get that sense that a lot of them are saying, this is more important to my little particular electorate.

Speaker 2 And I think Melissa McIntosh is a great example of that.

Speaker 2 She said she's polled her electorate and they've told her, get out of net zero. So that's what she's doing.
But how does that make her a future minister in government?

Speaker 1 Well, how do you actually keep the coalition together is really the question we're asking. And it's a double split, right? This is the important part.

Speaker 1 There's so much obsession with the Nationals and what they do. And I wrote a piece today, it's on the ABC website, just about the way the Nationals front-run things.

Speaker 1 The referendum was one of the things they did. They came out for no first.

Speaker 1 The Liberals then followed. They did it for nuclear, as you know, first, and the Liberals followed.
So the the Nationals do seem, at least optically, to set the agenda.

Speaker 1 But I don't think that's entirely fair about the way things work inside the Liberal Party. Inside the Liberal Party, they are also deeply split about the concept of net zero by 2050.

Speaker 1 Many of them, you mentioned Andrew Hastie, there are so many others, don't like it, not because the Nationals told them not to like it, but because they've come to their own conclusions about why they think it's electoral poison.

Speaker 1 But again, they are not the ones who are fighting in the cities so much. The ones who are fighting in the cities, there's not many of them left, quite frankly, but the ones that, you know, do the

Speaker 1 political arithmetic 101, like it's just, it's real, politics is not hard. Like it's just literally some majority numbers that you need.
Like you just need the seats. And you cannot get the seats.

Speaker 1 if your pitch is just to one part of Australia, which can I say, Jacob, the majority of Australians don't live in. Like they just don't.
Your numbers are all wrong, people.

Speaker 1 One caveat on all this, which I think is important.

Speaker 1 I've spoken to a pollster, for instance, this morning, who said to me, while net zero, dumping net zero, does look, at first blush, a bit not so good,

Speaker 1 the sentiment we're getting which is quite negative to the cost of power, all of that, is actually growing.

Speaker 1 So if they can land the language, maybe there's some opportunity for them. I know what I'm saying is counterintuitive, but I'll explain.

Speaker 1 I still think it's an issue in the cities, but some parts of perhaps the suburbs, perhaps there is some politics there. Like this is a politics podcast.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying whether it's the right policy, because that's not the point of what I'm saying. I'm talking about how people will respond.
That people are concerned about the renewables.

Speaker 2 rollout.

Speaker 1 They are concerned about the high cost of energy.

Speaker 1 And now the Nationals, let's say where the Liberals Liberals go, but the Nationals, they're being quite strategic in their language where they're talking about staying, keeping up with the world on emissions, yeah?

Speaker 1 Like, that's an interesting way of framing it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and look, I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to as well, which is,

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 there is a certain section of debate which is entirely devoted to telling viewers and listeners and readers that the renewables transition is terrible and it's the reason your energy bill is high.

Speaker 2 That is a relentless campaign. It's been running four months and months and months.
And I'm not surprised that people are starting to respond positively to that. If you hear it on up time.

Speaker 2 They feel that actually, yeah,

Speaker 2 and we saw again with the inflation numbers that came out last week, that the problems are not solved around cost of living and standard of living. That pressure is real.

Speaker 2 We've had six months of falling interest rates, but the inflation problem is not beat. And energy prices are a a big reason for that not being beat.
And so I think there is a political shift underway.

Speaker 2 I think it's, I wouldn't overstate it because a lot of people see the benefits of renewables personally. And actually there is a lot of support.

Speaker 2 I've seen polling, there's actually still a lot of support in the bush for renewables, but

Speaker 2 there is a shift underway. The Nats are trying to grab hold of that.

Speaker 2 And I think the way the Liberals might try and square this in a way where they can have a position that is not, frankly half pregnant on we're not we don't support net zero but we support climate change action you know some sort of some sort of flaky halfway thing like that that labor will be able to tear them apart on is this concept of net zero but not at any cost and you're going to hear that not at any cost not at any cost okay it's a bit it's a bit of a straw man argument but i think it's going to what what we're talking about here with these shifting moods so what does labor need to do right i mean not much really let's be honest because these people are eating

Speaker 1 careful actually no i'll tell you i know no i've got a like okay i i think right now the politics is still in their favour i don't think we're deluding ourselves if we're going to say that you know they're under some massive pressure but we we do actually agree on this like we can have a fight about something else but i know we do labor has to nail this message that so far the libs are the ones talking about the cost of transition being so high

Speaker 1 the alternative the counter It's really still expensive.

Speaker 1 Coal is aging.

Speaker 1 This is not cheap to go back to the old days. But it's a fur fee.
So Labor has to actually land that argument, Jacob, that, hey, if we were to go back, you're not going to get cheap electricity.

Speaker 1 You're just not.

Speaker 2 The coalition, well, sorry, the National Party's plan, Freudian slip there, is to go back to coal, back to nuclear,

Speaker 2 back to gas.

Speaker 1 You know the market? Is that cheap?

Speaker 2 They all cost money. All of it costs money.
And

Speaker 2 the problem for the government is what we're talking about here, this transition, is a multi-decade event.

Speaker 2 It's not something you tick a box on and next month it's sorted and then in a year's time it all lands and it's in place.

Speaker 2 This is such a complicated thing that's being attempted here and it takes so much time. The challenge for the government is keeping the public on side through that long transition.

Speaker 2 And it will wary some groups when it feels like it's going on forever. And why isn't my energy bill coming down? You guys promised it would.

Speaker 2 And that's probably one of the original sins here in this debate.

Speaker 2 Labor made it very clear in 2022 that energy bills would come down, and they haven't. And so that makes people question, well, is it renewables' fault? And

Speaker 2 there's a lot of chicken and egg in the

Speaker 2 energy debate. Coal's hanging in there because you can patch these stations up and keep them running relatively cheaply for now.

Speaker 2 So you can push them out to 2030, out to 2035. But that, of course, then means you're not making the investment decision for the alternative that you need.
So there's always that tension.

Speaker 2 And I think the National Party feels that this is where they can make hay.

Speaker 1 I'm sure they can.

Speaker 2 And I'm sure they can. And

Speaker 1 for their part of Australia, I'm sure they can.

Speaker 2 And a lot of people have commented on, for instance, Bill Gates last week put out an essay which upset a lot of people. I know that for a fact.

Speaker 2 I got frank feedback from friends and listeners and viewers about what they thought about Bill Gates.

Speaker 2 But Bill Gates making the point that the transition needs to take account of people's welfare today, which is essentially really where the coalition debate is trying to go, I think.

Speaker 2 They haven't landed it, but I think that's what they're saying.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I saw that too in the way that the right jumped on it to say, you know, a bit late, Bill Gates, but you're on board with us now.

Speaker 2 I don't think he is. I think he's still arguing for action on climate change.
He's just saying the pace of it is problematic and the distribution of it is problematic.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and it should be okay to have those discussions, but

Speaker 1 it's a case.

Speaker 2 Do you think this leads to a split in the coalition?

Speaker 1 Oh, I think it's never been closer that it's possible, but I don't think they're there yet. You know, they're allergic to a split.
There's only some of them that are crazy brave.

Speaker 1 And I'll explain what a split would do. I actually think personally, some people are very, you know, coalitionists and they're so,

Speaker 1 but increasingly, if you look at the number of seats of the TLSA one, for instance, I think a more moderate liberal wing, which is metropolitan-based, that can win some of the other seats, you know, like maybe in the outer suburbs, but still not hard right, that could go into alliance potentially in government.

Speaker 1 A different kind of structure, by the way. We're talking now very northern European kind of parliamentary.

Speaker 1 Then I think

Speaker 1 there is actually a potential sort of centre-right movement that does deals like that.

Speaker 1 And I know some moderate Liberals are thinking about those sorts of cases because they know this is going to be deep. This is now built in these kind of frictions.
And that means same thing.

Speaker 1 The right of the Liberal Party can form another kind of version and probably even unite with the Nationals potentially.

Speaker 1 It's like

Speaker 2 two splits, isn't it?

Speaker 2 It's a double split.

Speaker 2 You need the coalition to split and then you need the National Party to split and the Liberal Party to split. Sorry, that's actually three splits, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Okay, and then it's confusing because people think, well, how did John Howard manage, you know, that broad church? I don't know. Different times.
I think the world is more polarised.

Speaker 1 Like politics has shifted in that time. And so I don't know if the kind of way that things worked back then

Speaker 1 would work that way now.

Speaker 2 Just to leave this point, but the fear, I guess, is you lose all that status, you lose all the resources, there's staff involved.

Speaker 2 The National Party would be four seats, I think, in the Senate, so it would fall short of actual actual major party status. So there's all sorts of things like that.

Speaker 2 For instance, you and I would ask, who's the shadow treasurer?

Speaker 2 Is it Ted O'Brien or Matt Canavan? Like, it gets very, very messy. There would be two shadow treasurers in that sort of a scenario.

Speaker 2 And I think people in the Liberal Party and the National Party, that's what worries them about the split talk. But it has come back with a vengeance this week.

Speaker 1 Oh, it has. And I wouldn't be surprised if they talk about it and then never go to it because

Speaker 1 of tradition.

Speaker 1 Like, it's just been so long it's probably very hard to imagine an alternate universe but I do want to put you in one scenario that I want to get your thoughts on and it's an obvious one but that's Susan Lee and her leadership so six months in

Speaker 1 Look, I think it's fair to say she does lack authority in that party.

Speaker 1 The last couple of weeks have been shabby, shabby, shabby in terms of the breakouts, people just contradicting her without any shame.

Speaker 2 You mean her own side, her own side?

Speaker 1 Yeah, just no shame. It's rude, actually.
Like the disrespect

Speaker 1 never happened for Peter Dutton. Maybe people should look in the mirror about some of the reasons that might be motivating them.

Speaker 1 Or, you know, doesn't have the authority, has a split party, said she'd be sensible centre. The moderates are even getting frustrated with her.

Speaker 1 And then she, the right, she's never been their creature. What happens to her? Is it going to be the killing season by the end of the year, which is the traditional last week of parliament?

Speaker 1 You know, I'll be here just in case.

Speaker 1 All year I've thought that that week might go off, and I still think it's possible, although on balance, I think she's probably safe this year. I might eat my hat.

Speaker 2 I don't have a hat. Yeah, look, we can eat hats all afternoon on this one, but February, do they give a Christmas and the summer to try and reset?

Speaker 1 Or give themselves a holiday before they take over. Sorry,

Speaker 2 let's not pretend to be a little bit more difficult. It's still pretty wild though.
They tear down

Speaker 2 the first female liberal leader this soon. after electing them to this 80-year-old party.
That's still a big deal.

Speaker 2 But what your comment about even the moderates are disappointed, I'm picking that up very much. There's a lot of frustration.
And it's to do with small things quite often.

Speaker 2 It's to do with a sort of sense that judgment's not there on some really bad judgment calls.

Speaker 2 For instance, the t-shirt thing, which you probably talked about ad nauseum, but that's reflective of what people are saying to me, a judgment failure. You're not going for the big shots.

Speaker 2 And remember, this t-shirt thing happened the same week that inflation came out above the bandware it happened before inflation.

Speaker 2 Yes, but they knew the inflation number was going to be bad for the government. Strategically, you might have been quiet that week and waited for that number to come out.

Speaker 2 So they're little things, but they all add up and they're all weighing on her. And now she has this really, really difficult challenge around net zero.

Speaker 1 Does she ever say how does she deal with it? I mean, does she die you die on your feet or on your knees, right?

Speaker 2 Like she's always been supportive of action on climate that's what I mean in the past she's been supportive of net zero so how does she roll away walk away from this and that will that will only weaken her standing because it will be seen to be the yet again the National Party tail wagon the Liberal Party dog

Speaker 1 and she's following suit rather than leading it also yeah it looks like she's very weak if she does that but I've got to like be fair to her. She's in a lose-lose situation, right? She just is.

Speaker 1 If you think, okay, I'm going to pretend I'm Susan Lee now what strategic decisions would I make today to reset my leadership there is no there are no good options without with that party room that she has with the numbers that she has precarious as they are remember there are people in that party room who voted for her who are no longer there so she she doesn't even probably even on paper have the majority like she is in a very weak position and so she takes strong action on climate change they basically destroy her

Speaker 1 You know, she capitulates. She looks weak.
She's in a lose-lose. So I don't know.

Speaker 1 I cannot see an easy pathway for her. And I have some sympathy there.
Having said that, there are some judgment calls that are worth questioning.

Speaker 1 Hey, I want to do a little shift to roomie, if we can, a shift to something else. Quite.

Speaker 2 Speaking of dubious judgment calls, how about that? Have I done the shift? Dubious, dubious.

Speaker 1 Dubious. I like the way you did that.
Okay. While I was away, you covered extensively the Optus Triple Zero saga.
People died because of that outage.

Speaker 1 It's just, I couldn't believe, when I was overseas and I was reading these stories, I was just like so appalled that this was going on.

Speaker 1 The Greens and the Coalition pushed for a quick inquiry. So the Optus CEO, Stephen Rue, has been in the hot seat.
So we're recording this as we do in the middle of Monday.

Speaker 1 He's been in this hot seat just being grilled in this inquiry. He's acknowledged that there was a failure to appropriately escalate the information to the minister and the government.

Speaker 1 Sarah and Hanson-Young has grilled him on why he didn't call and inform government ministers about this. I mean, this is a terrible look for Optus, but I will ask you this question.

Speaker 1 Does the government come out okay so far? It seems that Optus is mainly wearing the blame here, especially with their lack of communicating to the government.

Speaker 2 So far, I think this is all landing mostly on the company.

Speaker 2 That said, there's always, there is the sense that some of these regulatory things were well known about and it's taken a while to get them rolling and into place.

Speaker 2 There was a sense earlier on in the piece that the government wasn't sort of leading

Speaker 2 the sort of sense that it knew what was wrong and had a way to get this problem sorted.

Speaker 2 That's been a problem. And I think now we're seeing again this morning the company very much having to explain itself.

Speaker 2 And there's that real sense that they were more worried about their internal stakeholders than actually informing the Australian government and therefore the Australian people. So

Speaker 2 that's been reinforced this morning

Speaker 2 in the testimony from, as you say, the CEO.

Speaker 2 Question is, do people blame the government? Ultimately, they will, because the government's on top.

Speaker 2 It's got control of the

Speaker 2 regulatory settings. It's got to

Speaker 2 set the rules and make sure they're right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it is in charge of that architecture.

Speaker 2 We're still trying to work out really why some of this stuff went wrong and and how how to ensure it doesn't go wrong well i think the ensuring it doesn't go wrong i mean news polls out this morning yeah okay i can't see the government having suffered there is no evidence whatsoever

Speaker 1 but i don't see the great giant blow that has come from the electorate mate you need a really strong microscope not seen it not seen it but but we are about to enter the ugly summer season.

Speaker 1 The summer season is often diabolical for people, of course, natural disasters, it's a difficult time.

Speaker 1 So if that's the case and we are going to enter that and this has not been repaired ahead of time,

Speaker 1 your point about

Speaker 1 who's going to face the consequences, look, the warning shots are all there now.

Speaker 1 You've got to get your house in order.

Speaker 2 It would be a disaster for the government. Yeah, I think so too.
It unravels. So I think everyone's hoping that it doesn't.

Speaker 1 All right. So final thoughts from you, Jacob.
So sitting week this week, the Prime Minister's back.

Speaker 1 He didn't go to COP.

Speaker 2 In In fact, they said that.

Speaker 2 Breaking news. Breaking news.

Speaker 1 This is the COP conference for our listeners who don't even know what we're talking about.

Speaker 2 He did say this morning that he's prepared to travel

Speaker 2 to Brazil, which would be at the end of the week.

Speaker 2 There's been reporting that he's not going to go, but

Speaker 2 he is still keeping the door open a little bit. Is it going if there is a deal with...
Remember, it has to do one with Erdogan of Turkey, and that's still up in the air by the side.

Speaker 1 It's up in the air, although my readers at the government's got very low expectations on getting it now, right?

Speaker 2 I think they're wondering how hard to fight for it. For Adelaide to host it next year, it would be a big deal.
These United Nations climate summits get a lot of attention.

Speaker 2 You get 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 people arrive. They'll sort of try and solve the world's climate problems.
A lot of people arrive to yell at people about how terrible they are.

Speaker 1 By burning so many emissions to get to Australia.

Speaker 2 So lower emissions.

Speaker 2 And of course, we're a big fossil fuel exporter, so a lot of them will be yelling at us directly as hosts so look there is there are signs that some people in government are not overly thrilled about this idea it goes it was a 2022 election promise by labor chris bowen in particular he's still very much very very keen to win this bid uh and it's now come down to the wire it has to be decided by basically everyone has to get on and say yes you can host it so it's australia versus turkey or turkey and if if us two can't agree it defaults to germany it goes to bond And they don't want it either, apparently.

Speaker 1 So anyway. Well, that's it for politics now.
Thanks for joining me, Jacob. My pleasure.
And tomorrow is rate day or not rate day.

Speaker 1 I think it's very unlikely we're going to see a rate cup, but let's see.

Speaker 1 Tom Crowley will be here to unpack the decision, the politics behind it as it happens, dropping in your feed shortly after the RBA's announcement. And we have a very special request for you.

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