WhenDavid Littleproudtravelled to Sussan Ley’s home base of Albury for Coalition talks last week, the Nationals leader arrived with a list of impossible demands.
In town to negotiate a new cooperation agreement between the Liberal party and the Nationals for the coming term of parliament, Littleproud was under pressure to secure major concessions. Despite the Coalition’selectoral drubbing on 3 May, the Nationals felt emboldened by mostly holding their numbers and therefore wanted more clout.
For Ley – inthe job for less than a weekand staying close to home as her mother received end-of-life care – Littleproud’s demand that the Coalition immediately lock in opposition policy on four key areas was completely unworkable.
Having promised no “captain’s calls” and a thorough review of the policies that fell so badly flat with voters under Peter Dutton, Ley could hardly agree to maintain her predecessor’s controversial plan for nuclear power without consultation – let alone a $20bn fund for regional infrastructure and demands on telecommunications and break up powers to target Coles and Woolworths.
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Many Liberals already felt the Nationals’ tail had waved theCoalitiondog in the last term. These new policy demands, plus rules to allow the Nationals to go rogue in parliament on shadow cabinet decisions they didn’t like, were completely unworkable.
All of a sudden, Nationals’ threats to quit the Coalition and sit as a minor party in parliament felt less like bluster and more like a genuine possibility.
Things got worse on Tuesday when Ley had only half an hour’s notice that her decision to hold the line against Littleproud meant the first break up in the Coalition since the “Joh-for-PM” push in 1987. Ley’s pleas to Littleproud to let her name a frontbench and for the usual policy process to play out fell on deaf ears.
Ley’s options were terrible.
She either broke her promise to surviving Liberal MPs and caved to the Nationals, or denied herself any plausible pathway to government at the next election.
So dire is the situation in which she finds herself, Ley had to repeat twice on Tuesday that the Liberals were in fact still the official opposition. Supporters of Angus Taylor, who Ley narrowly beat in last week’s leadership ballot, must be laughing at their new leader’s unenviable predicament.
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Albanese, who has had better political luck than any leader since John Howard, was en route home from meeting Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican as the drama played out.
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, speaking about the Reserve Bank’s interest rates decision, observed it was three years this week since Labor’s 2022 election victory. He dubbed the Coalition split a “nuclear meltdown” and suppressed a smile as he labelled the Liberals “a smoking ruin”.
The Nationals had already done well. The nuclear policy is designed to give cover to climate deniers and fossil fuel producers who have an ideological opposition to renewables, and Dutton had already taken up the Nationals’ supermarkets divestiture policy in full, ignoring the howls of traditional Liberals.
Ley’s challenge isn’t going to get any easier. Despite both she and Littleproud expressing goodwill for the future of the Coalition, the shadow ministry Ley announces this week is either temporary or unelectable, and their policies either theoretical or expendable.
This is because the only way the Liberals and Nationals can win in 2028 is by repairing the Coalition and running together. At least seven Nationals will have to come on to the opposition frontbench if there is a reconciliation, pushing out their placeholder Liberal colleagues. Any policies either side settles on will be up for renegotiation if a rapprochement is to be achieved.
Sussan Ley must be hoping her second week in the top job is better than her first.