Nationals leader David Littleproud is playing an uneasy high-wire act. Trying to hang on to his leadership and drag the Liberals out of the ‘moderate’ abyss, all while flip-flopping on the coalition agreement. Whether Littleproud’s decision of all of two days to walk away from the coalition (before scurrying to try and save it) will save either his leadership of the Nats or the coalition’s descent into irrelevance remains to be seen.
It’s certainly a Herculean task. Littleproud is trying to satisfy the Nationals’ conservative members, while trying to stymie the ‘moderates’ from trashing the coalition brand even further. Good luck with that.
At issue are four key policy demands from the Nationals, at least one of which is a key issue for the centre-right the Liberals are supposed to represent.
Nationals leader David Littleproud has left the door open to his partyroom rejecting the Liberals’ response to the Nationals’ four policy demands, declaring that it was up to his colleagues “whether they wish to re-enter the coalition or not”.
Mr Littleproud, who was yet to organise a partyroom meeting as of Monday night, defended his actions in recent days that led to the coalition splitting up for all of 48 hours, declaring he had “stared the Liberal Party down and … didn’t blink”.
Apparently the Liberal partyroom has agreed ‘in principle’ to the Nationals’ Big Four – nuclear energy, divestiture powers for supermarkets, improving telecommunications access in regional areas and investing in country Australia – but are fudging around the edges of wording. The sort of wording new Liberal leader Sussan Ley inserted – such as that the $20bn set aside for the Regional Australia Future Fund be distributed “equitably” – appears to suggest that the wet ‘moderate’ wing are still intent on plunging down the abyss of ‘us, too!’ aping of the left’s ‘progressive’ nostrums.
Despite Mr Littleproud declaring he was “relaxed” about his leadership, questions over whether or not he should remain in the role continued on Monday.
Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, who had indicated he would prefer Michael McCormack to head up the party, said the handling of the coalition agreement had been “a shocker”.
Mr Joyce also said the net-zero target should be dumped, exposing an ongoing split on the emissions reduction target within the Nationals […] some conservative Liberals such as Andrew Hastie have also revealed a willingness for net-zero targets to be reconsidered.
As the cost of Labor’s ‘Net Zero’ madness – both in power bills and grid outages – grows over the next three years, dumping it will become more and more of a policy plus for the opposition. If they have the sense to realise that copying the green-left’s policies is never going to either win over left voters, or win back conservative voters who’ve deserted the Coalition in droves.
The squabbling between the Liberals and Nationals is merely a proxy war for a fight for the soul of the Liberal Party.
The tension between the modernisers and conservatives that overshadowed three terms in government lay dormant under Dutton. His patience and skill kept the parliamentary party together through a fractious referendum and enabled the party to overcome the nuclear taboo.
And then they threw it all aside to run the most inept election campaign in living memory. All thanks to the so-called ‘moderates’ (who are now apparently calling themselves ‘modernisers’, in true Soviet style). These leftist turds just keep bobbing around in the coalition’s punchbowl, no matter how many times voters try to scoop them out.
These ‘modernisers’ are trying to blame the Nationals for the coalition’s shocking performance at the election. Except that the Nationals held on to all but one of their seats, while the coalition shed dozens. The ‘modernisers’ are also the prime drivers behind the ludicrous strategy of trying to win back the chattering doctors’ wives in the handful of teal seats in wealthy inner Melbourne and Sydney, rather than pitching to the vast swathes of families doing it tough, thanks to Labor, in outer-suburban and regional seats.
Jason Falinski, whose parliamentary career was cut short by Sophie Scamps’s victory in Mackellar in 2022 […] claimed the Nationals represented just a small section of the electorate but had been driving Liberal policies […]
His tail-wagging-the-dog argument was echoed in an ABC podcast by Malcolm Turnbull.
Word to the wise: whatever Turnbull says, do the precise opposite. Ever since ‘moderate’ Turnbull knifed centre-right conservative Tony Abbott, it’s been a steady slide into irrelevance for the coalition. With a few rare exceptions – mostly between the 2023 Voice referendum and the beginning of the 2025 election campaign – the Liberals have been pursuing the Turnbull strategy of slavishly chasing after every far-left policy Labor and the Greens can come up with.
How’s that worked out for them?
Exactly how you’d expect: the ‘modernisers’/‘moderates’ have achieved precisely nothing except to drive away the coalition’s base. Not to Labor – Labor’s vote has barely shifted from its record-low – but to a plethora of minor parties.
But, sure, tell us how doing more of the same that’s failed steadily since 2015 will suddenly start working.
