Days after announcing they would be consciously uncoupling from a decades-long alliance, the Nationals and Liberals might just be in talks of getting back together.
They’ve both pushed back planned announcements about their shadow cabinets and portfolio allocations (as in, who will oversee what departments as the opposition) amid reports senior figures are locked in last-minute negotiations to hash things out.
On Thursday, Nationals leader David Littleproud announced they had paused deliberations of their shadow ministry in “good faith”.
“I’m prepared to pause my announcement today as a sign of good faith,” he told journalists in Canberra, given Liberal leader Sussan Ley had not gone forward with the shadow cabinet announcement.
He added this would also allow her to “have a party room” (translation: consult with the others on where to go from here).
“She made an offer to reconvene her partyroom to discuss the four policy areas the National Party demand as part of a Coalition agreement, and I thank her for that,” he said.
To recap, a big teething point that drove the split was the fact that Littleproud and Ley couldn’t get on the same page on policy direction over the next term.
The Nationals have four key demands: a commitment to nuclear energy, divestiture powers against supermarkets, boosting phone connectivity in the bush, and a $20 billion regional investment fund. And while Ley didn’t outright reject the policies during initial talks, she said she couldn’t commit to anything quite yet as the party room had to discuss all its policies.
Another point of contention was reportedly the Nationals refusing to adhere to shadow cabinet solidarity (which basically means frontbenchers will stick with the opposition’s agreed policy, sometimes even if its not in line with their own personal views.)
In the classic he-said-she-said that comes in the fallout of a split, the Nationals have denied this was a factor. Things boiled over on ABC’s 7:30 show when host Sarah Ferguson straight-up asked Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie if Ley was lying.
“I can tell you, because I was in the National party room that made this decision, the decision that was then conveyed to the Liberal leader. And that was not part of our consideration … it was solely on those four policies,” McKenzie said.
But Ley’s office said it has ~receipts~, actually texting into the show to dispute McKenzie’s claims.
“It is not correct to suggest shadow cabinet solidarity was not a sticking point. We have it in writing that it was a requirement from their leader’s office to ours,” the text read, per ABC News.
Her office even texted a second time, adding about Senator McKenzie: “Her language was deliberate to make it sound like it was just about the policies. That is just not correct.”
So where do things stand now? Ley convened a virtual Liberal party room meeting on Thursday to discuss the Nationals’ policy demands. Another meeting is slated for next week, and there’s hope an agreement can be reached by the time parliament returns on 22 July.
On Friday, Deputy Nationals leader Kevin Hogan said he expected the Liberals to accept their terms.
“They’re saying that they now will, and those type of policies are really important to us,” he told Nine’s Today program.
“Some of those policies took us five years to negotiate and get through the Coalition party room process, and we don’t want to lose them. Otherwise they may never come back onto the policy agenda again.”
As reported by The Guardian, senior Liberal sources also predicted there would be “some grumbling” about the policies, particularly divestiture powers against supermarkets, but that they’re likely to be endorsed in the interest of resurrecting the Coalition after the 2025 election wipe-out.
The Nationals have flagged there might be a little flexibility in their policy demands, stating they would accept a more watered-down commitment to remove the moratorium on nuclear power (compared to doubling down on the previous policy to build seven power plants.)
What have Nationals and Liberal MPs said so far?
Amid news of the Coalition was donezo, Nationals MP Darren Chester told the ABC on Tuesday it might be time for leaders of both parties to see if they could “work towards a solution sooner rather than later”.
His Nationals colleague Michelle Landry also wanted a resolution “sooner rather than later”, arguing it did not help either side when “conservatives are fighting against each other”, per ABC News.
Former Liberal prime minister John Howard even weighed in, describing the break-up as “stupid” while Tony Abbott said he deeply regretted it: “History shows that the Liberals and the Nationals win together and fail separately.”
If the parties do get back together, the Liberals and Nationals will sit alongside each other in shadow cabinet.
Things sure got a lil’ messy there, but we’ll just have to wait and see now where this potential patch-up is heading. Could the Nationals short-lived single era be over soon?
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