Normally this column focuses on the agenda for the coming parliamentary week, unpacking a dense policy issue or two that will dominate the political discussion.
This week is a little different. You would expect the government’s big agenda would be front and centre in the first regularly scheduled programming sitting week of the year – but not this Monday.
Partly because, as of the time of writing, we know little about how the government plans to use its parliamentary superiority in 2026. But partly because, once again, all eyes will be on the Coalition – or lack thereof – as the opposition once again finds itself plumbing new depths.
Who will sit on the frontbenches of the new Liberal-only opposition? How bare will those benches look? Are the Liberals and Nationals getting back together, or is their split more long-term? And with at least one party-room spill called for Monday, who will be in their leadership positions to start the week – let alone by the end?
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Reduced from an already paltry 42 opposition members, the desertion of the 14 Nationals from the Coalition leaves Sussan Ley with an anemic 28 votes on her side of the chamber – herself included.
Angus Taylor will be the spectre hanging over the Liberals all week, with even Ley’s backers privately saying they expect a leadership challenge before the sitting fortnight is out. Waiting any longer would risk the Coalition chaos dissipating, allowing Ley’s interim arrangements to be formalised, and giving challengers less of a foothold to launch their coup.
David Littleproud faces a leadership challenge on Monday afternoon, which he’s expected to win, and there’s a chance he and Ley will meet before parliament on Tuesday to stitch the Coalition back together. But if that doesn’t happen, and the Liberals begin Tuesday with their current 28 members, it’ll be the barest opposition benches since the 1943 election – the year before the Liberal party formed. That time, the United Australia party and Country party combined for just 23 seats.
That, of course, was in a much smaller chamber of only 74 seats in the old Parliament House; the new House, opened in 1988, has never seen an official opposition as small as the Liberal-only one likely to trudge in on Tuesday. Unless the Liberals practise Covid-style social distancing, leaving spare seats and gaps, Ley will barely be able to fill the benches behind her in the chamber. There will be ample space for her senior team to spread out leisurely on the frontbench, at least, with extra room for the briefing notes for their new acting responsibilities.
Ted O’Brien finds himself in the silly situation of being shadow treasurer, and also the assistant shadow treasurer. Meetings of the Coalition’s economic team may end up like the Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man meme, or Bernard Black co-writing a book with himself, but at least O’Brien being his own assistant may make them run a little more smoothly.
It leaves 28 Liberals, and 28 crossbenchers. It wouldn’t ever happen, but mathematically there’s a fantasy football scenario where a loose Nationals-teals-Greens-One Nation-Bob Katter-independents alliance makes a play to be recognised as the official opposition.
Expect all these things to be ridiculed, relentlessly, by Labor in question time. We can almost hear the backbenchers delivering stilted dixer questions to various ministers about the “stability” of the government, and asking curiously about “any other approaches”. On Sunday, the health minister, Mark Butler, called it a “shambles”.
The week will be a storm of leadership questions, impromptu doorstops from rarely seen Liberal or National backbenchers, and the staking out of offices, restaurants and bars to try to spot more meetings of Angus Taylor backers – or Pauline Hanson cooking steak dinners for any One Nation-curious conservative defectors.
But while the emergency sitting week in January was a flurry of activity, negotiations and passage of complicated responses to antisemitism and the Bondi terror attack, the current legislation list for this week’s sitting looks a little more muted.
Subject to change, the parliament will debate an in-the-weeds bill on copyright, excises on draught beer and fees in the Corporations Act. Other more consequential bills on migrant exploitation, the commonwealth Parole Board and veterans affairs are also scheduled.
There is also a suggestion the government’s controversial changes to freedom of information legislation, including setting higher charges for documents and dramatically curbing access to government data, could return to the parliamentary agenda in coming weeks.
For a Labor government that has claimed to be among the most transparent in history, to oversee major downgrades to the already-broken FoI system – based on claims, questionable at best, about AI flooding their systems – would be an alarming wielding of its parliamentary muscle.
The bill passed the lower house, but was pulled from the Senate agenda late last year, though government sources say it remains alive. Speaking to my colleague Tom McIlroy this week, the shadow attorney general, Andrew Wallace, called it “friendless” and “a dog” of a bill, but conceded “never say never” when asked if the Coalition could back it.
Of course if there’s a leadership spill, it’s anyone’s guess who ends up in the opposition’s big chair, let alone where they end up on a troubling degradation of one of the few systems journalists can use to learn about government decision-making.
Politicians can also make FoI requests of their own, in a bid for political accountability. Maybe at some stage after this fortnight, the Liberal and National parties can get back to that brand of opposition politics, rather than writing new episodes in their never-ending soap opera.
