So does anyone have like that messy couple in their lives who are constantly breaking up and then getting back together again. And every time they get back together, you have to pretend like it's going to last.
Yeah, yeah, they do.
So that's the coalition right now.
It's the on again, off again political drama that has turned Australian politics into something resembling a soap opera. For the second time in a year, the Liberal and National parties have split, rendering the coalition dead again. The breakups once again thrown Susan Lee's leadership under a bus, shattered the opposition's ability to challenge the government, and underscore deeper
pressures from an ascendant One Nation. I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM today contributing editor of the New Daily Amy Remikus on the breakup, the fallout and the ex sitting on the sidelines. You can't get enough for the spectacle. It's Saturday, January twenty four. I am. At the start of this week the PM was on the ropes over these bills. Now not only has he got them both passed through Parliament, but the heat is
off him. So my question to you is is Albo a political genius or the luckiest man in politics?
Yeah, it's actually a bit of both.
And I mean before we talk about the political tactics here, it does need to be remembered that civil liberties have taken a pretty big hit in Australia this week with the passage of the Hate Bill in particular, and constitutional experts like Ann Toomey have raised concerns.
Over the broadness of the bill.
Lawyers, civil rights groups, even the IPA have raised a quite valid concerns about this bill.
But when we talk about the politics of.
This, if there's one thing that Anthony Albanizi is good at, it is thinking through how to screw someone over.
That's what he's good at.
He is not a fantastic communicator, but he is very good when activated on the politics. And I think this all started quite early on when Susan Lee and members of the Liberal Party were demanding that the government come back a recall Parliament and put through hate speech legislation, and fractures started very early on over who actually deserves
protections on this. So Susan Lee was like, we need to look at vilification, we need to look at hate speech, and then members of her own party weeks ago started going, oh, but let's not go too far here. We don't necessarily think we need to extend this to the LGBTQ community. But it did set off a chain of events in the Liberal Party where they started talking about do we actually want.
To do this.
I think Anthony Albanizi spotted that fracture. He saw that the unity was not going to hold, and then he set about laying out some political land minds that he figured that Susan Lee would absolutely set off. And set them off she did.
And so it all led to Thursday, a day that was supposed to be a day of mourning for the victims of the Bondai terror attacks. Susan Lee at least stayed silent in respect for the victims, but the Nationals were out pretty much everywhere talking about themselves, and the coalition split all day.
Our party room has made it very clear we cannot be part of a shadow ministry under Susan Lee.
Is the National Party made a principal decision on the hate laws.
We're very glad to vote and lead on voting against.
It's just about fixing people's problems. I feel like we fought and stood up for people.
This week, I've received enormously positive fak So.
Did the split surprise you, Aby, No, the split did not surprise me, and I don't think it should surprise anyone who has been watching this. The Coalition have not been united for a very long time, and when they split for that brief period back in May, they did not actually resolve any of the issues which led to the split.
It's always been simmering under the surface.
I was writing not so long ago that it wasn't going to last much more than after parliament started.
That proved to be true.
The Nationals have always wanted to lead the Liberal Party around and have when it comes to policy for the last thirty years or so. When we see the Liberal Party being pulled to the right, when we talk about, you know, the lack of moderates in the Liberal Party, that is a direct result of the Nationals dominating the Coalition policies in their fight against one Nation in their electorates.
So it wasn't a surprise that this happened. I think the only surprise is that the Liberals didn't see it coming, that Susan Lee did not see these things coming, and also not a lot is being said. I think about how political David Little Proud was in all of this, in that he chose potentially the worst day he possibly could to do it.
He did it on purpose. He could have done it the night before.
There were several entreaties from Susan Lee's office and allies, and Susan Lee herself asking David Little Proud not to do it on the National Day of Mourning, to speak with her, to delay it, to see if they could work it out, and he didn't.
He didn't entertain any of that.
And if these three senators could not be accepted, then our coalition has become untenable. This process was it.
He just got up in Queensland at eight thirty of non the National Day of Mourning, and decided to announce that the coalition was done.
And this is the most disappointing moment that we had to get to, but unfortunately we find ourselves in it.
Thanks Kevin, and he's done it to extend his own leadership.
But even that in these circumstances is probably going to be brief.
I mean, this is their second split up and just day over a year. Is it a sign that the Liberal Party and the National Party actually don't belong together.
So I mean to understand how the Liberal Party got here, we do have to go back to nineteen ninety six when Pauline Hanson came on the scene. So Pauline Hansen was kicked out of the Liberal Party for her horrendous comments about Indigenous Australians. John Howard though, was leader of the Liberal Party then and he was open to hearing those views, and that basically gave permission for Pauline Hansen to trample around Australia and Queensland first and suck up
a lot of the Liberal Party base. That has had massive ramifications, in particular for the National Party, who have now had to come out and try to out one Nation, one Nation, and in doing so it's dominated coalition policy because to beat one Nation, the Nationals have to be quite nationalists, quite out on the far right, very very conservative, bring in all the culture wars, and doing that has meant that the Liberals in the Inner City have been
unable to defend their seats and we see the Liberal boat continuing to tank because in order for the Nationals to fight one Nation, you cannot have the Liberals fighting off Greens and independence in the inner city. It just does not work. So the Nationals are fighting one nation and they've looked at the polls, They've looked at Barnaby's defection. They know what that's going to mean, and they have
panicked by saying we can do it too. We're not going to be led around by anyone in the Liberals who wants to try and tell us what to do, and we will blow up the show if we have to, if it means that we might have a chance at holding our own seats.
It's clear that the Nets wants Susan Lee gone. Why do they want to gone? And how long do you think she can survive?
They want to go on half of the Liberal party room wanna gone, probably more than half.
It's really hard.
For anyone to come in and lead an opposition after such a comprehensive loss. Susan Lee was the person who was handed the hospital pass to work out the mess. They still haven't done that. They haven't got their election review. They are still fighting. She hasn't been able to pull
them into any particular position. They don't have any strong contenders, which may extend her leadership for a little bit longer, but you know, it's essentially on life support in political terms, and the people who are fighting it out Andrew Hasty and Angus Taylor. Angus Taylor is a Conservative who wants to try to take it back to being John Howard's Liberal Party. He's untouched by everything that has happened in Parliament because he was overseas when this vote happened, so
he doesn't have any ownership of it. Andrew Hasty, who wants to go more down the one nation nationalist route for the Liberal Party. He's been burned by this vote because he told his supporters he was not going to vote for it, then after they removed Philification, he did. He's being absolutely torn apart by soft one nation voters and people who thought that he was going to make the Liberal Party more like one Nation. And there's no one really else that they can choose from in there.
So it's going to be about does Angus Taylor want to take over the Liberal Party?
Now?
If I was Angus Taylor, which you know, thankfully i'm not, and I'm sure he's thankful of that too, I would probably want the mess of the election review, which is going to be another very messy period for the coalition to come out first. I would want some sort of cohesive understanding of what the Nationals are going to do, and I would want some sort of, you know, at least assurance or confidence that the party wasn't going to have another kissy fit and dump me.
As leader just before the next election.
So so more than likely they're not. Susan Lee won't be leader after the next parliament sitting in February. But the thing that could save her is that does anyone else want that job right now?
Coming up? Can the coalition get back together while the Liberals still don't know how to be alone? Amy? As you mentioned, we have heard recently the Liberal Party's internal review is done, but as being with hell because Peter Dutton says it, the famed him. Is it a reminder that the Liberal Party still has a truckload of soul searching to do and are they capable of that? Oh?
I mean you could say truckload, you could say it be double load, you could say one of Jupiter's moons, like there is so much soul searching for this party to do and until.
They actually work out.
Okay, are we no longer a center right party? Are we're going to actually explicitly stop pretending that we still have moderates who have any sort of power in the Liberal Party. If they want to do that, that's fine. They're not going to win government anytime soon, but they can't have that discussion because they keep getting caught up in these leadership like squabbles.
And what was.
Completely underestimated in all of that was how the public was feeling, because when you look at the.
Polls, you can see that alls.
That happened is the Coalition went further backwards and that they potentially at the next election risk losing even more seats and they will probably lose them to One Nation and to Labor, and that's not great for anyone because Labor, in trying to win those coalition seats that they see opportunity, are going to move further to the right, or at the very least, they're not going to do any of the progressive reforms that people have said that they want
them to do in polls and in voting results. So we're going to see another shift to the right in the Overton window because the Coalition cannot get it shitited together.
Despite all of that, amy there were amusings late in the week that David Little Proud and Susan Lee, we're leaving the door Ajar for a possible reunion. Is that possible given the difference which now seem to be gaping, And where does that leave the possibility of a coalition long term?
Yeah?
So does anyone have like that messy couple in their lives who are constantly breaking up and then getting back together again, And every time they get back together you have to pretend like it's going to last.
Yeah, yeah, they do.
So that's the coalition right now. So like you know, sure, maybe like enough senior Nationals and liberals from outside the Parliamentary party intervene and say, guys, this is stupid. This is not what the Australian people want. You're concentrating on yourselves, You're not concentrating on the nation. This is doing nothing for cost of living, This is doing nothing to make
Australian safer. And they get back together again, and everyone's going to pretend that it's great and go to the dinner parties and pretend, like, you know, just a week ago that they weren't just calling up every single person that they knew to talk about how terrible they were
and how glad they were to be free. Probably if they get back together again, they will split up again because David Little Brown will do anything to hold on to his own leadership at the moment, because he might have got rid of Barnaby Joyce, but he's now going up against Matt Canavan, who's absorbed that de facto Barnaby Joyce role within the Nationals of being the disruptor.
Let's talk about David Little Proud. Is his leadership secure in the short do medium term?
I think it's secure in the short term. I wouldn't say that it's secure in the medium turn. I think he knows that. I think that's one of the main reasons why he has done this. I mean, he did not take Susan Lee's calls. He did not listen to anybody.
He just pulled them. And he's trying to shore up his own.
Electorate because he is one of the politicians under the biggest threat of One Nation. If it's vote holds, they've got a very big foundation in Marinoa already of One Nation taking his seat.
Labor voters in Marinoa are more likely than.
Not to put One Nation ahead of the Nationals and Barnaby Joyce knows it, and Barnaby Joyce hates David Little Proud. He is personally invested in the downfall of David Little Proud.
And the happiest person in the.
Country right now is Barnaby Joyce, who has been gleefully running around Canberra publicly and privately talking about how.
Wonderful and amazing this all is.
Amy, You've warned that we're about to see the worst of our politics this year. Has the first sitting week of Parliament made you reassess your prediction.
No, if anything, it's made me double down and you really need to start looking out for, you know, just marginalized and vulnerable people in your life, because their identities are going to be used as political flashpoints in what is basically a culture war tantrum that's going to be played out in our national Parliament. And we're not about to see any sort of Trump style like disruption in terms of Pauline Hanson or Barnaby Joyce becoming Prime Minister.
That's not going to happen. But we are going to see people carry out some of their worst instincts, both politically and culturally.
Because when the politicians.
Are openly debating whether somebody is allowed to feel a certain way about their existence, their identity and just living their lives as the person they are. When that becomes like something that you can make political grisk out of, it's bad for the whole country because the politicians will give permission for it, and then the worst aspects of Australian society will run rampant with it.
Amy Remikus, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you.
Seven Am is a daily show from Solstice Media. It's made by Atticus Bastow, Ariel Richards, Chris Dangate, Crystal Color, Nicole Johnston, Sarah mcvee, Travis Evans, Zoltenvecho and Me. Daniel James Ruby Jones is on to comment and we'll be back at the end of March. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Bordier. Thanks so much for listening to seven Am. Have a great weekend.