Already and this this is the Daily.
This is the Daly OS.
Oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Thursday, the twenty ninth of May. I'm Emma Gillespie.
I'm Harry Seculch.
This time a week ago on the podcast, we were discussing the future of the Liberal Party after the Nationals announced that it was splitting from its long term political partner, effectively ending the coalition. But eight days since news of that breakup emerged, we got another update yesterday which has thrown a curveball into this entire situation.
Dave and I have reached agreement formally to reform the coalition. I'm want to thank you, David for the respectful and productive way that you and I have engaged throughout this process, and I know that we will be a great partnership going forward.
The Liberal and National Party have reached a deal. The coalition is back together.
Now.
This comes after the Nats said they wanted to cut ties after failing to secure some guarantees from the Liberals about the future direction of four key policies, which we'll touch on a bit later. But it left us with so many questions about what led to the decision, what it could mean for the future of each party, how the new opposition would function, and Australia's overall political landscape.
But now that this separation has been abandoned and a coalition deal is back on, I needed to bring in the big guns to break this all down for us tda's political expert, our journalist Harry Seculitch, to take us through all that's been happening in one of the shortest breakups in history and why it all matters.
Hurry, welcome back to the podcast.
Great to be here, Emma.
It has been an ongoing saga, this coalition, will they won't they?
But it did make things really interesting after the election.
Which feels weird because all the dramas usually during the election, during the campaign, which is a bit more of a pressure cooker environment because you're trying to get elected. But in this context we've had all the drama come after the election. It seems I can't even seem to remember what happened before the third day.
Yeah, it's been an election after math unlike any other in my memory, or at least my voting consciousness. With all these recounts, these tight races, and of course the Liberal National Parties drama. Let's just go back to last Tuesday when this separation was announced.
What exactly happened.
Well, I was on leave, Emma, which I just have to say, as a political nerd, that absolutely gutted me. Yeah, but I was watching closely. It was actually kind of nice to be at home and watch it all unfold on TV before me, so I can just kind of, you know, digest it myself, I guess.
Yeah.
But basically what happened was leading up to last Tuesday, there was no hint of a coalition agreement actually coming to bear, which is pretty typical after an election. It's just kind of like rubbersta that the Liberal and National Parties would agree to form an opposition together, they would have some leadership roles that would be divided up between the two parties, and it's just pretty standard fair But
that hadn't happened. Then we see this press conference be called by David Little Proud after a bit of speculation.
And he is the leader of the Nationals Party.
Yes, and he said that there would be no coalition agreement based on a number of factors. But it basically confirmed what was in everyone's mind, which was what is actually going on with the Coalition? Why haven't they struck a deal yet?
I think it would be helpful to maybe take it back a little bit into the history books to understand the role of the Coalition in Australian politics. I think when I was a high school kid, I thought the Coalition was the Liberal Party. Wasn't until I got a bit older that I worked out, No, we're talking about two separate entities.
But how has that worked historically? That partnership, So it's an allie. Just think of it as two parties that are formally allied with each other. They both have conservative values, they have a lot of similar policy ambitions, and since World War Two they've basically operated as a singular unit in opposition to the Labor Party.
So if you want to think of it as a marriage, you can, and it would be quite helpful to think of this marriage scenario when we're talking about a breakup as well.
Lots of marriage metaphors over the last eight days. But we heard David little Proud, as you mentioned last week, call this press conference announce that for the first time in almost forty years, the Liberals and Nationals would not be agreeing to a formal alliance.
Did he say why so?
He pointed to four specific policy areas when it came to his decision and the National Party's decision to break up the coalition agreement or just not enter into one after this election. So the first one was this issue of divestiture powers, which is ba the power to break up a big company. They specifically spoke about supermarkets, so Colson, Woolworths, and hardware chains so Materi ten and Bunnings.
There are a lot of headlines about these divestiture claims during the microscope that's been on the supermarket duopoly in the last couple of years.
That's right, and the Nationals in particular have really been pushing to get these divestite powers up and they want it as part of a formal policy platform. The second thing that they wanted commitment to was guaranteed mobile phone coverage in rural and regional areas, which for the Nationals makes sense that they're putting that forward because that is their main constituency. They are a party of the regions.
The third area was a twenty billion dollar regional fund that was announced in the lead up to the election by then Opposition leader Peter Dutton, this was basically an investment fund for regional projects, so think of roads, infrastructure, and also hiring and retaining healthcare workers out in the regions, which we though is a bit more of a challenge. And then the fourth area, which we're going to put a pin in, comes to nuclear power.
Yeah, had a feeling that's what you were going.
To say exactly, and it's one that a lot of people picked up on and spoke about afterwards, and that's because it sort of chopped and changed a little bit. But basically David little Proud, the Nationals leader, wanted to keep that nuclear policy that the coalition had taken to the election. He wanted that firmed up going forward as well. So it's also really important to note that coalition agreements
in the past aren't necessarily tied to policy. It's usually just what we call like motherhood statements, which are these kind of loose commitments to work together. In opposition. It firms up some leadership roles, so if you have a deputy leader of the opposition, it's usually in the Liberal Party, but once you're in government, the deputy leader becomes the
leader of the National Party. It's all very technical, but it just basically out in writing what has been formally agreed to over the last eighty years or so.
So why in this instance was Little proud on behalf of the Nationals so determined to get these four policy areas written into an agreement. Does it have anything to do with the Liberal Party's outcome at the last election.
He did argue that the Nationals didn't really go backwards. I mean, they did lose one Senate spot, which they also blame on a sunken coalition vote overall in New South Wales, and they also didn't pick up their seat of Claire, which was held by a former Nationals who's now turned into an independent in the last parliament, and he held on to that seat as an independent. So they did go backwards slightly, but not massively. The Liberal Party, on the other hand, lost quite a few seats. They
didn't gain any ground against Labor. In fact, they went backwards. At least thirteen seats have been lost to the Labor Party. Now you just have to go back to our election night coverage and we had dozens of seats ready to go. Whether it was going to be Liberals gaining seats off Labor, which we didn't actually end up putting out into our feed because turns out the Swingers going in the other direction.
The Labor Party gained quite a significant majority at the election, and so the Nationals saw the results bear out and they said, well, the Liberals have really lost quite a lot of skin. We haven't lost as much. So I guess they believed that they had some sort of residence in the electorate that the Liberal Party may not have.
Okay, so we know though that those attempts to get those four policy areas written into a deal were unsuccessful at that point, and that's when we saw David little Prowd come out and say the Nationals we're going to break things off with the Libs. How did the Liberal Party react last week?
Well, Susan Lee, who was by that time the very newly elected Liberal Party leader, she'd only been in the job for about a week, said that they hadn't made
any commitment on any policy whatsoever. So her language was that no policy adopted, nothing abandoned either, that the party was going to go through a full scale review of all its policies that it took to the election, which she acknowledged they lost quite convincingly and that they were then going to look into what could be refined, what could be changed, But she didn't specifically isolate any policy in particular, she didn't isolate any area that she wanted
to keep set in stone, but she also didn't indicate that she was going to get rid of anything either. So her position was it's just not time to talk about policy just yet, whereas the Nationals wanted that commitment firmed up straight away. But both leaders did strike this tone of saying that their door was going to be opened.
So they did leave that possibility of a reunion out there, and they wanted to ensure that people understood that this was not going to be a flat rejection of any coalition into the future, and as we've seen play out over the week, they were right to sort of emphasize that tone, I think.
So it was more that they were taking a break than splitting up for good.
As we now know. Did this come out of nowhere?
I mean, obviously we knew that there were those priority policy areas for the Nationals in the lead up to the election, but do you think the public had the sense of the disharmony that was kind of potentially brewing.
So it's definitely really clear that this was a break from convention, and I think the public could bear that out because there was no coalition like we understood it to be for the last forty years since.
In terms of numbers exactly.
And it's been nearly forty years since the last coalition actually broke up. And then the Nationals and the Liberals also differed in their language over what they considered reasonable as an expectation of each other. So whether you put the policy into the coalition agreement, whether that was considered reasonable.
The Liberals didn't think so, but the Nationals did, whereas the Liberals thought, let's agree to work together and then we'll work through those policies once we actually agree that we're going to be in this as a team. Over the week, you saw a few different versions of events play out as well, which is pretty natural in politics. It comes back to depends who you ask. And one version of event that stood out was really interesting because it came back to this idea of cabinet solidarity not
being an agreement that both sides were comfortable with. Now, cabinet solidarity applies to both the government and the opposition, and that's basically an agreement not to speak out against the formal position of your party. It's basically being a
good team player. So if you have a policy that you're putting forward as a coalition member, and if you're in the shadow cabinet, so one of the shadow senior figures in the shadow ministry, then you're not going to go out in public and start criticizing that policy and cutting it at the knees.
So it's about putting up a united front, even if you might be disagreeing behind closed doors effectively.
So so this is a pretty standard convention. And Susan Lee, the Liberal Party leader, had said that she wanted that as part of the coalition agreement, once again a pretty stand affair, and that the Nationals weren't prepared to agree to cabinet solidarity as a condition of their agreement. The Nationals came back and said, well, that wasn't exactly the case. That wasn't taken to our party room. We didn't discuss it.
So it sort of came back to this back and forth of all right, cabinet solidarity became a sticking point, but we don't know who actually was vying against it.
We'll be back with today's deep dive right after this.
Another bone of contention that was out there in the public, as you mentioned, Emma, could people see that there was something wrong? I think that also stretches back to just after the election, just into Namba. Jimper Price, who's a Northern Territory Coalitions senator, defected from the National Party room to the Liberal Party Room, which was met with white hot anger amongst some Nationals. They were coming out and saying that this is a betrayal, that this is a
takeover by the Liberal Party. That they started throwing around some accusations saying that Just Enterprise was being courted by some senior Liberals during the campaign, that she was elected effectively as a National senator but now is sitting in the Liberal Parties room, which they just didn't consider to be very fair. And on a technical point, in the Senate, you need at least five members in order to gain what's known as party status, and that just gives you
some resourcing and staffing. The Nationals without Just Enterprise have four members, so they wouldn't be considered a party in the upper house in the Senate. So whoever you ask will give you maybe a varied response in politics, but a lot of people saw that as quite unfair.
A sign of potential disunity within the Coulish ranks. That's right, okay, So we understand that there were several aspects contributing potentially to this decision to announce a separation. But obviously there has been a walking back or a reunion over all of these issues. So how have the parties come together to overcome those points of contention?
So if we work through those three areas, so we've got just enterprises defection, the four policies, and cabinet solidarity, I'll go through one by one. So cabinet solidarity straight away, the Nationals said we are fine with that. They got that in writing to the Liberal Party and they firmed
up that commitment tick on the four policies. The Liberal Party convened last week late last week and they had a meeting of all the elected MPs and senators and some provisional MPs because some of the counts are still going on. That's another podcast for another day.
I show still going still.
Can you believe it, It's almost been a month. So this is where the Liberal Party got together and said, all right, we can agree in principle to some of these policy areas. So that's the divestige of powers, the Regional Fund, the telecommunications of all regional and rural areas. And then with nuclear power was a bit of a step change because the Nationals actually through the week watered down their commitment to the election policy, which was seven
reactors being built around Australia. What they want now is just for the national band to be lifted and that opens up the possibility of putting forward a nuclear plan, but it doesn't necessarily commit to public funding or anything material in the nuclear space. And the Liberal Party have said that that's actually a more liberal approach. It means that we get rid of some of that red tape that's preventing nuclear power from being used in energy production
in Australia. Okay, so they got through those four policies. That's another tick just enterprise. On the other hand, look, she's still in the Liberal party room, she's still considered a Liberal senator. She's going to be staying with the party for now. But you know, one Liberal put it to me that it's kind of the elephant in the room now if you like.
Okay, so it feels like there's been a lot of self reflection on both sides over recent days, compromise, widespread discussions about how to resolve this issue. Clearly from both sides, we've seen a level of willingness to overcome some sticking points. So take me through what actually happened yesterday? What did we learn, What have the party said? How did the coalition get back together?
So all the swords were dropped yesterday and we got a new sign sealed and secret coalition agreement. It's okay, standard convention. We never get to see it. We heard from former Prime Minister Malcolm Turbule last week he said it's actually a really boring piece of writing. It's just a commitment to work together. And as far as I understand from some Liberals that I spoke to, there's no
necessary policy actions attached to the agreement itself. But it's pretty much a statement of assurances that we were expecting after the election.
Our team is one of strivers and optimists, of leaders and listeners. We have voices from the city to the bush. Our parties are at their best when they work together to fight right now as a strong opposition.
The two leaders also put forward their shadow Ministry, so their front bench. So that was confirmed yesterday as well, no massive surprises. The Deputy leader of the Liberal Party Ted O'Brien, he's going to become the Shadow Treasurer. We previously interviewed the shadow the former shadow Treasurer, I should say now Angus Taylor on this podcast.
Yep.
And he is now going to be the Shadow Defense Minister. And on top of that there are a few reshuffles. Liberal Senator Jane Hume's been demoted from the shadow cabinet,
as has Sarah Henderson. Another Victorian Liberal Senator. Susan Lee also focused on some of the other women that she's promoted in her cabinet, and this includes Karen Little who will now take over as Shadow Indigenous Australians Minister, just Into Nemorship of Price will become Shadow Defense Industry Minister, and Giselle cap Terrian who's one of the MP's who's still waiting on that count a month on quite a grueling count that at last check was about eight votes separating her and.
The city Bradfields in Sydney.
In Bradfield, so the candidate trailing her, Nicolette Buller, is only behind by eight votes. So that's quite a tight margin by anyone's stretch of imagination. So she's been appointed as an assistant minister in the.
Meantime, pending that confirmation that she has succeeded in Bradfield.
That's right. And also the re elected MP Tim Wilson, who is all so subject to a recount in his seat of Goldstein, has also been promoted into the shadow cabinet should he hold onto his seat. But the projections in Goldstein look a bit more promising for Tim Wilson at this stage.
Okay.
And what about David Little, Proud National's leader. He's had quite the post election run himself, surviving a leadership challenge. He was the face of this breakup. I suppose he did the initial dumping. What has he had to say now that the coalition seems to have reached an agreement.
So he has focused on wanting to oppose Labor as a strong opposition.
This morning our party room made the decision to rejoin the coalition, and I think the Liberal Party and the leadership of Susan in getting that position to make sure there's understanding about the way forward. That's important for Australians that they know we've laid the foundation stones of a coalition that can move forward but also have an alternative government in three years.
He has said in the past week as well that he wants to see Susan Lee as the next Prime Minister too, So he wants to focus on putting forward a unified front against an increased Labor majority. And let's not forget that Labor appears to be in a stronger position than it has been in a very long time. It has an increased majority in the lower House. In the Senate, it only needs to negotiate with either the
Greens or the Coalition to get legislation through. It was a little bit more complicated in the last term of Parliament, but their representation has gone up across all boards. So having a unified opposition, according to David little Proud, is really important. If not to give Labor it's you know, blank check to do whatever it likes.
I think that might tie into my next question Harry, before we wrap up. I know we've made a lot of jokes about this breakup. You know, it's been the subject of memes and internet speculation and we've all kind of rolled our eyes a little bit at those metaphors, But can you just remind us, you know, other than it being a big political story, and aside from the jokes, why should we care about a story like this, What is really the significance of this moment?
In order to have a healthy democracy thrive, you need to have checks and balances in the actual parliament itself. We have what's known as question time. That's a chance for the opposition to hold the government to account and ask them very detailed questions, very specific questions about certain policy areas, about certain legislation that they might be putting forward. We also have an opposition with these kind of resources because they have the experience and the insight to actually
know what to look for as well. I mean, journalists can only do so much. And we're not on the floor of Parliament either. We can't be asking the government questions when it's carrying out official business, but the opposition can. Another point I would make is that this also goes
back to the purpose of having elected representatives. They represent their constituents, whether that's senator you represent a state or territory, or a Lower House MP you represent a certain area in Australia, and it's been set of previous governments, that they've been too inwardly focused, that they've only focused on each other and these internal battles. Think of the Rudd Gillard Rudd years. That was all that was really spoken
of for years was just these internal leadership contests. So I think the public really do switch off, and the public really do want to know that their elected representatives are doing a job and being part of important decision making processes that ultimately affect all our lives. And I know that's a really lofty and grand statement, but without an effective opposition, you can't have an effective government.
I mean, it's really important perspective for all of us who can get lost in these headlines. Harry, thank you so much for taking us through all of that. We are so lucky to have your political expertise.
I personally have you Tom.
I will be interested to see from here, you know, how public sentiment shifts towards or away from the coalition. I suppose voters will have their say in another three years.
Time, well we even remember this happened. I suppose we will. But will voters remember That'll be a really interesting point.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much, Harry, and thank you for listening. To today's podcast. That's all we've got time for, but we will be back later on this afternoon with your evening headlines. Until then, have a great day.
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Calcuttin woman from Gadighl country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.