Already and this is the Daily OS.
This is the Daily OS.
Oh now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily Odds. It's Friday, the twenty third of January.
I'm Lucy Tassel, I'm Emma Gillespie.
For the second time in less than a year, the Nationals have walked away from the Federal Coalition. This time, the exit was sparked by one of the two bills the government brought to a special sitting of Parliament this week, but ended up centering on the inner workings of the coalition and the parties that make it up. Today, we'll take you through the whole story from the beginning, explaining everything you need to know about the coalition's latest breakup.
Lucy, I've got a bit of deja vous this week with these headlines. You said you would explain this one from the beginning, but when is that a exactly Well.
I had a lot of thinking to do about where this technically starts. Do we start when the coalition formed for the first time, which was in nineteen twenty three. Do we say in nineteen eighty seven when they reformed for good after a short break after running separately in the Federal election and losing very badly to Bob Hawk's
Labor for the third time in a row. After that election, they got back together and they were together all through until last year, including in government and opposition last year.
Of course, May twenty twenty five. The last time we talked about the coalition's history and formation was after the most recent federal election, and that's when National's leader David Littelproud said the party couldn't secure guarantees about several policy positions as the coalition was kind of considering its place post election loss.
So as in he couldn't secure guarantees about where the Nationals would stand on liberal policy positions.
Yeah, he basically because the coalition acts together. The Nationals wanted certain things to be coalition policy, and he couldn't secure guarantees from the Liberals, the senior partner, and the coalition that those things would be agreed to.
Okay.
Now, At the time, Liberal leader Susan Lee said that this was because every policy was up for review post election and she wouldn't commit to anything specific because they were still working through that process.
Okay.
When they split last time, it lasted eight days. When they got back together. That reunion didn't resolve everything, as we now see, and one of those things that was left unresolved, which i'll just foreshadow, is called shadow cabinet solidarity. That reared its head again this week as Parliament sat to pass two emergency bills. Now, Emma, you were on the pod earlier this week to explain the context of those bills, so maybe you can give us a quick rundown.
Yeah, so very complicated, but I'll try to keep it simple. As I explained earlier in the week, there were two bills before Parliament this special sitting in the wake of the anti Semitic Bondi terror attack. Initially that was one piece of legislation, then it was split. We won't get into that. One of the bills was to tighten gun ownership rules and one was around hate speech. Now, the
gun reform Bill you've probably heard about. It includes a national buyback scheme, a new condition requiring firearm license holders to be Australian citizens, and some other reforms there. While the Hate Speech Bill, much more controversial piece of legislation, it has to be said, had a few aspects, but probably the most relevant one to this discussion. Based on what I've read at least was around a new national framework allowing the government to formally list prohibited hate groups
similar to how terrorist organizations are listed. So, Lucy, the Coalition was involved in amending these bills. It said that it had certain sticking points that it wanted to see resolved in order to support the bills. What do we know about what the Nats wanted changed on.
The Hate Speech Bill, which, as you said, is the most relevant to us today. The most contentious Opposition leader Susan Lee has said the Coalition had worked to quote narrow the scope of this bill to deal with anti
Semitism and tackle radical Islamist extremism. Now Lee's version of events is that the Shadow Cabinet, so that's her team of senior ministers from across the coalition, met on Sunday night to look over the government's proposed bills and to work out any issues they wanted to raise before they were brought to Parliament, then to discuss those with the government, which they then did, and then the bills came to
Parliament assumedly with the support of the Coalition. Then after that, according to reporting by Paul Sakhal at The Sydney Morning Herald. The Nationals then met as a party separately on Monday and Tuesday and came to a different position with the input of backbencher Matt Canavan, who was concerned the hate group listing part of the bill might end up including quote mainstream political and religious groups.
Okay, to recap, the coalition leadership from what we know, had agreed to a position, or the Liberal Party says the coalition leadership had agreed to a position. It's agreed to support the Hate Speech Bill if the Government agrees to some changes. So the coalition says, these other things we need to change. We're all aligned on that. If that changes, we support this bill. And the Government then does make those changes to allow the bill to pass.
Then the Nationals, including those who are in the shadow cabinet, so senior leadership, they meet to discuss other issues away from.
The Liberal Party.
What happened once the bills came to Parliament in a form that I'm assuming the Liberal Party thought the Nationals would support.
Yeah, So when the bills went to the lower House, the House of Representatives, one Nationals MP abstained from voting for the bill, so they didn't vote one way or another. The one who voted for it was backbencher Michael McCormack, who is the former leader of the Nationals. He was Deputy PM under Scott Morrison for a few years and he told AAP he didn't want to let the perfect
be the enemy of the good. Those were his words. Okay, this didn't particularly matter in the lower House because Labor has a huge majority as we remember from the May election, so it didn't need anyone else's support in that part of Parliament. But then in the Senate things look different.
Labor needed the support of the Coalition or a group of independents or the Greens, or they need to basically form support using different variations of the other parties in the Senate every time they want to get something through. Late on Tuesday night, around twenty minutes before the Hate Speech Bill was set to come up for a vote in the Senate, Little Proud posted a statement on x and he said the Nationals had decided they could support
the bill. He said the Nationals wanted to move amendments to quote guarantee greater protections against unintended consequences that limit the rights and freedom of speech of everyday Australians and the Jewish community, and he said that if their amendments didn't pass, the Nationals would vote against the bill in the Senate. So they've abstained in the House. Later that day he's released his statement it's coming up for a vote,
and then that is what they did. There are three Nationals in the Senate, plus there's Susan McDonald who is part of the Queensland Combined Liberal National Party. You probably heard about them last we talked about the coalition because we were saying, like, what happens now to the Combined Party? Nothing at the state level, but at the federal level, some stuff happens. So Susan McDonald, Bridget McKenzie, the aforementioned
Matt Canavan and Ross Cadell voted against the bill. McDonald, McKenzie and Cadell were all members of the shadow cabinet, so this was very significant for them to vote against the bill.
Can you explain, Lucy, why it was so significant that we had these senior Nationals leaders vote against the bill and presumably against their Liberal counterparts in the Senate.
Yeah.
So when a party forms government or it forms an official opposition, they set up a cabinet of ministers to advise their leader and to manage matters of importance agriculture, like the Minister for Women, the Shadow Minister for Women,
the treasurer, the shadow Treasurer. In the coalition, members of the cabinet or the shadow cabinet are bound to vote together and to not publicly disagree on party policy based on the position they agree to behind closed doors, and their cabinet or their shadow cabinet draws on the Liberal, the National the Liberal National, the Country Liberal parties, all of these different small parties that make up the coalition.
Okay, So while the National Party and the Liberal Party are separate parties on their own, when they come together as a coalition under the leadership of a shadow cabinet, that shadow cabinet is meant to be aligned on all policy. Whatever goes on behind closed doors, maybe they will disagree, have heated arguments that we don't hear about, but they are then publicly facing and in the Parliament saying this is where we're at on this.
Thing, united front. This is interesting because it's different to Labor, where that rule applies to the entire party. They can disagree on things behind closed doors, but not so much publicly disagreeing on policy, but they have to vote together one hundred percent of the time, unless it's a conscience vote where they're allowed to vote based on personal beliefs.
Which is why you will more often see a Liberal or National MP crossing the floor.
That's the way that it's referred to.
They may cross the floor on a piece of legislation and vote against their party, but that is very rare for.
A Yeah, and in the coalition. You really shouldn't do that if you're in the cabinet, if you want to keep your cabinet post. Historically, speaking now, back in May after the federal election, Susan Lee said, one of the issues that led to that split was that the Nationals wanted to do away with cabinet solidarity.
That's what it's called.
That first split of the Nationals and Liberal Party coalition.
Yeah, she said at the time that this was an issue and this was a subject of some dispute. As you'll hear in this clip from Sarah Ferguson on the ABC's seven thirty interviewing Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie again, one of those cabinet members who voted against the bill at the time.
Are you saying, Susan Lee is not telling the truth when she says one of the key issues was a request from the Nationals that they not be obliged to maintain shadow cabinet solidarity.
So Sarah, I can tell you because I was in the National Party party room that made this decision, the decision which was then conveyed the Liberal leader, and that was not part of our consideration.
Now, as that interview played, We've just received a note from Susan Lee's office saying it is not correct to suggest that shadow cabinet solidarity was not a sticking point, and they, that is Susan Lee's office, have that in writing.
In the end, the Nationals did agree to cabinet solidarity and the coalition got back together. But we see now that the issue might have been resolved in word, but not so much indeed in action, because these shadow cabinet members voted against the bill and against their solidarity obligation, and all three of those who are shadow cabinet members handed in their resignations on Wednesday.
So three National Senators who are in the shadow cabinet vote against the Liberal Party, breaking that rule of cabinet solidarity, and as a result they hand in their resignations from the cabinet, right, not from their roles altogether.
Yeah, not as senators, but as shadow cabinet members.
Yeah, okay.
How did opposition leader Liberal Party leader Susan Lee react to all of this? What has she had to say about this huge shift within her party?
In a statement on Wednesday afternoon, Lee said, quote, shadow cabinet solidarity is not optional. It is the foundation of serious opposition and credible government. And she outlined all those points that I've attributed to her throughout this episode, her version of events that she says the shadow cabinet agreed together.
And she added that she had spoken to Little Proud several times on Tuesday, the day that it was before the Senate, to make it clear that quote, members of the shadow cabinet could not vote against the shadow cabinet position. So you can see Little Proud has abided by that in abstaining not voting against but not the senor the
other senior Nationals. Lee accepted their resignations, and then on Wednesday night it was reported that the Nationals were having a crisis meeting, and later that night all of the Nationals who were still in the shadow Cabinet all resigned from the Shadow Cabinet a.
Total of eight Nationals MPs.
Right Lee said at the time that quote no permanent changes will be made to the Shadow Ministry at this time, giving the National Party time to reconsider these offers of resignation.
And that then brings us to eight thirty am Thursday morning, just as I walk into the office with my coffee, ready to start a day that I thought could possibly involve a coalition split, but I wasn't one hundred percent sure, and I turned on the office TVs to see David Little Proud at a press conference saying the Nationals were walking out of the coalition again.
Okay, we have obviously heard loud and clear Susan Lee's version of events. What has David Little Proud said, as Leader of the Nationals to explain what's gone on here?
How has he responded?
Yeah, he's basically outlined a kind of different version of events. He said the Nationals had to old the Shadow Cabinet meeting on Sunday that they supported the parts of the bill that related to giving the Home Affairs Minister more power to refuse or cancel people's visas, but that the Nationals had quote serious reservations about the freedom of speech and the hate organizations. We wanted to make sure that we got the right mechanism that didn't impinge on honest
Australian's rights to speak. He said. The Nats had been working on Monday and Tuesday on the amendments, which he said they had flagged they wanted to do, and he said Lee told him to let the Nationals raise those amendments and quote if they failed, then consider voting a different way. So that's Little Proud's characterization. But then Little Proud said, when Lee said this, the House of Representatives
was on the point of voting for the bill. So with no time left, he said he abided by his solidarity requirement by abstaining from the vote.
Okay, so the Nationals wanted amendments to the bill, there was no time to discuss or get those amendments sorted before it ended up being voted on in the Lower House, and as a result, the Nationals, with this kind of unresolved list of amendments, decided not to vote rather than vote for or against.
Yeah, exactly because he, as a member of the Shadow Cabinet, didn't want to break that rule. As he says that meant that the amendments had to go in the Senate. That's the last place that they could go. When they did go and they failed, Little Prowd says this meant the senators voted against the bill quote as the will
of the National Party party room. When they resigned after this, Little Proud said he told Lee that if she accepted their resignations, the rest of the Nationals in the shadow cabinet would walk because it quote would not be appropriate considering the circumstances we had. And he ended up sort of blaming the government for the situation, calling it a rushed process.
Okay, we've got the leader of the NACE, David little Proud, saying that government has pushed forward this legislation too quickly. There hasn't been enough time for proper due diligence. These sort of extraordinary circumstances of Parliament being recalled early in the wake of the horrific Bondi terror attack. Then you've got Little Proud saying that Susan Lee wanted the Nationals
to figure out these amendments and raise them. Those amendments were raised in the Senate by the three National senators who are also in shadow cabinet, the amendments fail, the Nationals don't support the hate speech bill, and those three National senators resign. Am I right in thinking Little Proud is then upset with Susan Lee for accepting those resignations and as a result stands in solidarity with his party room and the entire presence of Nationals in the shadow cabinet.
Resign from shadow cabinet.
That's basically the gist of it.
Yeah, okay, thank you, sorry, a lot of moving parts. Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page totally. What's interesting to me, Lucy, is that Susan Lee, as Opposition leader, was calling for Parliament to be recalled urgently to deal with anti Semitism, to have legislation of this nature tabled in the days immediately following the Bondi terror attack. This is what we had heard from her.
She wanted parliament to be recalled before Christmas. So there has been some criticism or confusion, I suppose around the line from both the Liberal and National parties that this was rushed and too quick a process, when that is what the opposition leader wanted, wasn't it.
Yeah, So, both before and after Christmas. In the first weeks of January, Lee was saying Parliament had to come back. She was saying that as early as the seventeenth of December, with the attack having occurred on the fourteenth of December, and in the first week of January, she said there had been enough time between the attack and Christmas. She
said that was a quote fair timeline. Now Little Proud said the Nationals would have the third Parliament come back to vote on just the migration aspect of the bill, so just the Home Affairs aspect, and divert the rest to committees to discuss in more detail. Finally, the final thing that he said that I think we should touch on is he said, quote the Nationals cannot be part of a shadow ministry under Susan Lee.
So very direct and clear in his language there. Yeah, there have been I suppose question marks around Susan Lee's leadership ever since these cracks first emerged between the Liberal and National Parties as a coalition.
Yeah. What has the response to all of.
This been from Susan Lee, the opposition leader and as well as the Prime Minister Anthony Albinezi as the person leading the legislation himself.
Yeah, so all of this was happening on the National Day of Mourning for the victims of the bond Eyed terror attack. Lee sent out a statement at nine am, right after Little Proud finished his presser. She said, quote, today the folks must be on Jewish Australians, indeed all Australians as we mourn the victims of the Bondai terrorist attack. My responsibility as leader of the Opposition and leader of
the Liberal Party is to Australians in mourning. And at the time of recording, we've also heard similar things from Albanezi, who was involved in events for the day throughout all of Thursday.
Okay, so both leaders there focused on the day of Mourning on Thursday rather than discussing the ins and outs of this political turmoil.
Yes, we did hear from ex National and erstwhile National Party leader Barnaby Joyce. He told reporters in his electorate in Tamworth on Thursday that Little Proud had quote besmirched the proper role of what is supposed to happen in a parliament where the government puts forward legislation and the opposition forensically goes through it. Coalition is a marriage and this is more marriages than a weekend at the Gold Coast.
It's just not working. He added that it seemed like a quote recruitment drive for his new party, One Nation.
And this all comes, of course, hot on the heels of One Nation. A historic result in the latest polling, yes having more support amongst the Australian electorate than the coalition itself.
Yeah. In the News poll which is run for the Australian they were one percent ahead of the Coalition. The question being if the election were held tomorrow, who would you rank number one on your ranked ballot?
So fascinating to see, Lucy. There are so many unanswered questions in terms of what comes next, but no doubt the conversation about Susan Lee's leadership will continue to be debated and we'll keep a close eye on it. Thank you for listening to today's episode. That's all we've got time for for today's Deep Dive, but we will be back a little later on with your evening news headlines.
Until then, have a great day.
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Adunda Bunjelung Kalkottin from Gadigol Country. The Daily Oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigol people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and torrest rate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.