Already and this this is the Daily Off. This is the Daily OS.
Oh, now it makes sense. Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Thursday, the twenty second of May. I'm Billy Fitzsimon.
And I'm Sam Bekazlowski.
In a surprise political development this week, the National Party announced it is splitting from its long term partner, the Liberal Party, effectively ending the coalition that has been a cornerstone of Australian politics for decades. This decision marks only the third time in the coalition's eighty year history that the parties have formally separated. So what happens now? Who now makes up the opposition? And does it just guarantee
Labor will be elected again at the next election. Well answer all of your questions in today's.
Episode, Billy. How fun is it just trying to wait for a week where Australian politics becomes a little quieter.
It's very busy at the moment.
It just keeps getting delayed. We had the election a couple of weeks ago. Then we are almost as busy politically as we were during the election time. And that's because there's some really fundamental changes to Australian politics underway. But why don't we start with the basics. Talk me through exactly when you say coalition, what exactly that means.
Yeah, this is an interesting question. I always think about the fact that Australia is often described as a two party system, but that's just not true because we have the Labor Party, which is a single party. But then we have the Coalition and that is not a single party, that is actually two parties. Well, actually it is more than two parties. It's a group of parties that make up the coalition. Mainly it is the Liberal Party and the National Party.
So we basically have a two family system.
Yes, that's a great way to look at it. So the coalition is a formal alliance primarily, like I said, between the Liberal Party and the National Party. Now, this partnership has been a mainstay in Australian politics, like I said, for decades, with those two parties joining forces to govern together. So if after an election they win enough seats to govern, then they do that together in the House of Reps.
But even if they don't win enough seats, usually they still come together in opposition and form a group to be the official opposition in Parliament. Now, It's been fairly well documented that at the most recent election things did not go well for the Coalition. I think it was one of their worst losses in recent history. The exact numbers, so Labour won ninety three seats while the Coalition together secured just forty three seats. So that's a fifty seat difference. That is massive.
And remember you need that seventy six seat majority to govern, so to get ninety three means you are well and truly with the mandate of the Australian people to govern a landslide under forty three with two parties combined in this coalition, clearly something has kind of gone wrong in their messaging to the Australian people. What led to the breakup though? I mean, I feel like I'm sitting through the notebook and the language that everyone's using is about
breaking up and relationships, and we're on the break. Take me back to the beginning of this love story and where it started to break down.
So I think it started to break down after the Australian people basically, like you said, rejected what they were offering. And so it's been what three weeks now since the election, and then on Tuesday, Nationals leader David littl prod made the announcement via a press conference that the Nationals would be ending their formal partnership with the Liberal Party. Often in breakups, you say who was the one who ended it? Very much the Nationals. They were the one who ended
this relationship. You're right that everyone's been talking about it as a breakup, even the Nationals in their press conference they kept comparing this to a breakup. Fascinating, but they said that this is just a temporary break by no means, does this seem like it's going to be a permanent breakup of the coalition.
I'm really interested in you saying that it could just be temporary. Yes, that doesn't sound like they're out of love. It just sounds like they might need a bit of space from each other. Can you explain what you mean by that a little bit more?
So, they have actually broken up before. This is actually the third time that they have gone through something like this. The most recent time was in nineteen eighty seven, which, if my mass is correct, nearly forty years ago, and so that was over a disagreement about who should be running as prime minister for the country. So obviously in the coalition, only one person if they are in opposition, can be running to be the prime minister, and the
Nationals said they wanted to put forward a leader. The Liberal Party, who traditionally does put forward the person to be running for prime minister, said no, and that caused a disagreement, which led to a split. But that lasted about one hundred days and then they eventually came back together because I.
Think the interesting dynamic, iming purely on the mathematical point, is for there to be any chance of a coalition government at almost any election, they almost need to be together. Yes, so the incentives to get back together are pretty strong. Did David little Proud, the current leader of the Nationals, did he talk through at that press conference the key reasons why they're making this decision right now?
Yes. So he said that there were four specific policy areas that led to this breakup. I'll go through them. The first one is nuclear energy. So the Nationals strongly believe that Australia needs to introduce nuclear energy. At the last election, the coalition together went to the Australian public
and said if we are elected, we will introduce nuclear energy. Now, obviously they were not elected but the Nationals are saying that wasn't because of our nuclear policy, and so we believe that at the next election we should still have the policy of introducing nuclear energy.
And it's an important policy for a lot of the nine million people that they represent, which the nine million Australians that don't live in capital cities where energy distribution and kind of the way that regional Australia is powered is a big topic.
Yeah, And they say that Australia can't just run on renewable energy. They are saying that in order for Australia to run efficiently, we actually need nuclear energy.
So if I'm understanding correctly, post election, the Nationals kind of said to their partners in the coalition, the Liberal Party, are you still going to back nuclear power going forward? Because that's a fundamental part of why we're staying in this relationship And the Liberal Party couldn't give that guarantee right now? Is that kind of right correct?
But we don't know how the conversation exactly went, but I think we can pretty safely presume that the Liberal Party said we're not willing to commit to.
That right now. Okay, And you said there were four areas so take me through Nuclear was number one? What's number two?
So number two is something called the Regional Australia Future Fund, and that was another election policy. This one was about creating a twenty billion dollar fund providing better infrastructure for regional and remote Australia.
Okay. Interesting, So we've got two very regional driven policies or very relevant to regional heartlands. Take me through the third and the fourth ones.
The third one is also very regional focused. It was something called the Universal Service Obligation and that was a plan to improve regional mobile and internet access.
Okay.
And then the last one is something called Divestiture Powers, which I find very hard.
To say, you're pretty good.
So that was a coalition policy that would require large companies to sell parts of their businesses if they demonstrated serious anti competitive behavior. And that was specifically aimed at reducing the market power of supermarkets.
So by effect standing up for farmers who may be producing milk or meat for the supermarkets and feel like they're getting ripped off.
A bit, yes, and saying that Australia has this duopoly with Cohles and Wulwas and we need to diversify where Australians are getting their products from.
And so these are all policy areas that the coalition, as a partnership between the Liberal Party and the Nationals carried into this election. What did the Liberal Party say about these four areas that made the Nationals break up with them?
Yeah? So, like I said, we heard from the Nationals leader, David Little Proud in the morning announcing the breakup, and then just a few hours later we heard from the leader of the Liberal Party, who is Susan Lee. She was only elected last week. And I also think it's worth mentioning that she actually lost her mother over the weekend, so I mean, she has had a terrible first week on the job.
It was interesting, actually, I'll just quickly tell you I was listening to an interview with David Little Proud with Triple J the day of this big announcement, and David MARQUESI, the interviewer, put to him, you know, this person's mother just passed away, like, is this the right time to
be renegotiating the coalition agreement? And David Little Proud said he let Susan dictate the terms of those discussions, and that she said, I'm going to come to Canberra the day after her mother's funeral to have these really important discussions about the future of the coalition, and he said, no, I'll come to you. And Susan Lee was in Aubrey at the time, which is where her late mother was, and David Little Proud went to Aubrey to have the
discussions on her terms. And I just thought that was an interesting Yeah, amid the political games that we're talking about here are very human story, Yeah, but.
Still just you can't imagine what she must be going through now, but we do know. So she did hold this press conference, yeah, on Tuesday exactly, and so what she said about the discussions is that the National Party came to her with these four policy areas and she just said, we are not able to commit to that right now. We need more time to understand what our policy areas are going to be moving forward, and if you can't give that to us, then we can't enter
into this coalition. And so that's when the National Party pulled out of the coalition.
We'll be right back with the rest of the TI They dive after a quick message from our sponsor. And we also know that the Liberal Party is planning this review of where everything went so wrong for them in the election, which is totally normal behavior for a political party post an election loss.
Definitely, so they are going to do this review. But I think one thing that they are clearly already reflecting on is this idea that they need to modernize, and that is their word. So Susan Lee in the press conference on Tuesday, she kept saying that the Liberal Party needs to modernize. Here's a little bit of that clip. The Liberal Party must respect modern Australia, reflect modern Australia
and represent modern Australia. And just in terms of why, I think that we can infer that she's saying that perhaps being with the National Party won't allow us to modernize. We know the Nationals are a more conservative part of the coalition, definitely sit more to the right of the Liberal Party, and we also know that Susan Lee is part of the more moderate part of the Liberal Party.
So I think the gap between the ideologies of Susan Lee as the leader of the Liberal Party and then the Nationals who are wanting to be more conservative is clearly quite far.
Billy, I'm king to zoom out for a sex So how will all of this affect the makeup of the opposition in Parliament.
Well, that's the critical question because it completely changes now who is in opposition. So, in case you're not familiar, every parliament needs to have an opposition and that's the party or group that has the highest number of non government seats. So I think you can think of it as like the party that won the second highest number
of seats at the election. Now, since the Liberal Party won more seats than the Nationals at the election, So the Liberal Party won twenty eight seats and the Nationals one fifteen, So that means that the Liberals had the second highest number of seats as a single party by.
Quite a bit.
Had a big Yeah, Labor had ninety three and the second was twenty eight, so that is a big gap. So that just means that the Liberals will be the official opposition party without the Nationals.
And before we wrap up, give me a sense of what this all means for the Labor government. I mean, primus Anthony Abeasy wasn't even in the country for all of this this week. He was off in Italy at the official ceremony to welcome the new pope. He's now back in the country. What will this mean for his government?
I mean, it doesn't mean a lot, although I presume that they would be quite happy because it kind of I mean, I think when there's so much disunity in the opposition and then Labor is able to present unity to the country, it's just good for them in terms of what it actually means for them. If the coalition doesn't get back together, it kind of basically guarantees that Labor will be re elected for a third consecutive term.
What do you mean by that, Well, because the Liberal Party, in order for them to govern by themselves, they need to win seventy six seats, Like I just said, At the last election, they won twenty.
Eight seats, so they've got a big gap.
That's a big gap, that's almost a fifty seat gap, and to turn that around in a single election cycle would be very hard. Some would argue it's near and possible, and so if the coalition, if they don't have the support of the National Party, then Labor is pretty much guaranteed to win again.
Okay, but you mentioned before that the last example nineteen eighty seven, there was an one hundred day breakup and then they got back together. The trend historically tends to be that the coalition reunites, they go and sit in the park bench and confess their love for once more. What happens if the Coalition does indeed reform before the next election, and.
They have basically said that that will definitely happen. No one is positioning this as a permanent breakup. Both David Littlproud and Susan Lee said that they have every intention to get.
Back together, they just need some time apart.
They were basically giving people relationship advice.
That's incredible. It's an incredible fusion of politics and caller daddy.
Yes. So if the Coalition does get back together then it's basically business as normal for the Labor Party for the next election. For everyone, it's just business as normal and your hope for them that they would have more unity in their policy positions moving forward.
One interesting bit of trivia I actually read about online is that so every member of Parliament gets an allowance and that allowance pays for their staff at Parliament that
helped them in their office. The opposition gets a certain allowance and then minor parties get a lower allowance, and the Nationals were part of the opposition up until Tuesday and then now a minor party, so every Nationals member actually gets a little less money to fund their office, and so there were actually reports of members of their office trying to figure out, well, what does this mean
for our job? And I just thought that was a really interesting kind of quirk of the system where yeah, on the surface, it looks like a symbolic split for now, but it can, you know, really shake up the way that the Parliament works. Definitely, thank you so much for that, Billy, some great relationship advice, some great political explaining. You would be the perfect political date show hosts. That's a fantastic
effort to explain the coalition through love. That's all we've got time for on today's episode of The Daily Os. We're going to be back in the afternoon with some headlines, but as always, you can check us out on Instagram to catch up with some news throughout the day. We'll speak to you this afternoon. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bunjelung Calcuttin woman from Gadigl 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.