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The Morning Edition
A funeral, secret plots, and 'wayward children' — another messy week for the Coalition
00:27:25
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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley and I'm coming at you from the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. Well, the drama between the Liberals and the Nationals continued this week with what appears to be a total breakdown in the relationship between Liberals leader Susan Lee and Nationals leader David Littleproud. Meanwhile, Susan Lee's leadership remains in mortal peril. And in a plot twist, David Littleproud now faces his own leadership challenge next week. I'm very pleased to be back from summer holidays with my podcasting partner in crime, our chief political correspondent, Paul Sakal. Hi, Paul.
- [00:39]
B
So good to have you back.
- [00:40]
A
It's good to be back. And, you know, we're really hitting the ground running this week. It's getting so crazy and dramatic there in Canberra that I almost feel like it needs to be its own reality TV show, like, I'm a coalition mp, get me out of here or something. The brand damage, as we were just saying, is totally incalculable, I think, to both of the coalition partners. But I just want to ask what the split actually means in practical terms, because I feel like there's still fights over the sort of headline stuff, but nobody's really talked about what it will mean in terms of, you know, opposition party funding, shadow ministerships, dare I say it, you know, the policies that we're supposed to be seeing from the Liberal Party this year, even just whether or not they're gonna sort of meet or talk to each other. What's your sort of understanding of how it's gonna work in practice?
- [01:26]
B
Well, you mentioned some reality TV show names there. Sean Carney, our excellent political columnists today channelled succession, the dramatic fictional version of the. Of the Murdoch family, which was a super popular show in his column today when he said that in reference to Coalition MPs, these are not serious people, which I think probably struck true to a lot of people watching the coalition over summer.
- [01:49]
A
Yeah, which is famously what Logan Roy, the patriarch, says about his wayward children. And, I mean, I think it is extraordinary that, you know, the leaders of two major political parties, which have these long, historically storied traditions and which have, you know, traditionally been the party of government, together more often than not in Australian history, you know, can't come to terms. They apparently can't stand each other to the point where they can't even have a phone call, let alone be in the same room with each other. There's talk of David Littleproud having shouted at Susan Lee down the phone. In any other organisation, any Australian, any listener, you know, listening to this will know that in their own workplaces this kind of behaviour would be completely unacceptable. I mean, it's, it's kind of extraordinary, isn't it?
- [02:34]
B
You often hear this said about politics, that this kind of behaviour wouldn't be acceptable anywhere else. And it's, it's there. There are so many exceptions in this world and there's like toxic relationships and shouting matches. The stakes are high. And, you know, when the public gets an insight into it through a debacle like this one, where there's lots of reporting and interviews, where questions are asked about private conversations, it all looks extremely ugly. And it cements in the minds of many voters what they suspect about Canberra, which is that it's a bit of a cesspit. People are power hungry. There are huge egos everywhere. And for the coalition which has spent years trying to repair its image as the kind of competent party which they have so often been seen since World War II, where they've been in government for about two thirds or just more of the time since World War II, that's been shattered. And from just a few weeks ago, when I think we were talking about this earlier in the week, Jackie, where the government looked on the ropes a little bit. Polling showed the Prime Minister's response to Bondi was in the minds of a majority of voters poor for that political ascendancy, which was probably more fragile than we realised at the time over summer. For Susan Lee, for that to have been ceded so quickly and for them to be in this state they're in now is quite extraordinary just in terms of where the split is at. It's a technical point, but not been noted probably enough even by me in the reporting. The split hasn't been formalised yet. So last week when this blow up occurred in Parliament, we know the Nationals senators who are in the shadow, the formal opposition Shadow Cabinet handed in their resignations because they breached Shadow Cabinet solidarity on it, on Labor's hate speech laws. Susan Lee accepted those resignations because she agreed that they had done the wrong thing. Even though David Littleproud says she should not have accepted those resignations, which is quite an odd argument, she did accept them. But all of the subsequent resignations that David Littleproud and his other front benches put to Susan Lee effectively in solidarity with their Nationals colleagues have not yet been accepted formally by Susan Lee and the pair are yet to have a patch up conversation, which I think is not likely to yield anything, but could potentially yield a resolution before Parliament returns next week. So we're still in this kind of point of stasis where the Nationals have said they cannot serve in Susan Lee's shadow cabinet. Susan Lee has not put Liberals in the positions that were once held by Nationals. And the Nationals have not yet created this unorthodox, novel kind of shadow shadow front bench which David Littleproud says he will do. Because there are many members of both the Nationals and the Liberal parties who behind the scenes are working really hard to patch this up. It's very hard to see how that happens with the two leaders in their positions because they've both climbed up to these positions where it would be very hard to come down from. But we still haven't formalised the split.
- [05:26]
A
Yeah, if they were to formalise the split and as you say, they've both painted themselves into a corner, it's very hard to see how they can patch it up. But at the same time, every way you look at it, it's untenable, particularly for the Nationals, I think, to be running their own show. I mean, on a basic level, you know, the shadow ministries that the Nationals have now, you know, these Nationals members have now given up, they come with an extra $60,000 in pay. Okay, maybe they've taken a big pay cut. These people, they come with more staff, they come with better officers. So that will all be gone. Which is a huge sort of funding hole really, for the Nationals to be running their own show. They'll apparently have to be doing separate policy making at an election. What would it mean? Because, you know, traditionally nationals and Liberals don't run against each other. There are certain seats where you could even, maybe even get a four pointed contest. And you know, with one nation in there as well, preference flows. And then of course there's the question of the Senate cause. Our colleague James Masola had a really interesting story this week pointing out that the Nats, particularly in New South Wales, at least if they were not on the coalition Senate ticket, they would maybe not win a seat at all or they might win. So they're basically subsidised or you know, cross subsidized by the Liberals, particularly in the upper house. I mean, they're just a sort of spent political force if they're not with the peoples, aren't they?
- [06:46]
B
Well, the Nationals have always been able to expand their appeal and demonstrate to voters that they are a kind of bigger and more substantive party in terms of their, what they can achieve in politics because of their link with the Liberal Party. Yeah, you're able to tell a regional voter if you're a nationals MP that if you vote for me, we are part of a coalition. We will then have a deputy prime minister as our party leader and we'll effect change through government that benefits regional voters. Without the Liberal Party, they're obviously unable to do that. And because the Liberal Party has now been diminished in the cities so severely, they also to form government, need the National Party because those four, five, six, seven, eight seats in the House are what they need to, you know, I mean they're nowhere near government at the moment, but they need them as well. And then to the point of pay and positions, you're spot on. I mean all of these nationals frontbenchers who have quit over coming weeks, unless this is somehow patched up, which is very unlikely, will lose multiple staff each. Those staff have families. They will lose $60,000 in pay themselves. And for senators like Bridget McKenzie and Ross Caddell, two of the MPs who crossed the floor last week, knowing what the consequence would be, they probably in two years time at the next election will lose their Senate positions. Because the way it works for voters who didn't read our colleague James Masola's story is that those national senators, every second election, so every, at the end of every six year term, there's a nationals politician who has the second spot on the coalition Senate ticket. If they were not on that Senate ticket, they would either get a quota themselves as a nationals politician, which is very hard. It will almost never happen. And so they will not have a position unless they're on the coalition ticket. Yeah, and Bridget McKenzie's distinctly aware of this. She talks about it in private. And the fact that they've taken this step, knowing the consequence on pay, on position, on staff, goes to the depth of hostility between these two parties. There is such an ideological gulf, there is such a, such a severe schism between some of the personalities, particularly between David Littlepred and Susan Lee, who have for many years not seen eye to eye and have shown various, at various points disrespect towards the other. And there's a feeling in the Liberal Party in both parties at the moment as they prepare for the first full parliamentary sit ins next week and the week after that when this reality dawns on the majority of members in the opposition that they look like this rump in Parliament. Albanese, who's a bit of a master tactician and practitioner of the Parliament, will belittle them. They'll be made fun of in the corridors. They'll just look like an absolute rabble and maybe that will spark the sense of urgency to heal this and overcome the ego driven decision making that got them here in the first place.
- [09:43]
A
That that may well be and I hope it is for the sake of our democracy and the health of our democracy. But the egos involved are so strong and they seem to be so myopic in their view. That's what I find so amazing. Because even if you don't want to cooperate with your coalition partner shortly, you can see on some level your strategic interest short term and long term in doing so. Because neither of them can win an election without the other. But also just the enormous, enormous brand damage that is being done because you have ordinary voters looking at this and you know, as we, as I was saying before, just thinking like I would get sacked for this behaviour. How is it acceptable in elected representatives? And also like this was supposed to be the year when the Liberals were actually going to give us some policy. I mean they're supposed to be pushing out an immigration policy. We have stuff like, you know, the Chinese ambassador this week has come out and said that if Australia sells off the Port Darwin sell, you know, takes Port Darwin off Chinese investors, then they will basically wage a new trade war. I'm kind of, you know, generalizing there, but these are major issues that, you know, particularly the coalition should be all over and they're just not. They don't have their eye on the game at all in terms of what the Australian people want or policy development. I find it actually really confounding.
- [11:00]
B
The government's inflation narrative is blown up in its face this week, which is absolutely beautiful terrain for the Liberal Party.
- [11:06]
A
Yeah. And they've got a really, really strong argument there, which is basically the Labor Party or, you know, labor government has spent way too much money and it's pushing up inflation and it's going to affect every single mortgage mortgagee in the country when interest rates go up this week. Paul, how do you see, like, how do you see it sort of playing out next week? Obviously Parliament comes back. David Littleproud is going to face this sort of weird squib of a challenge from Colin Boyce. What do you think is going to happen there? First of all, will the challenge even get up?
- [11:34]
B
David Littleproud's in a, in a difficult position politically because his authority's been dented by what's happened in the last couple of weeks, particularly in terms of the perceptions of him from his Liberal colleagues. There are most people in the Liberal Party believe that if there is to be a reconciliation at some point in the future. David Littleproud can't be the Nationals leader because he was seen to have acted totally unreasonably by his Liberal colleagues on the other side in the National Party because there is this sense of Nationals exceptionalism, Nationals parochialism in terms of being hairy chested and muscular in their dealings with their city based partners. It's galvanised the sense among the Nationals that, you know, we can go this alone, we can be our own party, we can be for our voters and not have to compromise and accommodate city based views, which they haven't done much of in recent years anyway. But this challenge from Colin Boyce next week, which has come totally out of the blue, we do have to get this coalition back together again. It's a bit like trying to weld square pipe to round pipe. And that is why I will announce to you right here today, you heard it first. I will be moving a spill motion on Monday afternoon in the National Party party room to give my colleagues an option, because the reality is, if they follow the course they're on now, we are going over the political cliff. Colin Boyce is a boilermaker from Gladstone, has very few allies in the party, was one of the closest MPs in the Nationals to Barnaby Joyce. He's been telling people privately that if he does leave the Nationals, which is in prospect, he'll join the crossbench rather than one nation. So he's a rogue operator. He's thrown up this bill motion for this coming Monday. He may not even receive a seconder on this motion. You need a colleague to back a motion for it to be put for a vote. And then if it does get the seconder, it's almost certainly not going to get enough numbers, a majority of the 18 Nationals MPs to get to a vote on the leadership. But just the raising up of the issue of David Littleproud's leadership will, I imagine, spark a conversation among some of the more ambitious Nationals colleagues of Little Proud, including Matt Canavan, Bridget McKenzie, Michael McCormack, all of whom would like to be the leader of the party. And these rumblings are occurring already. You're hearing these talks behind the scenes in the Nationals, about which are along the lines of, okay, look, he's safe for now, he still has the numbers, but in the long run, can this guy still lead us? So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out over a period of months. Not as immediate as the Susan Lee.
- [14:09]
A
Leadership troubles, but, I mean, that's the thing. Hasn't he just spelled the cat? Because it's Basically now, you know, David Littleproud and Susan Lee are so at odds with each other that it's either, you know, the Nationals have to decide whether they want to keep David Little proud in the leadership in apparent perpetuity, or at least to the next election, say, or go back into a coalition or put themselves in a position where they're actually electable as a government. So I don't know if I fancy. If I'd put money on David Littleproud's chances in that scenario, because Self Interest will generally win.
- [14:38]
B
I think that's a decent bet.
- [14:39]
A
Yeah.
- [14:40]
B
The Nationals are notorious for pretty speedy leadership changes. Their party room is so small that you only ever need really two or three votes to switch one way or the other. And that leader's dead. And Michael McCormack is ambitious. Bridget McKenzie is ambitious.
- [14:54]
A
Yeah. And he sort of did what they wanted him to do, didn't they? In the sense that he convinced he sort of strong armed. Susan, Leah. It looked a lot like he did into dropping the. The coalition commitment to net zero, which is one of, you know, sort of the National Party's major sort of ambitions, I suppose, within the coalition. Okay, let's talk about Susan Lee. Cause she's not looking too hot. And as we record, actually there's the funeral of the much respected mp, Katie Allen, in Melbourne, which both sides of politics, or I think it's a memorial service, which both sides of politics are attending. And Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie, you know, classic, classic politics, were photographed sort of going into a meeting with each other right before this. Fun. You know, it is a dirty game. It is a dirty game.
- [15:38]
B
It's a bit Shakespearean or something, having all this intrigue around a funeral and plotting around a funeral.
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A
Yeah, they're basically plotting to knock off their leader right before going to honour the life of this politician.
- [15:49]
B
I know Angus Taylor, by the way, has a strong relationship with Katie Allen's husband. So I know that his people are feeling a bit off about how this has been portrayed and they didn't mean it to be put this way, but with Hastie being in Perth, this event happening, it's unfortunately been caught up in the funeral debate.
- [16:04]
A
Yeah. And Angus Taylor, as you've reported, has been overseas for much of the summer. So this is the sort of first time they're actually in the same city together and this happens to be the reason. But again, it doesn't look so good. What do you think will come out of that meeting? Or, you know, are they likely to come to terms? Because it's hard to see Susan Lee's leadership continuing for too much longer, isn't it?
- [16:23]
B
Yeah. So for listeners to understand why that meeting is important, it's because, in effect, it's not quite this precise. But half the party room is moderate and half the party room are Conservatives. It chops and changes. The Conservatives probably have a slight edge, but for an alternative leader to beat Susan Lee in a leadership ballot, the right, the Conservative side, will need to be united behind one. If there's two candidates from the right, that half will be split 25, 25%. And the moderate candidate being Susan Lee will stick that in the job. So until Andrew Hastie and Angus Taylor can come to a resolution on who the right wing candidate is, this leadership spill ain't happening. The last couple of weeks has been pretty fascinating. So this coalition blow up, which was, in the minds of most liberals, precipitated by David Littleproud, even though Susan Lee kind of created the environment for herself to be smited in such a way because her vociferous calls to come back for Parliament were, in hindsight, rash and put the party in a precarious position, once they came back, she didn't think.
- [17:21]
A
More than one step ahead. I mean, this is what sort of, you know, and Anthony Albanese, by contrast, for all of his flaws, does he, you know, he's a political strategist with, you know, many runs on the board. But yeah, she didn't think more than one step ahead.
- [17:34]
B
Totally. Right. And as Sean Carney, who I referenced earlier, I'm just repeating Sean Carney's column.
- [17:39]
A
It was a great column. Everyone should go read it.
- [17:41]
B
Everyone should always read Sean Carney. As he said, the idea that you would call for Parliament to return in order to undercut the Prime Minister is the wrong way to view this Prime Minister because there is nowhere where he is more adept than in the Parliament and using the Parliament to wedge his opponents and create conflict on their own side, which he did despite a really difficult summer for him where he was exposed on more substantive qualities of leadership and potentially moral clarity, which is an overused term, but I'll use the cliche anyway. But just in the last couple of weeks on the Liberal leadership spill, it's been really interesting to see how it played out. So in the days after Little Proud left the coalition, it was clearly a moment of generational crisis. Like there are a few moments on the Conservative side of politics that looked so stark when it occurred, because the split that occurred after the last election was brief. There was always going to be patched up quickly. And there was a sense that Susan Lee could kind of this new centrist leader, woman in the role. There was a sense of positivity around the place. We're now nearly a year into her leadership. When David Littlepred split out last week, it looked like the split would be more permanent and there were serious questions about whether the coalition was dead. So at that moment, the group of supporters around Andrew Hastie, who are very bolshy, they want to see Andrew Hastie in the job quickly. And Andrew Hastie is telling people that he wants the job quickly, he's ready to do it, even though he's only 42 or 43. They very quickly started making calls to colleagues saying that Hastie was ready, saying that his wife was ready for him to do the job, and trying to create momentum for a spill. This got reported by us and all the other political reporters. But over days it became clear that the momentum was not quite as strong as we initially thought. A lot of MPs were saying, we haven't even received a call. Andrew Hastie's people were dampening the idea that there would be a quick leadership spill. And there was a really strong pushback from some moderates and from people around Susan Lee, who really started to, you know, take the piss out of the hasty camp to say, you guys have never done a leadership spill before. You're all first or second term backbenchers. You clearly don't know how to do this. Get back in your box.
- [19:49]
A
It just from the outside, it just looks like they couldn't run a chook raffle.
- [19:52]
B
There is that sense that I can understand it. All the while, Angus Taylor is in Europe with his wife. They're trying to have their first holiday as a couple for many years. He was away for the parliamentary sitting week where this all occurred. Even though he was zooming into leadership meetings and staying up all night, and he was not able to do the same level of rallying that Andrew Hastie was doing because Hastie was in the country. So Taylor gets back into the country, he's on the back foot, he starts calling around over that last weekend and realizes that quite a few people who might have been seen as on the fence and in the right faction on who to back were on leaning towards Hastie. So then the Taylor people enter the debate, try and calm the horses and say, you know, now's not quite the right time. Give this a few weeks. We need to come together with Hastie and have a meeting to determine which one of us it's going to be. And so now we're in this kind of holding pattern to see where the right goes. This meeting today in Melbourne might be crucial. I suspect it actually won't come up with a resolution. Susan Lee's people are feeling pretty bolshy because the other side looks shambolic. But even though Susan Lee's people have been projecting this confidence and making fun of their, you know, allegedly rabble rousing opponents, there's been this string of polls now which show that one nation is hovering somewhere between, you know, 16, 17% minimum on primary and up to 25%. And the liberal Party in some of these polls are in the high teens, mid 20s or low 20s. And those polls are just freaking out Liberal MPs, because those aren't like bad polls. They're like tectonic shifts in conservative voting patterns that could just cut the knees off the Liberal Party. So there's a sense that not only is Susan Lee's leadership, you know, it might be buffeted by the fact that there is chaos on the right flank of the coalition, but the situation is so dire that MPs are now starting to speak in existential terms. And I suspect that will lead to a removal. It might not be swift because the right's disorganised, but it will probably occur over the next few months. Yeah, if not, if not, in two weeks time, at the end of the parliamentary sitting week.
- [21:56]
A
I mean, this is maybe a bit of a byway, and I know you and Tas had did a podcast a couple of weeks ago about the one nation sort of threat as it might be dubbed. And I think again, we keep coming back to Sean Carney. I think he made this point as well, that the shift to one nation could be on ideological grounds, you know, on political grounds, but it could be also people who can't bring themselves or would never vote for a progressive party, but just cannot stand the chaos or are completely disgusted and disillusioned by the chaos within the coalition. So one nation, by contrast, looks pretty unified and together at least, which is not something I thought I'd ever say. And it is a tectonic shift. I mean, I don't think we can sort of discount the possibility that we're never going to go back to what we've always thought is politics as usual in this country, which is a two party system where both the major players basically swap government in and out, depending on how badly or how incompetent one or the other is in government. It's a split in the Vote on the right and you know, in many other countries, particularly European countries it's quite normal for coalitions to form governments and I mean coalitions in the small C sense and you know, maybe that's what we're looking at if they could ever agree on terms or ever get round to thinking about policy. Paul, where does this leave the government? Because you know it is quite extraordinary that, you know the amount of blame, you know, condemnation, criticism that Albanese got in particular and now he's managed to pull off this kind of legislation quite quickly. He looks very much like he's done it on his own terms. Yes, he had to back down over the Royal Commission but I don't know if he's going to pay a huge political price for that in the long term and what are they going to be getting on with now? Because you know, I mean Albanese has been in East Timor this week. He'll come back to Parliament next week. Will they actually have any sort of policy for us? Will they be, you know, what will they be doing in terms of their agenda this year?
- [23:44]
B
Well, the Prime Minister has a National Press Club speech next week. It was going to be I think in this week the Australia Day week or perhaps just before, I can't quite remember but it got delayed because of the Bondi legislative response. That's a set piece speech that the Prime Minister gives every year outlining his agenda and this year's I suspect will be more important than most because after the May election last year 2025 was seen as a year of delivery for Albanese. He would tell anyone who had listened that we're not going to embark on some new radical agenda in the first year after being reelected with a thumping majority. We'll do what we said and the future, we'll see what the future holds in terms of where our horizons can be expanded to. We still don't really have a clear sense of what the second year agenda might look like and this is a critical year in the sense that the government's got a big majority, the opposition's in crisis. We know there's no election this year so it's a full year of being able to govern without thinking about a campaign and the government's got a lot of political capital in the sense of a huge majority in the Parliament but as Bondi showed, he's not a Bob Hawke level figure in terms of his political ascendancy he can go through a crisis that quickly diminishes his personal numbers. His popularity ratings of Prime Minister dipped over January to the same level as they were in February, January of the election year, when he was at a point where many people were predicting a Dutton government, obviously very wrongly predicting that, but that's what polls were showing. So there is a sense that the government needs to get back, swing back into gear itself with a new agenda. The budget will be an important budget in May. Inflation pressure is back, so there'll probably need to be something on the spending front to see if the government can pare back, which they haven't shown much appetite to do to date. And then there's also this big question on what the government does on economic reform. Do they tackle the tax question? How ambitious does Chalmers want to be? The government's next year is really open and hard to predict as to where it will go. So it'll be fascinating.
- [25:44]
A
I mean, I think it's going to be all about the economy because as you say, there's a budget where sort of we go into budget kind of preparation mode almost from now and they're going to have to trim spending. It seems to me like they just have to one way or the other, depending on, you know, particularly what the RBA says next week when they say.
- [25:58]
B
They'Re not very good at it. Trimming spending.
- [25:59]
A
No. And they've got so much locked in. I mean, and you know, well, you know, there's, I mean health, health costs are blowing out. You know, they're about to do this deal on the hospitals. Childcare costs are enormous still there, huge sort of headline items in the budget there that I think they'll struggle to rein in. Paul, thanks very much. It's good to be back, to be reunited for this, what is going to be a very exciting year in politics, I think. And I will see you next week.
- [26:22]
B
Awesome to have you back. Thanks, Jack.
- [26:29]
A
You can read all of our political news on our websites, theage.com au or smh.com.au and while you're there, consider subscribing to the Sydney Morning Herald or the Age today and save 50% for the first six months. On our premium, digital and essential weekend packages. You'll unlock all of our award winning journalism plus subscriber favourites like Puzzles, Good Food and Traveller. Head to our website to find out more. Terms and conditions apply. Today's episode was produced by Chee Wong with help from Debbie Harrington. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills and our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Marksworthy and Tom McKendrick. Before you go, please follow Inside Politics and leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. I'm Jacqueline Maley. Thank you for listening.