Today, Nationals leader David Littleproud announced the Coalition will be ending its formal partnership with the Liberal Party.
This is extremely rare — the last time it happened was in 1987.
So what does this all mean? Let us explain!
Coalition
The Coalition is a formal, long-standing alliance primarily between the Liberal Party and the National Party, which means they join forces in Parliament.
At the last election, Labor won 93 seats. The Coalition (the Liberals and Nationals together) won 43 seats.
This was seen as one of the worst electoral defeats for the Coalition in recent history.
Reasons for split
Littleproud said there are four policy positions that the National Party could not agree with the Liberal Party on. They are...
Nuclear energy
The Nationals believe Australia needs to introduce nuclear energy to Australia. The Coalition promised to do this if it was elected earlier this month. The Nationals do not believe that the Coalition’s loss was because of its nuclear policy. Littleproud said the Australian economy cannot run efficiently on renewables.
Regional Australia Future Fund
This was a policy announced at the last election to create a $20 billion fund to provide better infrastructure for regional and remote Australia.
Divestiture powers
This was a Coalition policy that would make large companies sell parts of their business if they demonstrated anti-competitive behaviour. It was specifically aimed at breaking up the powers of supermarkets.
Universal Service Obligation
This was a plan to better regional mobile and internet access.
Liberal Party
Sussan Ley was elected leader of the Liberal Party last week.
In a press conference today, Ley said the Liberal Party was not ready “to land on those four policies, or any for that matter, right now in the form they were presented to us”.
Ley emphasised in her press conference that she believes the Liberal Party needs to “modernise”.
“ The Liberal Party must respect modern Australia, reflect modern Australia, and represent modern Australia” she added.
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Both party leaders have made clear they believe the parties will come back together in the future.
They have positioned the announcement as a temporary break, not a permanent break-up.
Littleproud said: “Hopefully before the next election we can reaffirm a Coalition agreement.”
Ley said: “The Nationals door remains open and our door remains open, and we look forward with optimism to rejoining at some point in the future.”
Precedent
This is the third time the Coalition has split in its 80-year history.
The most recent time was in 1987.
That split was over which party should be the ‘head’ of the Coalition, and which party’s leader should be running to become Prime Minister. The disagreement led to a split that lasted 100 days.
Opposition
Every term of Parliament needs to have an Opposition.
This is the party or group that has the highest number of non-government seats.
The Liberal Party won more seats than the Nationals at the election, meaning the Liberals will be the official Opposition Party.
This also means the Shadow Ministry will only be made of Liberal Party politicians.
Labor
So what does this all mean for Labor?
Not much changes for them, except that their Opposition in Parliament is now just the Liberal Party.
If the Coalition stay apart, it means Labor is almost guaranteed to be re-elected in a third consecutive term. While Labor is on track to win 93 seats at the most recent election, the Liberal Party is set to win just 28 seats.
If the Coalition come back together, it would be business as usual at the next election. The next election is not due until 2028.
