Nationals leader David Littleproud has dared the Liberals to reunite the Coalition with a leader who will reinstate three rebel senators to their shadow ministry positions, heightening the stakes as supporters of Liberal MP Andrew Hastie sound out support for a leadership challenge.
As the bitter fallout from last week’s Coalition split deepened, Littleproud insisted he and his colleagues did nothing wrong when three Nationals senators crossed the floor to vote against the opposition’s shadow cabinet position of supporting Labor’s hate laws last week – a decision that has torn up the Coalition alliance.
But the Nationals leader would not say whether he yelled at Ley and demanded she resign in tense phone calls, refusing to weigh into what he called “delusional, petty games” as the saga prompts fresh leadership speculation and enlivens right faction Liberal MPs who want to move on the opposition leader.
Hastie’s supporters have started hitting the phones to rally support for a challenge but this weekend reached a stalemate because Angus Taylor, another right faction Liberal, also wants to run, and many Liberal MPs are cautious about moving on Ley because they do not want to be seen as rewarding Littleproud or the Nationals for their behaviour.
As the Coalition break-up destabilises conservative politics in Australia, a resurgent Pauline Hanson said she would not look to form an alliance with the Nationals, now a crossbench party, because of their messy infighting.
The three Nationals frontbenchers offered Ley their resignation last week because they had broken with the convention of shadow cabinet solidarity in voting against Labor’s bill. However, Littleproud threatened that all the Nationals would walk out if Ley accepted. She did, with the backing of the Liberal leadership, and the Nationals left the Coalition.
Many Liberal MPs are furious with Littleproud, but the Nationals leader said on Sunday that blame for the Coalition split rested squarely with Ley. He said he was “not interested in playing pick the leader” and that the Liberal leadership was a matter for the opposition.
But when asked whether there was any Liberal leader who could reunite the Coalition, he told Nine’s Today: “Anyone prepared to reinstate the three colleagues who were sacked for standing up for principle, without proper process, would help. These were extenuating circumstances. There was no need for it to unfold the way it did.”
The Nationals leader did not confirm or deny claims he yelled at Ley and told her to resign. “I’m not going to get into these delusional petty games. This is just nonsense,” he said in a separate interview on Sky News.
“The reality is that we wanted to get to a position to keep the Coalition together. We did nothing wrong. None of us did anything wrong, and we shouldn’t have been in this position.”
The Coalition’s breakdown comes as Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party surges in the polls, creating a crisis of direction for both the Nationals and the Liberals, who are grappling with how to stop voters bleeding to the right-wing minor party.
Sources within both parties say One Nation’s polling was one factor causing jitters in the Nationals as they chose to vote against Labor’s bill last week. Latest polling from this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor, published on January 18, put the primary vote for Labor at 30 per cent, the Coalition at 28 per cent and One Nation at 18 per cent. Newspoll puts One Nation ahead of the Coalition, at 22 per cent to 21 per cent.
Hanson, whose position was strengthened by the defection of lower house Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce to her party late last year, said on Sunday that she did not intend to form any coalition with the Nationals.
“I’m not going to rule anything in or out,” she said on Sky. “[But] as far as I’m concerned, I’m not going to take on another organisation, another party, where you’re going have, you know, factions or fighting, infighting … People have joined One Nation to support me. They didn’t come on board One Nation to support the National Party.”
Hanson said her party was polling as high as 40 per cent in some seats, but conceded it would be difficult for One Nation to form government.
“I’ve got four seats in the Senate; we’ve only got one seat in the lower house with Barnaby Joyce,” she said. “If we get that No.1 vote, and we get the majority of the votes, the majority of the lower house seats, yes, we can form government. But it’s a big ask, and I’m being honest with myself and honest with people.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Sunday accused the Liberals and Nationals of shifting to the right to follow One Nation.
“You can’t fight One Nation by being a lighter version of them,” he said. “Now, people like the late [Nationals] senator Ron Boswell understood that, [former Liberal prime minister] John Howard understood that when he put One Nation last on how-to-votes.
“What we saw at the last election was a preference deal between One Nation and the Coalition. We’ve seen them become closer and closer as the Coalition have shifted to the right. And what that does is legitimise some of the hard-right policies that One Nation has.”
At the last election, Hanson placed the Coalition second on how-to-vote cards in about a dozen seats, including former opposition leader Peter Dutton’s, after the Coalition preferenced One Nation in 57 seats.
It marked a departure from the Coalition’s previous attempts to lock out the minor party – then-prime minister Howard refused Hanson’s preferences in 1998 partly over the firebrand’s infamous statement that Australia risked being “swamped by Asians”.
Albanese said he would respond to One Nation’s surge by continuing to point out “the damage that One Nation policies would do to our national unity.
“The politics of just identifying grievance and not coming up with solutions is a cul-de-sac that doesn’t lead the country anywhere,” he said.
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Natassia Chrysanthos is Federal Political Correspondent. She has previously reported on immigration, health, social issues and the NDIS from Parliament House in Canberra.Connect via Twitter or email.
