Editor’s view: No winners as Libs and Nats air dirty laundry in ‘split’

Queensland’s Liberal National Party is ideally placed to offer couples-counselling for the feds who have either really split or are on a Friends’ Ross and Rachel-style break, writes the editor.

Opposition leader Sussan Ley and Party leader of the National Party of Australia David Littleproud . Picture: Martin Ollman

Whether the federal Coalition has really split or – like Rachel and Ross from Friends – are just on a break, one thing is for sure: Queensland’s Liberal National Party is ideally placed to offer couples-counselling.

Its members know first-hand the hard work needed to keep alive the relationship between the two major anti-Labor parties, which sometimes have different concepts of what it means to be a conservative.

The Liberal and National parties formed a coalition for the first time in Queensland in 1957. The group then won nine elections in a row, until premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen called it off in 1983 – over what he was saw as Liberal Party disloyalty.

They got back together, but not before Wayne Goss won office for Labor in 1989 – and again in 1992. The Coalition then won an election in 1995 thanks to a formidable display of unity between Liberal leader Joan Sheldon and the National Party’s Rob Borbidge.

But then came the five election wins in a row of the Beattie/Bligh years, and by 2003 the relationship was again dissolved. But within a year or so of solo life, both sides accepted they would still be better off together. And soon after that they decided to take the plunge to formalise their de facto relationship with something more permanent.

And so, the Liberal National Party was born. It achieved success with the election of the Campbell Newman-led government in2012. And it held together in opposition until and through Premier David Crisafulli’s resounding victory in October last year.

A key to his success, apart from promising law and order reform, was to keep all the party – both country and city, and conservative and more liberal members – on the same page, despite some challenges.

Having an exhausted 10-year-old Labor government as the opponent certainly helped Mr Crisafulli, but so did his combined party’s ability to keep any internal dispute about policy or direction in-house.

There is little doubt that within the broad church of the LNP there are differing views on a whole range of things – something Mr Crisafulli clearly recognised when one of his first actions as premier was to push through legislation gagging further debate on the state’s abortion laws.

It was a move that would have upset conservatives in the party room and broader membership, but which forestalled a potentially divisive debate within the LNP.

The federal Coalition’s future looks brighter today than it had, with Nationals leader David Littleproud postponing the formal split pending more talks.

Mr Littleproud says the Liberals will still have to agree to his party’s four core policy demands if they want to get back together – a new one-off regional fund, supermarket divestiture powers, improved regional telecommunications and support for nuclear energy.

We are still to learn if this has all been a strategy by the Nationals to wring policy concessions out of the Liberals. But whatever the motivation, it has been ugly to see the dirty laundry aired so publicly.

The Queensland model allows those grievances to be debated in private, behind the closed doors of a combined party room.

After all, the only winners ever when wrangling in public over this or that are your political opponents.

OUR ANGE ON TOP OF WORLD

These days, we can take Australian sportsmen and women excelling on the world stage for granted.

Oscar Piastri is currently leading the F1 world championship. Josh Giddey and a host of others are NBA stars. Sam Kerr, before she was injured, was one of the best female soccer players on the planet.

But there is something unique and very special about the achievement of Tottenham coach Ange Postecoglou. The former Brisbane Roar coach guided Spurs to victory in the Europa League, beating Manchester United 1-0 in the final in Bilbao early yesterday.

He’s the first coach not from Europe or South America to lift a European trophy.

Ange has taken an unusual road to the top. He went from the A-League to the Socceroos, winning the Asian Cup. He then won titles in Japan and Scotland, all the while having to deal with the prejudice that an Australian couldn’t know anything about the world game.

That belief followed him to Tottenham, a former giant of English football that had fallen on hard times. He was ridiculed as a Ted Lasso-type character.

And all the time he smiled, called his detractors “mate” and promised that he would win a trophy.

Now he has, but it may not be enough to save his job. While Spurs may have won the second-tier European trophy (behind the Champions League), they had a disappointing Premier League season, curtailed by injuries and penny-pinching club owners.

But if Spurs sack him, he’ll resurface somewhere else, at a team with a management that realises what we in Australia worked out long ago.

Ange Postecoglou is a winner.

Responsibility for election comment is taken by Chris Jones, corner of Mayne Rd & Campbell St, Bowen Hills, Qld 4006. Printed and published by NEWSQUEENSLAND (ACN 009 661 778). Contact details here