Liberals, Nationals and the battle over two Australias

In his lecture on Tuesday honouring our longest-serving leader, Scott Morrison said no one knew better than Sir Robert Menzies “the importance of a Coalition partnership to deliver good government to Australia”. Mr Morrison also lauded Michael McCormack, the low-profile Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister, for his constancy and forbearance. Yet months from a federal election, that partnership is fraying, brought to a head by failed energy policy, personality issues and the Morrison government’s lagging position in opinion polls. These intra-Coalition divisions also reflect splits in the nation itself, of two Australias, the tussle between the city and bush, increasingly estranged socially, culturally and politically, ignorant of their economic interdependency.

Nationals are quarrelling with Nationals over leadership; Nationals are fighting with Liberals over coal; Liberals are at odds with Liberals on climate change policy. The latest agitation within the Nationals is driven by Barnaby Joyce’s blind ambition, Mr McCormack’s perceived blandness and timidity, and a whiff of desperation in the ranks. Mr Joyce pushes the case for Nationals’ brand recognition, given the junior Coalition partner’s base is under populist siege from rural independents, One Nation and the United Australia Party. The only reason for having a rural-based party, he argues, is to pursue its unique agenda and serve its constituency. Otherwise it becomes merely a slave to urban interests.

Mr Joyce’s colourful message that he will never “throw our people under a bus” over coal-fired power plants may not play well with Liberals in Kew or Vaucluse, but it is a different story with LNP voters in Rockhampton and Bundaberg. Last week, six Queensland National MPs signed a public letter urging Mr McCormack to champion the party’s “big-stick” energy supplier divestment laws and underwrite a coal-fired power station in the region. Such postures may be electoral poison in Brisbane’s inner city, where “Stop Adani” stickers adorn the Subarus of public servants, their jobs funded by coal exports. Still, they represent a voice for thousands of miners and labourers in the Nationals’ heartland of central Queensland’s Galilee basin and beyond. It appears the metropolitan-regional divide is less troublesome for the Coalition in Western Australia; voters in Perth, for instance, embrace the job opportunities and royalties that flow from energy projects and resource extraction. In the west, development is not a dirty word.

The mission of the Nationals is to give voice to people living outside the cities. Taking clear positions, often at odds with the Liberals, on the big issues — coal, trade deals, the power of banks and supermarkets, farm support — is their core business. Conviction, relevance and connection with voters are winning approaches for the party. At the 2016 election, the Nationals increased their primary vote; the two-party swing against the Turnbull government was 3.1 per cent. John Howard, our second-longest serving prime minister, argues the Coalition is the most successful partnership in the nation’s political history. Right now, it faces a bleak reality on energy. As Paul Kelly wrote yesterday, Australian sentiment has turned against coal: “The conservatives have been outsmarted and out-muscled.” If it aspires to govern, the undeniable challenge for the Coalition is to reconcile its current differences, stick together and promote policies that are in the national interest. That task may be more difficult than it looks. The forces working against the Coalition are structural, economic, demographic, ideological, and relentless. They can be confronted, but not without pain and compromise.