Nationals tread water on drought as Scott Morrison steals thunder

Uneasy bedfellows ... Nationals leader and Deputy PM Michael McCormack enters the House of Representatives alongside Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: Kym Smith

Publicly, through his staff, Mike Kelly says he is not going anywhere and there is no other job he has signed up to take next year. Labor’s member for Eden-Monaro has been on sick leave while speculation abounds about his future and what his expected departure may mean for the opposition, the government and the Nationals leadership.

Privately, unless Labor leader Anthony Albanese succeeds in inducing him to stay, Kelly’s colleagues are convinced he will be gone by Christmas and that his resignation could be the trigger for others such as Mark Dreyfus and Brendan O’Connor to follow suit. Life in opposition is infinitely more painful than the treatment Kelly is undergoing for kidney stones.

MORE: Raise drought fund or lose government | LIVE — Follow the latest from Canberra in our PoliticsNow blog

So the 2020 political year could begin with a super Saturday of by-elections. The most interest will be on Kelly’s marginal seat, and while this road was travelled not that long ago with momentous consequences, the chances are the government could pull off a once-in-a-century feat and win a seat from the opposition at a by-election.

Labor remains demoralised, its campaign structure is degraded and Albanese is not getting any traction against Scott Morrison, although finally formally securing John Setka’s removal from the ALP will provide some balm.

Issues that should be costing Morrison votes have yet to penetrate and he is reigning supreme inside the Coalition. Tuesday’s joint party meeting was over by 10.30am. There wasn’t much to talk about.

They can’t recall him mentioning it and no backbencher asked the Prime Minister about the media’s campaign on press freedom, not even after his confused answer on the dangers of allowing politicians to decide the fate of journalists — which they try to do every day while hoping no one rattles the skeletons in their cupboards — and despite the fact his Attorney-General, Christian Porter, moved last month to entrench the practice. Really, so much bubble talk; critically important in every way to a properly functioning democracy but MPs’ constituents were not talking about it. At all. So they didn’t bother with it either.

There is a strong cohort of Liberals, more than two dozen, who owe their existence to Morrison. As far as they are concerned he can do no wrong. The Nationals have a different view.

Morrison’s dominance is part of the root cause of the rumbles about the Nationals leadership that will only be exacerbated if NSW Nationals leader John Barilaro uses Eden-Monaro to vault into federal parliament, where he fancies himself a contender.

The angst that some Nationals have expressed about their deputy, Bridget McKenzie, and less loudly about their leader, Michael McCormack, is as much about Morrison as them.

It is a complicated relationship, which needs the Liberal leader to understand that every now and again he has to allow the Nationals to score a few wins, and to be seen to be scoring a few wins inside the government, rather than claiming the credit himself or, even worse, allowing a mortal enemy such as Pauline Hanson to do it.

Morrison’s declaration when he became Prime Minister that the drought would be his No 1 priority has further complicated the relationship. There are Nats who think that was a mistake because Morrison has to appear to be doing his utmost to address a problem that can’t be fixed or will take years to fix even when it has ended, crowding out the Nationals even more, competing with them and stealing their airtime, even though without them — and they are now a sizeable block of 21 in the Representatives and Senate — there would be no Coalition government.

Barnaby Joyce keeps reminding everyone of that, just like he keeps reminding everyone he is still there. How could anybody forget, or forget why he is where he is? But Joyce’s chances of reclaiming the leadership are similar to Barilaro’s, even though his not-so-subliminal message is that he will take a tougher line against the Liberals.

Queensland National Keith Pitt applauds Morrison for recognising the actual and political necessity of delivering drought assistance; nevertheless, Pitt also believes more can and should be done, warning that at some point the Nationals will have to “muscle up”.

Deputy Leader of the Nationals and Agriculture Minister Bridget McKenzie appearing at a Senate Estimates hearing at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Kym Smith

More immediately, Pitt suggests an audit in the Environment Department to fast-track projects in regional areas that have been held up, to get jobs going and keep communities alive.

Another senior National is less forgiving. “He is killing us with kindness,” he said the other day following one announcement after another from Morrison on drought aid, although the trigger for the spill talk against McKenzie was allowing Hanson to announce the code of conduct on dairy farmers, which Nationals MPs had been pushing for but which McKenzie insisted could not be delivered until next year, only to speed it up to secure Hanson’s vote in the Senate. That sent Queenslander Llew O’Brien into orbit.

Nationals resent and fear Hanson, but they also are muttering about Morrison’s presence at the dam announcement a couple of weeks ago, saying the Nationals leader should have told him to butt out. Good luck with that.

Early on in the life of his government, after John Howard passed the gun laws, regional Liberals formed a subfaction to complain about all the concessions he was making to the Nationals.

Tim Fischer, under extreme pressure for siding with Howard on guns, was delighted with the public howls of complaint from the bush Liberals, thanking me profusely for getting the story of their formation on the front page of the newspaper.

After Fischer retired from parliament the grouping disappeared. Soon after, Howard’s Liberals began acquiring Nationals real estate.

That’s what the Nationals mean by killing them with kindness. It worked very well for Howard. It might not work so well for Morrison, particularly if the Nationals follow through with their threat to muscle up against him and if Labor makes headway by applying the truth test to his every claim, tempted by his propensity to overstate or oversimplify, including that $7bn is being spent on the drought.