No convenience for Nationals voters in Coalition ‘marriage’

The Nationals were in ‘frame’ in early 2018 when Barnaby Joyce was leader. Picture Kym Smith

Political potency brings leverage for outcomes in regional Australia. Regional Australia provides the seats that tip the scales of government and as such the desire for power professes its love for regional Australia, whereas urban votes demand love.

The Liberals get the final numbers to be a government from the Nationals’ regional seats.

Politics is business, not love. The ambition, avarice, plotting, subtext, private WhatsApp groups tearing each other to pieces and venting to the fourth estate would not bode well for any relationship. There is no “marriage of equals”. As time progresses, one party is completely dominated by the other, existing in the shackles of the expectation for harmony. For better or worse, till death will the Coalition part.

If the Liberals and Nationals are in a “marriage”, as is often said in a creepy saccharine way, then the wedding photo of the couple is a bit of an anachronism. In question time to the right of the dispatch box, where the Prime Minister sits, is no longer the Deputy Prime Minister, leader of the Nationals, but the Treasurer. He moved into the picture recently with the COVID pandemic and it does not look like he is for moving out of the frame.

COVID-19 and social distancing have forced Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack to sit further away from the action. Picture: Sean Davey

With dismal polling for the Nationals, noted in this newspaper last week, a closer look needs to be had, now, as obviously there is a voter perception issue. The Coalition’s prospects at the next election rely on it.

John Howard said politics “is ruthlessly governed by the numbers”. As the Jesuits would train you in debating, ask “which numbers?”.

The Nationals have 16 and the Liberals have 61 seats where 76 are needed to have a majority of the 151 in the House of Representatives. The Nationals, by this calculation, are entitled to five of 22 cabinet ministers, not four. These should include substantive portfolios such as Treasury, Finance, Defence or Trade. Some cabinet positions are more nominal than substantial. The 22 ministers are in 13 silos; the Liberals exclusively hold nine, the Nationals share the other four. Nationals have no silo of their own.

When you include members and senators in determining the number of cabinet ministers allocated, which is the formula used by the Coalition, four is what the Nationals are entitled to. But it should not be as simple as that. In the Senate the Nationals hold five seats and the Liberals hold 31.

Senate tickets are a matter of bargaining prior to an election and the Liberals on the joint Senate ticket get the sure thing, position number one. The Nationals get second, the precarious third position or nothing.

Often, cabinet decisions are purely the Prime Minister’s. Cabinet contributes its stamp of imprimatur as the PM’s submission sails past. The proportionality of cabinet “numbers” only aligns in fact as long as you believe the Prime Minister’s number has no more weight than the Minister for Water and Northern Australia; the Treasurer’s is only as important as the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs. This is ridiculous. Numbers may be proportional but the power that rests behind them is overwhelmingly weighted to the Liberals.

A better understanding of the divvy-up can be seen by the size of budgets held by the parties. The total of all Liberal-held portfolios is $2,382,549,067,000. This number is large because of transfers and special appropriations in Treasury. Portfolios shared by Liberal and Nationals cabinet ministers is $82,222,256,000 (from the Parliamentary Library).

Nationals cabinet ministers share responsibility for merely 3.45 per cent of the total federal budget. Even if we exclude all of Treasury’s budget, the Nationals still only share a fifth with the other Liberals. If we look at departmental staffing, the total staff numbers in Liberal-only portfolios is 118,406.

Even in committees, the step below cabinet, the prominent committees are chaired by Liberals. The Nationals chair only two, 9.5 per cent of the 21 joint standing committees. Of the most important statutory committees, all are held by Liberals.

The Nationals are berated if they talk to their constituency on pertinent issues at odds with the conditions of Coalition policy, which is really just Liberal policy. Coal-fired power stations, manufacturing, mining, a better deal for farmers on the Murray-Darling, decentralisation, senators appointed by regions not states, environmental laws that handcuff farmers; all are muffled or mute.

I am kicking up the dust now because the Coalition has devolved into a marriage of convenience that diminishes the electoral prospects of the whole Coalition. The Liberals allocate the substantial portfolios and chairs exclusively to themselves. Would the Nationals’ doyen, John “Black Jack” McEwen, have accepted this? This needs to be corrected prior to an election, which I presume will be at the end of this year. A Coalition has to be in fact and form to authentically live up to its name.

Barnaby Joyce is the Nationals member for New England.