Nationals on notice after McCormack survives

Nationals leader Michael McCormack has been warned: he must look sharp or rural Australia will be asking why he’s there.

Congratulations for re-elected Nationals leader Michael McCormack (facing camera) and new deputy David Littleproud (back to camera) in Parliament House. Picture: AAP

Michael McCormack has survived a leadership challenge in the first week of the parliamentary year, but the survival of the Nationals’ leader and Deputy Prime Minister is not enough to stem the existential threats facing the junior ­Coalition partner and the ultimate success of the government.

McCormack is on notice like never before that he has to change. He has to be more assertive. He has to enunciate policies and positions­ rural and regional Australia­ns care about. He has to provide more room for the Nationa­ls, not conduct the Coal­ition as simply a Liberal vassal.

If he fails to do so, he will face another leadership challenge from Barnaby Joyce, who finished close enough in Tuesday’s ballot to harbour the belief he can succeed with a second strike, or newly elected deputy David Littleproud, now perfectly positioned to develop his profile and internal support.

Littleproud — young, relatively new, ambitious and from Queensland — can offer a compromise between the Joyce and McCormack camps. He is already offering reassuring words about the talented ministers in exile — Joyce, Bridget McKenzie and Matt Canavan.

McCormack’s nadir

Despite McCormack’s claim that Joyce’s challenges are over, the ballot was too close — at least seven votes for Joyce, probably eight or nine, possibly even 10, in a caucus of just 21 — and the dissension over the party leader’s performanc­e too widespread.

The leadership is unresolved: to fix it, McCormack will need more than his statement on Tuesday that “we are going to move on”.

The reasons for the lack of resolution were exposed in a dramatic moment for McCormack in the last week of the 2019 parliamentary year in December, before the full impact of Scott Morrison’s summer of discontent.

In front of Parliament House, surrounded by hundreds of protesting farmers and their families demanding changes to water allocations to grow food for the nation, McCormack stood dumbfounded in front of a farmer who yelled at him to show he cares about rural Australia.

John Russell, from Kyabram, Victoria, told the Deputy Prime Minister in front of the cameras: “The National Party is not going to exist after the next election unless you grow some spine and stand up. Where’s the passion? I haven’t seen any passion from you.

“You’re like a poker player. Get up there and say this isn’t f..king good enough and get angry.”

Another Victorian protester, Cobram maintenance worker Shane Bugge, clashed with McCormack over water allocations, accusing him of “selling us down the river and that his party has caused all this rack and ruin”.

Suddenly, the government and the public could see the raw anger of rural Australia being directed at the Coalition, the rapid rise of minor parties of protest from the right not the left, and the failure of a “nice bloke” to fire up when necessary.

The hundreds of protesters — more akin to the Yellow Vest protest­ movement of French workers, contractors, truck drivers and farmers than the environmentally radical Extinction Rebellio­n — were talking about man-made drought not from clim­ate change but through water allocation and trading.

Importantly, this protest came after various minor parties from the right, particularly the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, had made great strides in the NSW state and federal elections.

Nationals party MP Barnaby Joyce in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: AAP

Rise of the ‘others’

The federal Nationals are now weakened, chaotic, uncertain and short of frontline talent as a result of the internal dissent and the brutal­ messages sent to McCormack to change and resurrect the party. This instability within the Nationals is hurting a Prime Minister who craves stability and an ­opportunity to rise above daily ­crises and reassert his authority.

Following Canavan’s resigna­tion from the frontbench, the Nationals­’ Senate team is now without a cabinet minister. But the real, fundamental threat to the Coalition­ and Prime Minister in the longer term is the loss of ­conservative, rural and regional votes to these new right-wing splinter groups, which could easily claim rural seats at the next election and defeat the Liberals.

At last year’s federal election, the parties designated as “others” in polling — including the Shooters and Fishers, Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party and One Nation — attracted undecided voters and created the Morrison miracle.

On May 18 last year, 41.4 per cent of the primary vote went to the Coalition, 33.3 per cent to the ALP, 10.4 per cent to the Greens, 3.1 per cent to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and 11.8 per cent of the primary vote went to “others”.

Labor’s primary vote meant it could not win the election, but without preferences from non-green parties neither could the Coalition­. In key seats, particularly in NSW and Queensland, the minor parties, helped by Palmer’s $80m advertising spend, chased and drained votes from Labor, bumped up the UAP and funnelled preferences to the Liberals and Nationals.

In the NSW seat of Calare, won by Nationals MP Andrew Gee, the Shooters and Fishers polled 18,000 votes, 17 per cent of the prim­ary vote, with the UAP garnerin­g 3300 votes and the Fred Nile Group 2000 — which totalled more than the ALP’s 23,000.

 

Gee’s 44.7 per cent of the prim­ary vote meant he had to rely on preferences from the conservative “others” to hold the seat.

Labor’s stronghold NSW seat of Hunter Valley was almost lost after One Nation finished with just 913 fewer votes than the ALP on primary votes and Joel Fitzgibbon survived on Coalition preferences.

In the Queensland electorates of Flynn, Herbert, Longman and even Maranoa, Littleproud’s seat, there were similar stories of big votes for “others” delivering preference flows of between 60 and 70 per cent to the Coalition. These were the quiet, undecided Aust­ralians who rejected Labor, weren’t happy with the Coalition and voted “other”, thus delivering victory to Morrison.

After the election, support for others went into decline as ­Palmer’s big dollars stopped and the Coalition’s support rose. From May to September, that fringe support­ dropped from an 11.8 per cent primary vote to just 5 per cent in Newspoll.

In September, when the others were at 5 per cent, the Coalition was at 43 per cent. Last weekend the Liberal-Nationals support dropped five points to 38 per cent, its lowest since the election, at the same time as the vote for the ­others was at its highest.

Given that Labor’s support also dropped, the inescapable conclusion is that the lost Coalition support­ is not going to Labor, but is going to the others.

Consider this: in May last year, after Palmer’s advertising blitz, the others vote was 11.8 per cent and last weekend, fuelled only by anger directed towards the Coali­tion, it rose to 10 per cent — the highest since the election. These numbers detail the loss of Coal­ition (Nationals) support in rural and regional Australia as discontent grew over water shortages, the difficulty with drought declar­ations and relief and the view that Liberals favoured inner-city and big-money interests over farming.

Anger shifts to Coalition

During the election campaign the Coalition painted the ALP as pushing to tax everyone much more, kill initiative and, most ­importantly, of not being interested in people employed in forestry, mining and farming. But now that anger — which has grown steadily since because of water shortages and drought, and then spiked ­during the summer of bushfires — is being directed at the Coalition, specific­ally at the Nationals.

This is McCormack’s challenge. He must re-engage with disaffected voters who have turned to the splinter parties or those workers who have returned to Labor in the Hunter and elsewhere.

As a former leader, Joyce argued that he could reconnect with voters attracted to the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party and stem the lost Coalition support.

Joyce and other Nationals leaders before him appealed to conservative fringes, keeping those voters in the Coalition tent without sundering the agreement with the Liberals.

Matt Canavan in the Senate chamber at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Gary Ramage

Crucial loss of Canavan

Canavan’s departure from cabinet as minister for resources and northern Australia is a grave loss of talent to the government and, coupled with McKenzie’s axing over the sports rorts conflict of interest­, leaves the Coalition Senate team bare and inexperienced.

The young Queensland senat­or was instrumental in attracting those quiet, working Australians in rural and regional Queensland to the Coalition with a message of protecting mining jobs, advocating for the opening of the Adani coalmine, building dams and rail in the north, and supporting the construction of coal-fired power stations.

In the past two weeks, Canavan has earned high praise from Morrison­ for delivering a gas polic­y aimed at keeping reserves in Australia and lowering consumer prices. He’s also settled the thorny issue of radioactive waste.

In the Coalition partyrooms after the leadership ballot on Tuesday, Canavan argued that “we will not get a new Coalition agreement but we do need a new Coalition approach”.

This view was endorsed by others­ and was a further message to McCormack that he “had to find more space” for the Nationals and stand up more to Morrison.

The issue of climate change, raised in the joint partyroom meeting on Tuesday, is the most contentious between the Nationals and the Liberals, with Nationals calling for new coal-fired power stations and the Liberals wary of losing city votes.

But, as Canavan argued on Tuesday, the Coalition won the last election by appealing to workers, particularly in regional areas, and its city vote held up overall.

In his statement of resignation from cabinet to support Joyce, Canavan said a change of leadership was necessary to “effectively fight for regional Australia”.

“It is my view that forthright leadership from the Nationals party is needed more than ever. A worker in a coalmine, a cane-farming family and indigenous Australians who just want to develop their own land are all having their interests threatened by a radical agenda that seeks to shut down Australia’s wealth-producing indus­trie­s,” he said.

“More than ever, the Nationals party must be strong in defence of our people’s livelihoods and the future opportunities for their children.”

After the failed ballot, he signalle­d his intention to continue to press for a new Nationals narrative. “The Nationals party is at its best when it acts as an amplifier for the concerns and frustrations of those that live in areas where the light at night comes from the moon or the stars, not fossil fuel-powered electricity,” he said.

“Over the last decade the ­Nationals have become the true party of the worker. The people we fight for are those that wear bright orange, bright yellow and even bright pink. They are the most visible people in the airport but they often get ignored by the comfortable commentariat of our nation.

“The Nationals have grown and consolidated their vote over the last three elections, and if we keep fighting hard for workers we will continue to do that. I look forward­ to working with my Nationals colleagues and the broader Coalition to do that.’’

This was the essence of the Liberal­-Nationals success in 2019. McCormack is going to have to change dramatically in style and substance while relying on a deplete­d talent pool to just recover to that level and avoid another — probably successful — challenge.