How David Littleproud killed the Coalition in one virtual hook-up
Some Nationals MPs and senators who dialled into the virtual partyroom meeting that tore up the Coalition did not outwardly oppose David Littleproud’s move, but privately believed their leader was cooking his own goose.
The final trigger in the death of the modern-day Coalition was a note sent by Sussan Ley to David Littleproud that he read out verbatim to colleagues in a hastily organised partyroom meeting on Tuesday morning.
Ley, smelling a set-up from the Nationals, told Littleproud on Monday that she could not guarantee a list of four non-negotiable policy demands from the country party until a thorough post-election review process had been completed.
Once the message was sent, Littleproud and his leadership cabal, including Senate leader Bridget McKenzie and deputy Kevin Hogan, pressed the button that would terminate a conservative marriage that has delivered seven election wins since the last divorce in 1987.
Some Nationals MPs and senators who dialled into the virtual partyroom meeting on Tuesday did not outwardly oppose Littleproud’s decision to dissolve the Coalition but privately believed their leader was cooking his own goose. “This is going to be an absolute train wreck,” a Nationals source said.
After fending off a leadership challenge from Matt Canavan last Monday, in which he was read the riot act by some Nationals members over the party’s support for net-zero emissions by 2050, Littleproud was feeling the pressure.
Ley, who the following day had defeated Angus Taylor in a tight Liberal leadership ballot to replace Peter Dutton, had rushed home to her home base of Albury to be with her terminally ill mother, Angela Braybrooks.
Littleproud, who had publicly signalled his intentions to thrash out a Coalition agreement and finalise an opposition frontbench with Ley, drove to the NSW Murray region town for a critical sit-down with the newly minted Liberal leader.
Meeting with Littleproud in her Albury office two days before her mother passed away on Saturday, Ley described the talks as “productive and respectful”.
Within 24 hours of the Albury encounter, Littleproud, his leadership team, Nationals MPs and senior party officials convened their own meeting to discuss the fate of the Coalition agreement.
The meeting, which is now viewed by Liberals as a fabricated exercise in killing the Coalition agreement, determined that the Nationals would make four key policy demands of Ley. If the demands could not be met, the two parties would go their own way.
The four policy demands focused on maintaining support for nuclear energy, forced divestiture of supermarkets, the recently announced $20bn regional future fund and enforced Universal Service Obligations ensuring reliable mobile phone coverage in the regions.
The Nationals, who were also demanding a top economic portfolio and seventh shadow cabinet spot after the defection of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to the Liberals, devised the ransom note knowing Ley had already announced a review of all Coalition policies taken to the disastrous May 3 election.
Ley had verbally assured Littleproud and key Nationals figures that there would likely be no issue with those policies.
In fact, both Liberals and Nationals had publicly declared they were likely to revert to a technology agnostic position on energy sources and adopt a position to remove the moratorium on nuclear power. The regional fund, of which McKenzie was a key architect, was off-budget. And regional Liberal MPs are very supportive of the USO policy.
Top Liberal operatives said the four policies were a ruse.
The major sticking point, they say, was a demand from Littleproud that his shadow cabinet ministers be granted the right to a free vote and be allowed to oppose the Liberals on contentious issues, including the net-zero emissions by 2050 policy.
Shadow cabinet members being allowed to break ranks on key policy issues would have delivered a field day for Anthony Albanese’s Labor.
After The Australian revealed this on Tuesday, Ley confirmed it at her press conference. “Cabinet solidarity is very important and unless I, as leader of the Liberals, could be sure about that, it was important that we didn’t take those next steps,” she said.
Once Ley officially communicated her position on the four policies to Littleproud and confirmed she needed to wait for the review process to be conducted, the Nationals anti-Coalition forces ordered a snap partyroom meeting.
After the decision to quit the Coalition was ratified and the party’s federal management executive notified, Littleproud informed Ley in Canberra about the dissolvent about 30 minutes before alerting the public in a press conference alongside McKenzie and Hogan.
Senior Liberal sources with knowledge of the negotiations described the Nationals’ efforts to broker a deal as “completely faux”.
They believe Littleproud had the right intentions but had been rolled by influential forces, with McKenzie accused by some Liberals of being a “puppet master”.
“We knew there was a meeting last Friday and the noises were that it would focus on not proceeding with the Coalition agreement. We thought David would win the day. We quickly realised whatever we did, ultimately it didn’t matter,” a Liberal source said.
“It was made clear that once shadow cabinet was stood up, we would be reviewing the policies, they were not predetermined. But the Nats had already predetermined to blow up the Coalition on a hypothetical that we might disagree.”
In the wake of Albanese’s landslide victory, hardening splits had emerged inside both Liberal and Nationals camps around a push to scrap the Coalition agreement.
Metropolitan-based Liberals, who had seen dozens of colleagues booted from capital city seats in the 2022 and 2025 elections, were vocal in their belief the Nationals were partly to blame for their devastating results.
Some in the Nationals believed the Liberals were holding them back from going harder on policies that could grow their regional power base. Nationals had become increasingly frustrated by moderate Liberal MPs, senators and party figures publicly blaming them for their election bloodbath.
“You’ve got all these moderates and people like Jason Falinski out there banging the drum that it was time to rethink the Coalition agreement. If they want to run their own show, we’ll run ours,” a senior Nationals source said.
A moderate Liberal MP, who linked the Nationals decision to the shock defection of Senator Price to the Liberals ahead of last week’s leadership ballot, said the split “helps us as Liberals reposition and rebrand”.
While Littleproud and Hogan repeatedly suggested in their press conference that the Coalition could “get back together”, McKenzie was more direct in her position.
Speaking to The Australian, she said “it’s very important to realise that the determination of the partyroom was based on those four policies, nothing else”.
“We sought guarantees that those four policies would be Coalition policies in this parliament. We were unable to get that assurance from the Liberal Party. That’s a matter for the Liberal Party. Our partyroom determined to end the Coalition agreement as a result of that, and that alone,” McKenzie said.
Ley, who won strong support from Liberal MPs during a virtual partyroom meeting on Tuesday afternoon, is now prepared to go it alone all the way to the 2028 poll.
The 63-year-old will be able to promote up to nine Liberal MPs and senators into frontbench roles, hand them payrises and allocate more staff. If a Coalition was re-formed before the election, she would have to demote them.
Senior Liberal sources said that “will not be happening”.
The other complicating factor is staffing allocations and resources. The Australian on Tuesday revealed Littleproud had already been in touch with Albanese, while senior Liberal figures have also reached out to the government.
The Prime Minister will determine staffing allocations for the parties, just as he does for the Greens, teals and crossbenchers.
Under current settings, the official opposition party is the Liberal Party, which should receive about 21 per cent of the staffing budget compared with the government.
The recriminations of the decision by the Nationals to break up the conservative family could also deliver politically fatal outcomes for both Littleproud and Ley across the term of the 48th parliament.
Senior Liberal and Nationals MPs, who are flagging no immediate moves on either of the leaders, said the reality was that when the parties decided to strike the next Coalition agreement, it was likely that neither Littleproud or Ley would be a leader.
A senior Liberal Party source said it would be hard to put the Coalition back together, describing the new dynamic as “a bit like Humpty Dumpty”.
“How is this going to work? Two shadow foreign affairs spokespeople, two shadow treasurers. And then when they try to bring it back together, you’ll have to sack eight Liberals. It certainly weakens the opposition and makes it harder to fight Labor,” the source said.
A Liberal MP raised the prospect of future Coalition parties bringing together conservative forces from across the spectrum, including Clive Palmer’s party and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, because we must “stop cannibalising each other”.
“There has been some talk of working closer together. We should consider that,” the MP said.
The Nationals now face a range of organisational pressures that come with standing on their own.
Can they afford a slew of three-corner contests? Will they sort out joint Senate tickets in time? How will they work with the Liberals and Labor in passing legislation?
The Australian understands McKenzie and NSW Nationals senator Ross Cadell, who are up for re-election in 2028, will rely on state-based Liberal and Nationals organisations agreeing on keeping them at No 2 on joint tickets.
Without being on a joint Senate ballot, both would come under threat of falling short.
Senior Nationals sources believe Littleproud’s time as leader will come to an end before the next election. The partyroom would take its time before coalescing around a candidate who “isn’t Barnaby Joyce”.
“Just a few weeks ago during the campaign, Littleproud suggested the relationship between the Libs and Nats was so close that they didn’t even need to have a written agreement with (Peter) Dutton,” a Nationals source said.
“He comes from the Liberal National Party from Queensland. That’s a joint party including both Liberals and Nationals. He ran on an LNP ticket, got financed by them, got preselected by them. This decision is very bad for conservative pathways moving forward, it’s not going to be easy to put it back together.”
Another senior Nationals source said “this is going to be an absolute train wreck … there are going to be very serious ramifications across the board. It’s like he’s just put the gelignite in his mouth and lit the fuse himself.”
Albanese, who won at least 93 seats in a historic victory over Dutton’s Coalition, on Tuesday night returned from his first post-election overseas trip to Jakarta, Rome and Singapore.
The Labor leader will now play judge and jury in deciding how generous he is in allocating staffing and resources to the warring Liberal and Nationals tribes.
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