It’s not all peaches and cream in the Nationals partyroom

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good gap in the news cycle must be in want of a knife.

“It was my intention to call a spill today,” Llew O’Brien announced to the Nationals partyroom on Monday.

Spoiler — he didn’t.

Leader Michael McCormack and deputy Bridget McKenzie are safe … for now. Instead, narky Nats whipped out their phones and backgrounded about the Killing Season: Ground Beef edition.

Their udderly insatiable complaints centred on McKenzie’s kowtowing to Pauline Hanson. The One Nation leader wanted a dairy inquiry and went on strike to get it. She managed to achieve what the junior Coalition partyroom could not. And they wanted some good old-fashioned cream and punishment.

One Nat told us that O’Brien et al are merely milking it. This is a publicity tour to ease those with a vested interest into a change, they said. But who would silence the moo-very?

“Have you told Minister (David) Littleproud to, sort of, stick to his knitting?” Labor senator Murray Watt asked McKenzie at the estimates hearing. “He doesn’t look like much of a knitter … pearl one, plain one — just doesn’t strike me as David’s thing,” she shot back with a smile.

After refusing to answer questions about things going sour, Watt decided to find out who held the more senior agriculture portfolio.

This clear-as-mud answer came back from McKenzie in writing. “There are two senior ministers representing the portfolio: the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Water Resources, Drought, Rural Finance, Natural Disaster and Emergency Management.”

We haven’t seen a turf war like this since the 2016 Defence showdown between Marise Payne and Christopher Pyne!

As for his leadership ambitions, Littleproud was quizzed in March about his support for MickMac (or as the Prime Minister once aptly anointed him, Big Mac). Quoth Littleproud, “To the hilt!”

He and McKenzie chuckled heartily at the time and claimed it was “a personal joke”.

But we know better.

Nearly two years ago on November 7, 2017, Malcolm Turnbull said: “Barnaby and I have been the closest, best team you’ve seen between a Liberal and a National leader for many, many years … As PM, as Barnaby’s friend and colleague, I support him to the hilt.”

Look at them now!

According to Darren Chester, the daggers have yet to be drawn. “It’s much ado about nothing,” he told Sky.

As we all know, when making a play in the Nationals partyroom, there is little margarine for error.

“I’ll tell you the truth. You’ll wait forever before the Nationals spill a leader. They don’t do that. It doesn’t happen,” former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce told the ABC in third-person pronoun.

“So Bridget has my support. Michael has my support … our leaders are doing the best job they possibly can.”

McKenzie, who it should be noted is the longest-serving person in a leadership position in any major party and the only woman, has achieved one thing not accomplished by her backbench colleagues. Her name in headlines. How many other deputy Nationals leaders can you name?