Divorce would be suicide for Coalition

THE temperature in the federal Coalition is at boiling point. It is a distinct possibility that the Liberal and National parties could go their separate ways, just as they did ahead of the ill-fated 1987 election campaign during the ill-conceived "Joh for PM" push.

Whatever the disagreements among Liberals and Nationals, it would be absolute folly for the conservative side of politics if the Coalition were to disintegrate, and it would hurt the Liberal Party at least as much as it would the Nationals.

Some Liberals, especially those representing non-metropolitan electorates, are dissatisfied with the Coalition because the Nationals, despite being the junior partner, are heavily represented in the allocation of rural and regional portfolios such as trade, regional development, agriculture and fisheries.

The likes of Alby Schultz and Wilson Tuckey are on the public record complaining about this.

Equally, some Nationals are sick of their party being treated as the poor cousin in the Coalition relationship. They feel they don't get enough respect for what they bring to the table as a party representing the non-metropolitan regions prepared to follow the Coalition line on most issues. This is central to Barnaby Joyce's pitch for greater recognition.

The truth of the matter is that both sides of the debate have apoint.

Rural Liberals have a right to demand a share of portfolios that affect their communities and the Nationals deserve credit for the way they have fought the good fight against populist campaigns by the Pauline Hansons of this world, often to their electoral disadvantage.

Both sides of the Coalition need to put aside their differences, recognise the value each of them adds and get on with the job of getting along.

If they don't, it will guarantee that the conservatives don't win their way back into government for many years to come, as happened after the 1987 split.

It's true the Nationals benefit -- and they know it -- from the funds generated by taking a share of the public funding from the joint Senate tickets in NSW and Victoria. But if the Coalition were broken, alternative revenue sources would fast open up if the Nationals pursued a populist policy approach in the bush, which is exactly what they would do. And the electoral benefits would soon follow as well.

The downside for the Nationals breaking from the Coalition is that while they would likely maintain or even increase their representation in parliament, they would do so at the expense of achieving a share of power incumbency brings. The reason the Nationals are a political force able to disproportionately deliver for regional communities is because they are regularly part of a Coalition in government.

The West Australian Nationals' model of breaking the Coalition in opposition and coming back together in government is high risk. Had Colin Barnett and his Liberals won a majority in their own right, as they nearly did, they would not have needed Brendon Grylls and the Nationals.

Just consider for a moment what it would do to the Liberals if they let the Coalition disintegrate.

For a start, Joyce would immediately become Nationals leader. Warren Truss's strength is that he is a bridge between the parties. Without a Coalition the maverick Joyce would easily win a leadership ballot and, as head of a minor party not in the Coalition, being based in the Senate wouldn't be a short-term problem for him. He would move to the lower house at the next election, quite possibly winning a seat at the Liberal Party's expense.

Joyce would be free to become even more populist than he already is and not just on the basis of his opposition to emissions trading, about which rural Australia has serious concerns.

He might even embrace policy positions such as giving farmers back their guns, highly selective immigration reforms or a quota for spending in rural communities, similar to the royalties-for-regions policy the WA Nationals successfully took to the previous election. It would be a case of Joyce maintaining the Nationals base but also building the Hanson vote back into it, along with the votes of disillusioned farmers.

On the back of such populism, Nationals candidates would happily take part in three-cornered contests in rural and regional seats right across Australia. This would threaten the futures of a good number of Liberal MPs and it would certainly make marginal Labor-held seats unwinnable for the Liberals or likelier to be picked up by the Nationals.

To be sure, the Nationals would not limit their push into new electorates to non-metropolitan seats: they would also contest some city-fringe electorates such as Macarthur, McEwen and Paterson in a bid to increase their statewide Senate vote. So the Liberal MPs whose future would be on the line would include those holding marginal seats in or on the outskirts of big cities.

There would be no guarantee the Nationals would even preference the Liberals.

An average of 28 per cent of Nationals' preferences flowed Labor's way in three-cornered contests at the previous election, even though in every instance except the seat of O'Connor the Nationals officially directed preferences to the Liberal Party.

The loss of support for the Liberals if Nationals ran against them in a large number of electorates would be fatal.

Nationals may offer voters double-sided how-to-vote cards with the option of preferencing either of the main parties, as the Australian Democrats often did. Doing so would certainly be a neat way of proving to the electorate that Nationals shouldn't be seen as a party in bed with the Liberals.

The most obvious example of what can happen when Nationals run against Liberals and don't preference them, even in seats where the Nationals have no chance of winning, occurred this year in the South Australian state seat of Frome.

In a by-election prompted by the retirement of former Liberal premier Rob Kerin, the Nationals came fourth, but their preferences flowed to an independent who was thereby able to leapfrog Labor and win the historically safe Liberal seat.

Then there is the difficulty of breaking the newly formed Liberal National Party in Queensland. If the LNP were to disintegrate it would leave what remained of the Queensland division of the Liberal Party more or less bankrupt (a reason the merger was approved by the Liberals in the first place) and shatter the state wing for both parties.

In NSW, where the conservatives are considered almost certain to win in March 2011, the Coalition would once again have found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Even if the break-up of the Coalition federally didn't filter down to ruin state-based coalitions, it would cause serious distrust between the parties because they would be working against each other federally but would be expected to work with each other at a state level. It would be nothing short of dysfunctional.

And where would a federal break-up of the Coalition leave the WA government?

Would the minority Liberal government be forced to the polls as a result of the Nationals withdrawing their support or would the two parties remain in a distrustful relationship?

And Liberals couldn't be happy about the likelihood that the Nationals would try their hand in Tasmania, a state they have always left for the Liberals to contest. Nationals and Liberals may not always agree with each other, and we know some of them don't like each other.

Deal with it and start working together. The alternative is electoral oblivion.