The Nationals were once feared. Now they merely stamp their feet

There was a time when the hard men of the Nationals – it was always men – struck mortal fear into Liberal leaders. They got their own way because everyone knew their threats weren’t empty.

It was, of course, a long time ago.

Now, as the nation witnessed on Tuesday, the Nationals, desperately feigning toughness, were reduced to stamping their feet and announcing they were separating from the much-weakened Liberals.

The stuff of political legend – former Country Party leader ‘Black Jack’ John McEwen in 1952.Credit: Fairfax archives

It seemed, now that neither the Liberals nor the Nationals retain the numbers to have any serious effect on the doings of parliament, not much more than a performative tantrum, a version of the old “two bald people arguing over a comb”.

Nationals leader David Littleproud and the latest Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, know they can’t hope to return to government without each of their parties getting back together down the track.

Littleproud said as much: “I gave her [Ley] the commitment that I’ll work with her every day to help to try to rebuild the relationship to enter into a Coalition before the next election.”

If that wasn’t enough of a capitulation to the reality that this was no real divorce and barely worth the name of a trial separation, Littleproud’s deputy leader, a fellow named Kevin Hogan, added this: “Very often, more often than not, you get back together and join together with clearer clarity and focus on what the relationship was all about and when you get back together, how it is going to work even better. I think that it is really important for the Coalition that that happen.”

In short, reconciliation was in the air before even the clothes cupboards were emptied out.

Interpreted, it simply means the Nationals and the Liberals will retreat to their corners – very small corners after the election, each not much larger than a proverbial telephone booth – and sulk about their positions on nuclear power and supermarkets and a few other things – until it becomes obvious they have to climb back into bed together and yield a bit on their separate pet ideologies, or perish.

Whether either Ley or Littleproud will still be leaders by then is far from guaranteed, as these things tend to be when chaos descends after what was less a federal election than a cruel flogging of the non-existent Coalition.

Former Nationals leader Doug Anthony forced policy changes.Credit: Bruce Milton Miller

How very far and how very pale it all seems from the days when the Country Party, later the Nationals, were led by genuinely tough champions of agrarian socialism.

The troika, they were called in the 1960s and 70s: National Country Party leader Doug Anthony and ministerial colleagues Peter Nixon and Ian Sinclair.

They could leave senior Liberals – whose party was supposed to be the senior partner in the Coalition – white-faced and shaking when they strode together into meetings determined to get their way on behalf of the farming community.

In the early 1970s, for instance, Liberal prime minister Billy McMahon wanted to revalue Australia’s currency.

The troika – believing the move would harm Australia’s rural exports – laid down the law, stalked out of cabinet three times and threatened to leave the Coalition. McMahon and his Liberals went to water and dropped the proposal.

Before the troika, of course, was Country Party leader John “Black Jack” McEwen.

After Liberal prime minister Harold Holt went missing in the surf near Portsea, Victoria, McEwen exercised his muscle to black-ban Billy McMahon from becoming prime minister.

McMahon, as the Liberals’ deputy leader, had the right to expect to become PM. But McMahon was a free trader, which McEwen opposed as a threat to rural Australia.

Doug Anthony of the national Country Party of Australia, later the National Party.Credit: Fairfax Media

McEwen said he and the Country Party wouldn’t serve under a McMahon prime ministership. And the Liberal Party, knowing he was serious, folded and appointed John Gorton instead. McMahon had to wait until McEwen retired.

It is unimaginable that the Nationals’ troika or Black Jack McEwen would ever, in laying out their threat to crash the Coalition, simper about how “you get back together and join together with clearer clarity and focus on what the relationship was all about and when you get back together, how it is going to work even better”.

Littleproud’s Nationals were known as the Coalition’s junior partner until Tuesday. Now, they seem just juvenile.

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