Joe Hildebrand opinion: Liberals keep on losing, even after they’ve lost

The Liberals and Nationals are apparently back together and everyone is friends again. No harm done! Except, of course, to the electoral prospects of both parties for the next decade, writes Joe Hildebrand.

So, er, what was all that about then?

After a week in politics that resembled Mel ­Gibson’s final scene in Braveheart, the Coalition is now apparently back together and everyone is friends again.

Oh well, no harm done!

Except of course to the unity, ­credibility and electoral prospects of both the Liberal and National parties for — oh I don’t know — say the next decade or so?

But apart from that it’s all water under the bridge right?

Let’s move on.

The only problem for the newly reconstituted Coalition is that the journey ahead for each of its ­constituent parts is akin to It’s a Knockout and, for the lot of them, it’s more like Squid Game.

Leader of the Opposition Sussan Ley has suffered a number of blows in her short term in charge. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

And it’s a journey that’s beginning like the old joke: “Hey farmer! How do I get to majority government?”

Farmer: “Well, I wouldn’t start from here …”

So let’s look at how they got to the wrong starting point in the first place.

Just three weeks ago, the Liberal Party suffered its worst election defeat in history because it was divided, ­undisciplined, lacked policy detail and was completely out of touch with mainstream community sentiment.

And even as it was heading towards the cliff, then leader Peter Dutton still had people in his ear telling him to go even further towards some mythical electoral Shangri-La that would ­apparently appear on the horizon somewhere towards the Right.

Instead it led to a sheer drop that ­resulted in him and his party losing pretty much everything it is possible to lose.

Nationals Leader David Littleproud, Nationals Deputy Leader Kevin Hogan and Nationals Senate Leader Bridget McKenzie. Picture: AAP

The best that can be said about the Nats is that they fared less catastrophically, dropping just one seat to a former colleague who jumped ship to run as an independent.

But they then post facto lost CLP senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price from the Nationals party room as she abandoned them to pursue leadership ambitions that she ended up not ­pursuing after all.

And so, long before May 3, both parties were plagued by disunity ­internally – and that’s before we even get to the disunity between them.

In the days after the poll, Labor spent most of its time losing count of the googolplex of seats that were ­falling its way, but did find a day or two for some obligatory factional brawling.

The Coalition’s brains trusts could have just sat back and enjoyed a rare respite from their rubblization.

Instead they said: “Hold my beer!”

The Coalition brains trust said ‘hold my beer’ when David Littleproud, pictured in held a press conference to announce his split party’s form the Liberals. Picture: Jack Tran

Nationals leader David Littleproud publicly declared that his party was splitting from the Liberals due to ­irreconcilable differences.

Forty-eight hours later it turned out those differences were entirely ­reconcilable.

So again, what was all that about then?

These matters of high principle were so non-negotiable that the ­Coalition needed to be publicly burned at the stake and yet, just a couple of days later, they were able to be resolved by a Zoom call.

This is the sort of kindergarten ­behaviour that hasn’t graced Australian TV screens since they cancelled Romper Room.

And for what? So some imaginary future Coalition government in the 2040s would have the power to make laws about Chemist Warehouse?

Indeed, so demented is the logic at play here that the key Nationals ­demand is that its members can violate shadow cabinet solidarity and publicly disagree with their frontbench colleagues.

Yes, after getting shredded at the ballot box due to division and disunity and embarrassing itself on the national stage due to division and disunity, the Coalition has decided that the key to its future success is more division and disunity.

Surely the Keystone Cops must be preparing a copyright infringement case by now.

Still, with a William Wallace-esque commitment to freedom, Littleproud says that he would rather lose his job than compromise on the Nationals’ articles of faith. I wonder how many voters could name one of them.

Certainly none could be a more noble cause than what should be the Coalition’s undying core purpose, which is destroying the Teals – if only for the fun of it.

The fact that the Liberals came so close at the last election even with Dutton as leader shows just how ­vulnerable these insufferable toffs would be to a serious and sensible campaign and yet the Coalition is ­intent on tearing itself apart over net zero and welcomes to country.

So carry on, by all means, chaps. Maybe you can seize some momentum when Labor has its next cabinet brawl in 2034.

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Originally published as Joe Hildebrand opinion: Liberals keep on losing, even after they’ve lost