Why Libs and Nats will get the Coalition band back together

Times may be grim and getting grimmer for the Liberal and National parties, but things could be worse. The Coalition, for example, could be living in 1967.

Following the drowning of prime minister Harold Holt, John McEwen – the then-Country (as the Nationals were then known) party leader and deputy prime minister — vetoed deputy Liberal leader Bill McMahon from becoming leader of the party and country. “Black Jack,” who represented Victoria’s manufacturing and farming interests, had reasons to dislike and distrust the Sydney solicitor, who toed Treasury’s free trade line.

McEwen reflected the protectionist times, but his conduct was widely seen as a highly provocative and destabilising act. After all, here was the leader of the junior Coalition partner upsetting the natural leadership succession of the ruling party.

Twenty years later, Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen decided to withdraw his state National Party from the federal Coalition and make his own disastrous bid for the Lodge. Labor capitalised on Coalition in-fighting, and Sir Joh’s ambitions damaged then Opposition leader John Howard’s chance of winning the 1987 federal election. As a result, the Coalition went backwards and Labor picked up four extra seats in Queensland alone.

Even during Howard government’s near-12-year tenure, the Nationals and Liberals clashed bitterly over gun laws, native title (the 10-point Wik plan) and plans to fully privatise Telstra. This led to media cries of Coalition disunity, including defections (Bob Katter, for instance), even though Howard’s team won four elections on the trot from 1996 to 2004.

In more recent times, the decision of prominent Nationals legislators to leave the party has rocked the Coalition. Two years ago, Andrew Gee resigned over his support for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which the Nationals strongly opposed. It lost in a landslide referendum result.

In the wake of the recent federal election, CLP senator Jacinta Price shocked the country by moving from the Nationals party room to the Liberals’ party room. This elicited cries from the media and political class of a historic betrayal. It was hardly unprecedented.

Twenty years ago, on January 24, 2006, The Australian splashed a front-page story under the heading “Nationals vent fury at defection.” Journalist Samantha Maiden reported: “The shock defection of Nationals Senator Julian McGauran to the Liberal Party has rocked Coalition unity… John Howard has been forced to confront a splintering of Coalition unity. National leader Mark Vaile condemned Senator McGauran’s defection as ‘a betrayal.’”

The more things change, the more they stay the same – or so it seems in Coalition politics.

All these examples contributed to a public loss of confidence in the Liberal-National party Coalition. Yet the Coalition resumed relatively quickly, the centre-right parties eventually bounced back from their setbacks and went on to either retain government or win back power.

The big debate in the National Party — and before that the Country Party — has always centred on whether it and its constituents are best served by trying to make policy inside the Coalition or from outside on the cross benches.

According to biographer Peter Golding, McEwen himself never favoured the latter course. He knew his would always be a minority party and could never govern federally in its own right. That’s why he was such a staunch Coalitionist, though he was never attracted to a passive role in the Coalition.

None of this should disguise the deep policy divisions that are increasingly evident between today’s Nationals and Liberals – from net zero and nuclear power to divestiture powers for supermarkets.

These are, moreover, not easy times for Australia’s centre-right parties, languishing in opposition, humiliated in the recent federal election and facing the prospect of a long time in the political wilderness. No wonder many people think they are finished.

But parties of such long standing will survive as the main vehicles for those Australians who want a more secure nation, a smaller state, lower taxes, national sovereignty and a humane but strong national identity.

Sussan Ley and David Littleproud head serious and ambitious cohorts of MPs and senators who have no interest in the politics of perpetual opposition. They want to change the country, and they should heed John Howard’s advice: “If you work together, you win together.”

It’s also possible that Labor becomes so overwhelmed by hubris that the party hastens its own destruction. “Events, dear boys, events,” was how Harold Macmillan described the unforeseeable triumphs and disasters that alter political party fortunes. As Howard or, for that matter, Donald Trump proved, in politics nothing is certain.

The point here, though, is that the Coalition parties have been riven by very real personal and ideological tensions over a very long time; and the Liberals and Nationals still joined forces when the moment of truth arrived.

Or put it this way: would these two parties not serve together in government if they won enough seats to gain a parliamentary majority? Reports of the Coalition’s death are greatly exaggerated.

Tom Switzer is executive director at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney.