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You might expect to hear reference to the sinking of the Titanic in commentary about the Nationals deserting what, until a few hours ago, was known as the federal Coalition.
The analogy is too grand.
Better to think in miniature: the chaos in one of the Titanic’s little lifeboats.
The Titanic was a mighty ship filled with thousands of passengers, from the most powerful to poor immigrants hunkered in steerage and putting their faith in a better life in the New World.
The Coalition was a collection of a few ambitious egos and a rump of the confused left over from the last election, with no obvious passage to a land of hope and glory.
The ruin now facing them invites comparison with the sort of panicked frenzy that meant the Titanic’s lifeboats were less than half-filled with those hoping to survive.
That the Nationals decided to shoulder everyone out of the way during their bolt for the boats on Thursday says a great deal.
That they chose to do so on a day of mourning for the victims of the Bondi massacre, when they had the decent opportunity to take a deep breath and think things through, says more.
David Littleproud actually bawled it out loud: he and his mates “cannot be part of a shadow ministry under Sussan Ley”.
So shove her into the sea?
Nationals senator Susan McDonald made a bold bid for going down with the ship when she denied outright that Littleproud had said the Coalition could not proceed with Sussan Ley at the helm.
Meanwhile, Bridget McKenzie was clearly jockeying for the favoured seat in this ship of fools when she blamed Ley for the whole mess because the opposition leader had been silly enough to accept the written resignations from the frontbench.
In a day of heroically absurd statements, this wasn’t even the nuttiest.
The panic, of course, was because the Nationals and the Liberals feared they’d hit an iceberg called One Nation.
But neither the Nationals nor the flightier Liberals have bothered to learn much about navigating around such obstacles.
They might have remembered the madness that all but destroyed them in the 1980s when Joh Bjelke-Petersen loomed out of Queensland, claiming only he could save the ship by becoming prime minister, despite the actual lack of a seat in parliament.
It was crackpot time and came to nothing beyond the end of Ian Sinclair’s period as leader of the Nationals (he was replaced by someone called Charles Blunt, who rose from nowhere to obscurity), the replacement of John Howard as opposition leader by the suntanned Andrew Peacock, and the extinguishment of any faint hope of the Coalition winning the next election from Bob Hawke’s Labor administration.
Now we’ve got Pauline Hanson, another Queenslander with a remarkably inflated opinion of her political abilities, wonderfully demonstrated by her declaration a few days ago that she was ready to lead the nation.
Her new sidekick, Barnaby Joyce – elected as a Nat but now the single One Nation MP in the House of Representatives – was so pleased the Nationals had fallen for their own fear of drowning that he couldn’t resist a little burlesque.
Having spent much of his energy over the years blowing up various relationships, he lectured his former colleagues that “you don’t blow the whole show up”.
And then, glory be, he launched into a spot of marriage counselling, cautioning that the Coalition’s predilection for divorce looked crazy and chaotic.
And people still find it difficult to believe the Titanic’s orchestra kept playing as the ship went down?
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Tony Wright is an associate editor and special writer for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.From our partners
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