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Updated ,first published
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley’s hard deadline for the Nationals to reform the Coalition has been questioned by Liberal leadership rival Angus Taylor as drawn-out talks between the feuding parties falter.
In a shadow cabinet meeting of Liberal frontbenchers on Tuesday morning, Taylor and his ally James Paterson argued for a loosening of her demand for Nationals leader David Littleproud to agree to conditions on party discipline by the weekend. Three MPs, including regional Liberal Dan Tehan, backed the pair.
Four sources in the room, speaking anonymously about the confidential meeting, said Taylor and Paterson argued that a deadline was appropriate to focus both parties on the task of re-enlivening the Liberal-National agreement. However, the pair wanted talks to continue into next week, so long as they were trending in the right direction before the weekend.
Some Moderate supporters of Ley, led by Senator Andrew Bragg, went in the other direction and backed the deadline. If an agreement is not struck, Ley will permanently appoint Liberals to frontbench spots previously held by Nationals, baking in the rift that has been likened to the 1950s Labor split, which handed the Liberals a generation in power.
Conservatives are suspicious that Ley is using the fight with the Nationals to bolster her authority and rally support among Liberals who remain angered by the rural parties’ move last month to vote against Labor’s hate crimes laws despite a shadow cabinet decision. Ley’s allies, and some MPs who are not in her camp, believe the Liberal leader has been sabotaged by the Nationals and is rightfully playing hardball in response. Giving weight to Ley’s stance, senior Liberal right-wingers in the Senate are backing the weekend deadline.
“The conservatives are trying to buy time,” one Liberal MP said, suggesting the delay was intended to create more time for a challenge.
Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie highlighted a sense in the Nationals that Ley’s conditions were too rigid, calling the deadline “arbitrary”. McKenzie and two other frontbenchers who crossed the floor last month, sparking the Coalition crisis, would be suspended from the frontbench for six months under Ley’s peace plan. Ley also wants the Nationals to abide by shadow cabinet decisions.
McKenzie suggested this suspension was a “red line” on ABC TV on Wednesday. “At some point there becomes an impasse,” she said of the talks, which one Nationals MP described on Tuesday as a “bullshit” process designed to create the perception of good-faith negotiations.
The fracturing of the right wing of Australian politics was on display in Canberra on Wednesday. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson held her first meeting with the prime minister in years.
She claimed the meeting was “very good” and the pair discussed giving her more resources because One Nation qualified for minor party status after recruiting Barnaby Joyce, bringing its total number of MPs to five.
Billionaire populist-right funder Clive Palmer, meanwhile, assailed Ley in a typically outlandish press conference in Canberra. The Queenslander claimed she could “not make an impression on a cushion” and described the Liberal Party as a “dead brand” as he opened the door to bankrolling the Nationals.
The manoeuvring between Ley and Nationals is feeding into the Liberal leadership contest, which quietened down this week. If Ley strikes a deal with the Nationals and pressures Littleproud to agree to her terms, her authority would be bolstered. But if the dispute was resolved, right-wing Liberals could push on with a leadership challenge without being seen to be siding with the unpopular Nationals.
The Coalition split on January 22 for the second time since last May’s election after the three National frontbenchers – McKenzie, Cadell and McDonald – voted against hate speech legislation in the Senate after a shadow cabinet decision to vote for the laws, and subsequently offered their resignations.
Ley has demanded the three senators be out of shadow cabinet for six months. Littleproud got back to Ley on Wednesday afternoon suggesting looser arrangements for shadow cabinet solidarity and asking for an affirmation of the right of the joint party room of Liberal and National backbenchers to overturn shadow cabinet decisions.
Ley returned serve, saying Littleproud must directly address the suspensions.
“The Coalition can re-form this week with conditions that are supported by the overwhelming majority of my party room,” Ley said on Wednesday.
Littleproud said the senators “were sacked when they shouldn’t have been” and that if the issue was not rectified, the parties could not work together.
“We’re not a division of the Liberal Party. We have our own rights to have our own thought process,” he said.
Ley is expected to move quickly to appoint a Liberal-only ministry next week if negotiations break down, as expected. High-profile Moderate Jane Hume, who was dumped by Ley after the election, could be lifted straight back into the shadow cabinet. Right-winger Phil Thompson is also tipped to go into the shadow cabinet, while Cameron Caldwell, Simon Kennedy and Aaron Violi are in line for promotions.
In the Moderates, Paul Scarr or Zoe McKenzie may be put up into the shadow cabinet, while Dave Sharma and Maria Kovacic are expected to be elevated into the outer ministry.
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Paul Sakkal is chief political correspondent. He previously covered Victorian politics and has won Walkley and Quill awards. Reach him securely on Signal @paulsakkal.14Connect via X or email.
Nick Newling is a federal politics reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.From our partners
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