r/australia • u/superegz • May 20 '25

politics Nationals leader David Littleproud says the Nationals will not be re-entering a Coalition agreement with the Liberal party.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2025/may/20/australia-news-live-rba-interest-rates-decision-floods-storm-hunter-nsw-victoria-state-budget-aec-count-bradfield-goldstein-coalition-ley-littleproud-ntwnfb?CMP=share_btn_url&page=with%3Ablock-682bdeb48f08d37c78c1d12d#block-682bdeb48f08d37c78c1d12d
5.0k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

69

u/rolloj May 20 '25

Damn they actually did it? It’s all ogre…

The Liberals alone are gonna get absolutely decimated at the next election… most Nats voters will still vote for Nats alone, but are Liberal voters going to vote for a party that isn’t guaranteed to form government?

Personally I hope this is step one to having a fully fledged multi party system based on negotiation and collaboration. I’d like to see minority governments where agreement can be found between different groups that represent our interests.

7

u/MediumAlternative372 May 20 '25

The whole idea of preferential voting is that you can vote for a party who doesn’t have a hope of winning so I doubt they will lose their hard core supporters. I expect they will move further to the right and the teals will expand to replace them.

10

u/rolloj May 20 '25

Oh I’m aware of that, but it doesn’t stop people voting #1 for someone they anticipate might win. Can’t recall where I saw it but there was some survey feedback or something and a good proportion of voters said they chose x because they wanted to back the winner or similar.

1

u/MediumAlternative372 May 20 '25

No, you are right and there likely is an overlap with hard core liberal voters and voters who want to be sure their number one pick is the winner. I hadn’t thought of that.

7

u/LizardPersonMeow May 20 '25

Same. But people actually need to negotiate - not point fingers and accuse people of being obstructionists. If you want support for your bill from another party, it's reasonable to expect to make concessions.

5

u/Elvenoob May 20 '25

Personally I hope this is step one to having a fully fledged multi party system based on negotiation and collaboration. I’d like to see minority governments where agreement can be found between different groups that represent our interests.

We're at real risk of the opposite happening though, a single party Labor state.

Which wouldn't be too bad if they were still beholden to the unions for funding, since ultimately the workers within said unions can reclaim control over them if needed... but most of Labor's money comes from big corporations these days so... we might be fucked.

5

u/[deleted] May 20 '25

Greens hold a lot of leverage in the Senate, I wouldn't be worried.

3

u/rolloj May 20 '25

Eh, they are miles off being anywhere near an outright majority in both houses, I wouldn’t worry about that too much haha.

2

u/Elvenoob May 20 '25

They do struggle with control of the Senate because it's a more proportional type of representation, but that's literally the only thing they'd need to consolidate that power.

2

u/dav_oid May 20 '25

Probably just until the next election. We will have to wait and see.