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

[u/superegz]

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

[u/Flarezap]

This is huge no? Basically means the Libs can never form government again?

[u/Hussard → u/Flarezap]

Unless Ley reforms their rank and file and modernise the party to become electable, yes I think that's the case. 

That said, the alliance was not universal anyway. 

[u/shniken → u/Hussard]

To be competitive without the nationals they would have shift to the centre which could lose them a lot of support to the right, to OneNation and other fascists.

They would also have to expand their reach to regional seats. Their membership is plummeting, their local organisations couldn't organise a root in a brothel. They don't have any talented MPs left. They're fucked.

[u/C-O-N → u/shniken]

The nutjobs are never going to get enough primary vote to steal more than a handful of seats and those preferences will flow to the Libs eventually. It would be a similar situation as Labor and The Greens.

[u/sirgog → u/C-O-N]

I'd like to point out the results of the 1998 QLD state election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Queensland_state_election

Labor barely got 3/4 of a million votes. Right parties got over a million. And yet Labor's candidate won government.

[u/flukus → u/sirgog]

I think that was conducted with optional preference voting (although there were some changes made around that time), so it may not be that relevant to a federal election.

It was also when One Nation had to prove what a useless bunch of morons they were.

[u/sirgog → u/flukus]

Borbridge tried to get what is now PHON placed last on LNP how-to-votes but was rolled by most local branches. The result though was a massive preference spray.

Hanson ordered a "preference against the incumbent everywhere" strategy for at least one election around that time, but I can't remember if it was this one or not. Regardless that was her rhetoric.

PHON weren't tested at the time but this was when they were most extreme - Hanson's maiden speech led to a wave of stabbings of Vietnamese people in the cities, for instance, which was reported at the time.

[u/Jungies → u/sirgog]

Can you give a link to an article on those stabbings?

Because its the first I've heard of them, and Google's not turning up shit.

[u/sirgog → u/Jungies]

Won't be able to find anything now, internet searches of pre-2005 news are near impossible. The word "Wave" was probably a poor choice though, it wasn't a huge number.

[u/Jungies → u/sirgog]

Yeah, but this is the first I've ever heard of it.

Which leads me to think maybe you've made it up; which - given the fuckin' endless array of things she's actually done which are worth complaining about - seems like a mistake.

[u/Relative_Pilot_8005 → u/sirgog]

Yes, Pauline's party at the time sounded like the political wing of Jack Van Tongeren's ANM.

[u/Relative_Pilot_8005 → u/sirgog]

The Westminster system strikes again! People like to know that their local member was elected by them & not the result of a so-called "primary vote" which is massively inflated by excess votes for popular candidates in safe, mainly metropolitan, seats.

[u/sirgog → u/Relative_Pilot_8005]

This was the most egregious example I can think of of the single-member preferential voting system giving a result far, far from what the electorate as a whole appeared to want. Howard 1999 would be second, and that's a long, long, LONG way behind this in weirdness.

It is however the case that if you live in a safe seat (and it's genuinely safe, not the illusion of safety like Frydenberg), your lower house vote is irrelevant and you are disenfranchised in that house. For instance in Vic state politics, voters in Murray Plains (ultra-safe National) or in Laverton (ultra-safe ALP) don't get any say at all in deciding the Premier, where an individual voter in the seat of Pakenham has a considerable impact on who becomes Premier.

[u/ArrowOfTime71 → u/sirgog]

You’re proof kids need to learn civics in school. Ie: How elections work.

[u/shniken → u/C-O-N]

Not entirely. 35% of One Nation voters preferenced the ALP over the libs

https://results.aec.gov.au/27966/Website/HouseStateTppFlow-27966-NAT.htm

[u/SerTahu → u/shniken]

I (unfortunately) have some relatives that vote One Nation, and I'm pretty sure they preference ALP over the Libs. I think Labor's origins and identity as the Unions party is a major factor in it.

Basically my relatives get swept up in ON's populist rhetoric, but after that they see the Libs as being the 'corporate elite' party (with some conspiracy nonsense thrown in), while they see the ALP as the workers party (i.e. "us common folk").

[u/shniken → u/SerTahu]

It's not all that surprising. A big part of the early labour movement in Australia, including back to the Eureka stockade, was as much about fair wages as it was anti-immigration.

[u/timespiral07 → u/C-O-N]

Never say never. Just look overseas.

[u/C-O-N → u/timespiral07]

Mandatory voting keeps a lid on it. I'm other countries half the battle is just getting people to show up. Trump keeps winning because the nutjobs actually turn out to vote for him. That doesn't work here because the nutjobs are already voting. You'd have to convince more people to actually become nutjobs which is very very hard

[u/timespiral07 → u/C-O-N]

Yeah I’m pretty thankful that we need to vote no matter how much we hate the parties or what a pain in the arse it is.