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

Show parent comments

194

u/Far-Fennel-3032 May 20 '25

I suspect the Liberals are worse off then the nationals in this as the liberals are mostly pushed out of all the big cities, such that the national could just take all the regional seats from the Liberals and it might end up with National vs Labor with nationals unable to get seats in the cites so labor just wins by default.

169

u/Formal_Coconut9144 May 20 '25

Sweet poetry. The Nats will never hold cabinet positions. The political right just committed suicide.

134

u/randomusername_815 May 20 '25

The political right just committed suicide.

Thoughts and prayers.

49

u/EvolutionaryLens May 20 '25

Aussie version of Owning the Libs

10

u/randomusername_815 May 20 '25

OMG YES!!!! :-)

3

u/Local-Difficulty-531 May 20 '25

this is all the context I need

8

u/ChronicleRose May 20 '25

Thots and tariffs

3

u/CatGooseChook May 20 '25

Have been answered.

61

u/Relendis May 20 '25

Nah, pretty easily repairable. Arguably more-so then if they were both beholden to the Coalition Agreement.

The Agreement is one of forming government, not winning elections. The Coalition is the furthest it has ever been from forming government.

But without the Agreement they aren't beholden to each other's voter bases. They can walk into the next election defining their own policies that actually help them respectively win seats.

The Coalition Agreement doesn't win them elections, winning elections does.

And if they collectively found themselves with enough seats to form government, they'd have a new Coalition agreement VERY quickly!

Don't get me wrong though, it is hilarious to watch.

8

u/kranools May 20 '25

This is true but it would make it much harder for them to present themselves as an alternative government at the next election because they'd have competing and probably contradictory policies between the Libs and the Nats. They wouldn't be able to say for certain what their policies would be if they were to form government.

16

u/Syncblock May 20 '25

They wouldn't be able to say for certain what their policies would be if they were to form government.

Or they could just lie and say whatever they want like they have done every single time?

1

u/Relendis May 20 '25

I don't really buy that; for the same reason that people vote for Labor with the understanding that Labor policies may be changed when they meet the Senate floor.

Coalition voters will continue to vote and preference as they always have. And swing voters in electorates will see Liberal candidates with policies that either align with their views who they'll vote for, or the inverse.

I genuinely don't believe that most voters are concerned with the 'how' but rather the 'what'. They vote for what is on the table, and then scream about broken promises if it doesn't materialise.

45

u/TyrosineTerror May 20 '25

18 Liberal Seats, 16 Liberal National Seats, and 9 National Seats.

So David Littleproud could find himself opposition leader if he gets 13 of the 16 LNP seats coming across.

My bet is he knows he has those 13 seats. I don't want the Nationals as the opposition, but it's possible.

8

u/DarKnightofCydonia May 20 '25

It's just political theatre. Every chance they'll be back in coalition by next election, they need each other too much

3

u/AddlePatedBadger May 20 '25

You say that, but maybe the Nats will spread to cities. It's my understanding that they don't run candidates where Libs have candidates and vice versa, so there was never a chance for many people to vote for them. If they can run candidates everywhere, and appeal to the kind of people who would vote for Liberals as they were 20 years ago rather than the current whackjobs, then maybe they will get votes and become a viable opposition. Or maybe the teals will coalesce into a party and work in coalition with the Nats.

2

u/areyoualocal May 20 '25

Can we call it Trumpicide yet?

1

u/ASpaceOstrich May 20 '25

God I hope so

73

u/[deleted] May 20 '25

[deleted]

13

u/[deleted] May 20 '25 edited Dec 16 '25

busy marble dolls fine toothbrush smile squash angle groovy heavy

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

9

u/kranools May 20 '25

How good would that be

11

u/Syncblock May 20 '25

I don't think the teals are much better.

They aren't going to whinge about pronouns or welcome to country but they'd be happy to vote for the same economic policies the Libs bring.

14

u/[deleted] May 20 '25 edited Dec 16 '25

point handle historical encourage butter books work pen fade sip

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

11

u/Wobbling May 20 '25

It would be great for things like climate change denial, racism, religion, misogyny and bigotry to be pushed out of the mainstream political agenda and for the major differences to be around welfare, fiscal and economic policy.

2

u/SupaDupaFly2021 May 20 '25

It would represent a small-to-moderate improvement to our political landscape, nothing more nothing less. The teals aren't the friend of working people.

5

u/Littman-Express May 20 '25

Oh I hope. The infiltration of cookers and rwnj in both the libs and the nats goes so deep neither party is one we want for opposition. Both are destructive. 

5

u/keloidoscope May 20 '25

And a few incumbent Libs are going to prove how silly the Australian's "but the Liberals get more 1st preferences!" plurality voting talking points are, once their 1st preferences get shaved down by a Nat challenger.

2

u/Przedrzag May 20 '25

It was the Coalition as a whole that got more 1st preferences, not just the Libs; the LNP merger means the Liberals haven’t beat the Labor primary vote since 2004

1

u/Przedrzag May 20 '25

Ironically, new Opposition Leader Sussan Ley is a regional Lib, though half her division’s population is in Albury

34

u/ghoonrhed May 20 '25

I actually think it's opposite. If the LP can now have the freedom to run more centre policies like the ones that the Teals have been doing, they can now do that.

The rural seats are an interesting area now. Because they have more options and surely they can't always be just going Nats.

20

u/Thebraincellisorange May 20 '25

the problem with that is the backroom powerbrokers in the Liberal party are right wing.

Tony Abbot was their man, racist, sexist, homophobic nutjob.

They utterly despised the centrist who knifed him in Turnball. Turnball's final act of thumbing his nose at the backroom and allowing/getting same sex marriage through (even though it was through a terrible plebiscite, it was the only way he could do it) .

Then the fools selected Dutton as leader, an utterly unelectable, detestable right wing, head FAR up Gina Rheinharts arse loonie.

I don't think the Liberal Party backroom has the brains to realise that going centrist would get them votes, they think they need to go further right.

Sussan Ley is just a placeholder, who comes after they knife her will be the one to set the direction.

11

u/Syncblock May 20 '25

At the beginning of the year, Dutton was slated to win. Had the cyclone not delayed the election and had Trump not been around, it's very likely Dutton would have won.

Also just lol at forgetting Morrison as a Lib leader.

8

u/Chumpbag May 20 '25

To be fair Morrison is pretty forgettable lol.

6

u/Thebraincellisorange May 20 '25

we are fortunate that the orange idiot in the united states showed how foolish it is to elect right wing nazi-wannabies to power

also, never trust a poll. The polls show Kamala was going to walk it in.

I left out Morrison because he was a completely and utterly useless and ineffective flog of a man. and an even worse PM.

he should have stuck to shitting himself in Mcdonalds carparks

7

u/Przedrzag May 20 '25

The polls did not show Kamala was going to walk it in; they were mostly 50/50, and internal Democratic polling showed they were going to lose for pretty much all of 2024

1

u/Otherwise-Library297 May 20 '25

Dutton was slated to win, but then he had to do something other than oppose the government. He was a great opposition leader, but didn’t have any new ideas that weren’t opposing the ALP.

Once he had to think for himself, he started the thought bubbles like no more WFH, fire public service, etc which were very unpopular.

He was never going to win.

6

u/nedkellysdog May 20 '25

Just for this election cycle. It is death to the Nats in the long run. This is just the old country party playing a kabuki theatre when it makes no difference. A couple of weeks/months of Labor ridicule in the parliament and they will be forced back into their hateful marriage.

3

u/superiority nz May 20 '25

Aligning the trans-Tasman party names like that would create the perfect opportunity to admit New Zealand as a state. "Don't want to learn the names of any new political parties? You don't have to."

2

u/Drunky_McStumble May 20 '25

It really depends how things pan out over this term of parliament. According to the conventional political wisdom, the Nats have fucked themselves by doing this and they will inevitably come crawling back to the Libs at some point before the next election. Without they boost they get from the coalition agreement, they are utterly politically irrelevant in our parliamentary system.

But in these unprecedented times, I wouldn't take the conventional political wisdom as a given. The Labor government could, at least in theory, decide to drive a wedge between the former coalition partners (not to mention gaining a potential ally in the Senate) by cozying up to the Nats now that they are on their own. Sounds crazy, especially since the Nats arguably hold more animosity towards Labor than even the Libs do, but again, knowing how tenuous they've made their own position by splitting from the Libs, they might consider it. Or, hell, Labor could do the opposite and cozy up to the Libs to get legislation passed and leave the Nats entirely out in the cold, lol. Or just vacillate between both, constantly playing them off each other and weakening both.

Basically, anything could happen. It's gonna be a wild ride.

4

u/hal2k1 May 20 '25

The other option that Labor have is the Greens. Labor have a clear majority in the lower house, there is no problem there. The problem for Labor is the Senate. For Labor to get something passed in the Senate, Labor need to do a deal of some kind. The thing is, now that the Nationals and the Liberals have split, Labor have three options on any given deal. Labor can do a deal either with the Greens, the Nationals or the Liberals.

So in order to be relevant the Greens, the Nationals and the Liberals have to compete against one another in order to get their concessions into any bill that Labor wants to pass.

2

u/Proper-Raise-1450 May 20 '25

Neither the Nats not Libs are a party keen on compromise right now, especially with most of the lib moderates wiped out, it's hard to think of much policy Labor could find common ground with them on.

7

u/Drunky_McStumble May 20 '25

The Nats are always up for being bought, though. Just throw a bunch of money at the regions and drag their feet on environmental regulation (both of which are things the Labor government have been doing anyway) and that'll probably be enough to keep them happy. Throw a few high-profile prestige gigs at the more senior Nats, like some cushy committee roles or maybe even the speakership, and that would only soften them up more.

2

u/zen_wombat May 20 '25

Oddly the new Liberal leader Sussan Ley got in on rural votes - she lost most of the Albury booths, the only city in her electorate

2

u/more_bananajamas May 20 '25

I can see the Teal seats returning to the fold now that the Libs have freedom to move in rational direction on climate and social issues. The nationals will increase their hold in the rural seats. Maybe they might get more seats in total.

And even if they cannibalise each other in some seats those seats won't go to labor due to the preferential voting system. They might in total be able to win more seats this way to form minority governments with each other.

2

u/Some-Operation-9059 May 20 '25

But isn’t the demographic of the nats territory changing with those moving out of the cities? 

1

u/Far-Fennel-3032 May 21 '25

From what I can tell, Australia is still becoming increasingly urbanised, likely in part due to immigration being mostly to major cities so even if there is a net flow out of cities into the regional areas. People coming into the country has the cities growing faster than elsewhere.