“Today the focus must be on Jewish Australians, indeed all Australians, as we mourn the victims of the Bondi terrorist attack,” said a statement by Opposition Leader Sussan Ley on Thursday morning.
“My responsibility as leader of the opposition and leader of the Liberal Party is to Australians in mourning.”
The short statement was released even as Ley’s recent Coalition partner, National Party leader David Littleproud, was taking a different kind of stand in Brisbane – effectively asking the Liberals to remove her as the price of any reconciliation.
When Littleproud first opted to walk out of the Coalition after the election defeat in May, his rapid about-turn made for an undignified and unedifying spectacle. This time around, it is an insult to the nation.
We should not forget that during the May rupture, one of the sticking points to emerge from behind closed doors was Littleproud’s desire to see his team exempted from the demands of shadow cabinet solidarity. No sooner did this claim see media daylight than it evaporated.
Yet on Wednesday it reappeared in the post-Bondi scramble to pass laws on hate groups. Having broken shadow cabinet solidarity to vote against that bill, three Nationals MPs duly tendered their resignations. But Littleproud decided to make acceptance of the resignations a trigger for dissolution of the Coalition.
We have reached quite a pass in our parliamentary life when it is Barnaby Joyce who steps in to pose as the voice of sober judgment and political constancy. “You don’t blow the whole show up so that Australia as a nation doesn’t have a competent opposition,” he told reporters in Tamworth, before raising more than a few eyebrows by comparing the Coalition to a marriage.
The point stands, however. At a time when the Labor government is seen to be floundering over its responses to a ghastly terrorist attack, and economic, geopolitical and environmental challenges confront the nation at every turn, how can it be that we are deprived of a functioning opposition to hold ministers to account?
Whatever happened to preventing what Liberal senator James Paterson called “the Victorianisation of Australia”?
Joyce is more than simply a commentator in this week’s events. His defection to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in December and that party’s rise in the polls have amplified the Nationals’ skittishness on both vilification laws and buying back guns. As Environment Minister Murray Watt colourfully put it: “The National Party is a tired old horse who’s been spooked by a snake in the paddock, and that snake is One Nation … It’s about them seeing their own voter base disappearing before their eyes and wanting to position themselves.”
Following Labor’s sweeping May victory, it has been repeatedly pointed out that its majority was “a mile wide and an inch deep”, with many seats won on a diminished primary vote. But if this made Prime Minister Anthony Albanese seem vulnerable to shifting public sentiment and media clamour in the weeks after the Bondi massacre, the unscheduled return to parliament – something Ley has repeatedly demanded – brought the Coalition back to its own numbers problem.
Since the election, Ley and Littleproud have found themselves presiding over party rooms so small and shorn of experience that even lone dissenters can wreak havoc within them. Lacking the ballast of a large factional base, neither has been keen to lay down the law in such situations, and this week both were accused of hiding behind parliamentary process when personal leadership was desperately needed.
Littleproud’s lamentable performance, in particular, could have an impact on the nation’s politics for years. If he was motivated by the challenge from One Nation, his shameless display has surely only given constituents more reason to consider switching their vote.
The result of this week will almost certainly be that both lose their jobs. Yet whoever replaces them will face the same arithmetic and the same divisions, with One Nation and the teal independents waiting at the doors to woo defectors. It is not clear that Angus Taylor (on holiday in Europe during this debacle) or Andrew Hastie has together the acumen, the authority or the trust across Liberal ranks to rebuild the compact between their party and the Nationals, or to re-establish a brand that wins votes in urban and rural seats.
We may be on the cusp of a great realignment in this country’s conservative politics, but from the outside the impression has been of an extended and unproductive pantomime at a time of the utmost seriousness.
Those mourning the 15 lives taken from us at Bondi Beach deserve a measured debate and careful consideration of what needs to change in our nation’s laws and our government’s policies. That road, through the royal commission, lies very much in the future, not the rancorous past few days. Instead, they have watched as politicians generated a great deal of heat but very little light, and legislation was pushed through with scant review.
When parliament returns for its scheduled February sitting, it will now inevitably be consumed by speculation and manoeuvring on the opposition and crossbenches.
In an age of social media sensations, perhaps it is futile to hope for a more considered tone and more measured decision-making and debate. Yet, should the major parties fail to deliver those, the steady decline in their electoral fortunes will continue. And a nation in need of clear direction will find itself drifting into danger.
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The Age’s View – Since The Age was first published in 1854, the editorial team has believed it important to express a considered view on the issues of the day for readers, always putting the public interest first.From our partners
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