In the days before Sussan Ley won the Liberal leadership on May 13, one member of the party told our reporter Olivia Ireland that “if Sussan gets it, it’ll be our Liz Truss moment”.
Truss, chosen by Britain’s Conservative Party to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister, lasted 45 days before being forced to resign. One tabloid newspaper livestreamed a fresh lettuce bought at a supermarket, challenging Truss to outlast it. She failed.
But at the end of this tumultuous week, which saw the National Party announce on Tuesday that it was quitting its coalition with the Liberals for the first time in nearly four decades, before rushing back to the negotiating table on Thursday, visitors to the vegetable aisle might find that it is Nationals leader David Littleproud who is reduced to clear.
Sussan Ley and David Littleproud have had a topsy-turvy week.Credit: Artwork: Marija Ercegovac
On Tuesday, having been told by Ley that all the policies the opposition took to their resounding election defeat would have to be reviewed within the Liberal party room before she could sign up to four key demands by the Nationals, Littleproud called time. “They are going on a journey of rediscovery and this will provide them the opportunity to do that without the spectre of the National Party imposing their will,” he declared.
It soon became apparent that some members of his own party room were kept in the dark regarding other sticking points between the two leaders: Littleproud had sought the deputy opposition leader’s role and an exemption from shadow cabinet solidarity for Nationals, without success.
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By Thursday, it seemed the Liberals needed some company on their journey of rediscovery after all. With some members of the larger party saying their review could take months, Littleproud said, “I don’t want to put specific days or weeks on it”. The supposedly principled stand of two days earlier now looked pointless and petulant.
As our chief political commentator, James Massola, wrote on the day of the split, this crisis has been years in the making, as the two parties increasingly pursued different goals and different constituencies. This year they also had very different elections.
Even as voters swung away from the Liberals, and they lost seats across Australia, the Nationals held their seats and in several cases experienced a swing towards them. But just as the Liberal Party boasts fewer and fewer small-l liberals, the Nationals have never been a small-n national force. The policies that they believe helped them get elected in rural and regional areas have failed to deliver for the Coalition in the nation’s cities, where power is lost and won.
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