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Nationals leaving Coalition as David Littleproud announces split with Liberal party after election defeat

57 comments
  • I didn't see that coming. Wow.

    I don't know what this means as far as pragmatic effects like voting on legislation. Does that mean 9 Nationals go to the HoR crossbench?

  • While there has obviously been a lot of public talk about the reasons why, I do genuinely wonder how much came down to the Nationals not being ready for the Coalition to be led by a woman. I genuinely can't believe the numbers are as bad as 4/28 for the Liberals and 3/15 for the Nationals that are women. Also insane that the Nationals have a larger ratio!

  • [Labor Treasurer] Jim Chalmers has described the Nationals split from the Coalition as a "nuclear meltdown" that is a "smoking ruin".

    Brilliant wordplay.

  • This technically means that now the Opposition has 28 seats, and the crossbench has 27.

  • Whoa!

    My instant question was "I wonder if that's because the Nats think the Libs have gone too far to the right, or not enough?"

    • libs want inner city seats, nats seem content with regional areas

  • The cycle continues... the Free Trade party merged with the Anti-Socialist party, and then with the Protectionist party (ironically enough) to form Deakin's Liberal party... enough Labor dissidents fused with that to form the Nationalist and then the United Australia Party (no relation to Clive's party). When the United Australia Party became so politically unfavourable, they completely dissolved and rebranded into the current Liberal party.

    Either the coalition re-emerges in the near future (by far the most likely option), or we will see another shake-up/rebranding/fusion. Labor look set to hold power for several terms now, but the longer this continues, the longer the power vacuum for opposition stirs up. There are a lot of independents in the house now, and when they realise they may have collective power against Labor in a coalition with the Liberal party, they may end up uniting. Possibly within the decade. I think it would look very different to the Liberal party of 2025.

    • It's pretty funny seeing the Wiki page for the Coalition listing six dissolution dates

  • I expect they'll be back together in some form come next election, I can't see the Libs - let alone the Nationals - forming government in their own right.

    I am curious as to what will happen in Queensland state level now the federal parties have split - will they split the LNP party there?

    • The ABC live blog gave an answer to this. The LNP will keep doing what it's doing. Federal members will sit in whichever of the two party rooms they used to sit in, and the state and council LNP members will stay unified. The latter is pretty obvious, since the federal Coalition has always been separate from state ones. NSW and Victorian coalitions have come close to splitting before, and that wouldn't have directly necessitated a split federally. They each have separate coalition agreements.

  • If the Coalition is a big ship, does that mean the National party is the front that fell off?

  • What does it take for the Liberals to form government anymore? I’ve always been a bit unclear on the whole LNP distinction. How do you actually come PM if you don’t have a party that can get a majority vote? Article suggestions welcome.

    Edit: The video explained it a bit. Is it essentially you need to get a majority of senators voted in to agree on a leader?

    • How do you actually come PM if you don’t have a party that can get a majority vote?

      You convince a majority of the members of the House of Reps to agree to support you in passing bills required for operating the government (basically bills allowing them to spend money, also known as supply) and to support you if a motion of no confidence is put forward.

    • Regarding your edit, no, you don't need a majority of Senators and no party has in a couple decades. What you need to form government is a majority in the House. However, at times when a majority has nog been possible, a PM can be decided when they have a majority of MPs in the House that will vote with them on confidence and supply. Confidence is a literal vote of confidence that happens, where if it fails, the PM is ousted and an election happens. Supply being the budget, which, if it can't be passed, also triggers an election. Hence why Australia could never have a US-style government shutdown.

    • Not senators, Members of Parliament. From the House of Representatives. It's equivalent to Majority Leader in the US House of Representatives, Chancellor in Germany, etc. As long as you can command majority support on matters of confidence, you can become Prime Minister. That's the most important thing the Liberal-National Coalition agreement did for them: the Nationals agreed to provide support for the Liberal leader as Prime Minister. It was similar to the Gillard Government, where Labor didn't have a majority on their own, so they reached an agreement with the Greens and the 4 or 5 independents that they would support Labor on matters of confidence, in exchange for whatever was in their agreement.

    • What does it take for the Liberals to form government anymore?

      Learning some empathy might be a good start.

  • didnt see this post till just now, shouldve crossposted sorry =3

    i brought up this possibility before the election with my family and they all told me i was being stupid naive and optimistic. so exciting

    • Nah that's the great thing about Lemmy, it seems you shared the same URL (let me guess, you first saw it on the ABC live blog and then went searching for a less ephemeral source to submit?), it automatically links the two posts. That's how I found yours in !world@lemmy.world.

57 comments