Littleproud got nothing but still claimed a win. Where have we seen this behaviour before?

For Nationals leader David Littleproud, the moment that prompted him to walk back the Coalition split was when Liberal leader Sussan Ley agreed to a demand he claims he didn’t make.

The past 24 hours of developments between the two parties beg the question: what was the point of it all? 

The Nationals demanded the Liberals commit to four policies: support for proposals for a new universal service obligation for mobile phones, divestiture powers to break up the big supermarkets, a Regional Australia Future Fund, and continued advocacy for nuclear power generation. Ley said she couldn’t make those commitments because she was determined to review all Liberal policies and not make any “captain’s calls”. 

The turning point came when Ley’s office claimed in a text to the ABC’s Sarah Ferguson, while Ferguson was interviewing Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie on 7:30, that they had written evidence that Littleproud had made an additional request: that his Nationals frontbenchers be exempt from shadow cabinet solidarity, which would have allowed them to vote against Coalition policy.

Earlier in the week, the Nationals had denied they made that demand, and it appears it wasn’t brought up in the partyroom. But on Thursday morning, when Littleproud said he had accepted Ley’s dismissive response on the solidarity issue as “reasonable and fair” and one he “accepted”, the Liberals took that as a sign of detente and invited him for another talk. 

Shortly after, Littleproud told reporters Ley had “made an offer to reconvene her partyroom to discuss the four policy areas that the National Party demands as part of a Coalition agreement”.

And in a bid to exhort how much abundant good faith there was, Littleproud said, “And as a consequence, I have decided to send [the National shadow] spokespeople home, as a sign of good faith … And Sussan, as a sign of good faith, will not be announcing a shadow cabinet. This is a positive step forward, one in which we’ve always said we’d be productive and constructive. And I think the Nationals have acted in good faith.”

In other words, Littleproud made a series of demands, fractured the Coalition, and then pretended he had scored a win despite having achieved nothing. The would-be Coalition partners are exactly where they started: Ley will work through the policies at her own pace, and Littleproud will continue to advocate for his pet projects. 

It’s all reminiscent of when ex-NSW Nationals leader John Barilaro threatened to break up that state’s Coalition over a koala protection policy, before backing down and claiming preposterously he had scored a “win for the regions”.

On nuclear energy, it appears possible the Coalition will end up settling for the half measure of lifting the moratorium on the technology rather than advocating for taxpayer-funded reactors — the hope being that the private sector would step in instead. But given the Coalition’s resounding loss on May 3 — and the fact nobody in Australia appears to want a nuclear reactor built in their backyard — bringing nuclear policy to the next election would be a gift to Anthony Albanese.

Divisions in the Nationals partyroom will deepen as well. The Sydney Morning Herald reported this morning that Ley had gone above Littleproud’s head to ask Barnaby Joyce, Darren Chester and Michael McCormack to lobby for their leader to get back to the negotiating table. Littleproud had reportedly planned to dump McCormack and Joyce, both former party leaders, from the frontbench. 

McCormack told Crikey in an interview conducted before the thawing in relations that he sincerely hoped the Coalition would reunite. 

“I hope we can work through the whole process and get back together,” he said. “Taylor Swift has many breakup songs, some of them have happy endings, some of them do not. I hope this will have a happy ending, that it’s not like that one that goes: ‘We are never, ever, ever getting back together’.”