Reading the near hysterical outbursts of faux upset and horror on the part of members of the mainstream media and some current and former Liberal Party MPs at the decision by the National Party not to re-enter a Coalition with the Liberal Party whilst in Opposition reminded Kooka that Coalition, whilst offering benefits to the National Party, has also come at a cost. Nothing comes free.

The chiding and belittling of the National Party in the lead up to the Nationals’ decision by the same media and current and former Liberal MPs, along with the ‘dirty deeds done dirt cheap’ of the Liberals secretly pandering to the over ambitious Jacinta Price and enticing her to go behind the backs of her National Party colleagues to sit with the Liberal Party party room, appears to have been forgotten in this hail of outrage.

A little bird told Kooka that a former Liberal Party leader was involved in the Price manoeuverings, which would surely not have gone unnoticed by the Nationals – and no, it is not another former Liberal leader (there are so many) who lectures the Nationals about the need to be in Coalition with the Liberal Party for their own good.

This all appears to be a sign of desperation on the part of a disintegrating Liberal Party, so riven by internal disputation that its only common cause appears to be criticising the Nationals, stealing National Party members and threatening to run in National Party seats.

What the Nationals have suggested is not actually radical, it does not threaten the future of the Westminster system (a ridiculous suggestion made by one media commentator), it does not consign Australia forever to a socialist wilderness, but what it does do is to enable both the National Party and the Liberal Party to spend some time consolidating their vote with their respective constituencies, which are very different.

The Liberal response appears also to be a desperate attempt to retain the form of coercive control which the Liberal Party enforces upon the National Party when in a formal Coalition. This coercive control has led the Nationals into situations where often they have had to tolerate decisions by the Liberals which went against the interests of their rural and regional constituents. For example, and this is just a small selection – a number of which are amongst the reasons why the Nationals made the decision which they did:

• The Water Act 2007 (Cth), imposed upon the bush by the Howard Government – the ongoing impacts of this piece of destructive legislation remain an issue between the Liberals and the Nationals;
• The privatisation of Telstra imposed by the Howard Government without any adequate allowance for the maintenance and development of telecommunications services in the bush;
• The roll-out of the renewable energy transition, often promoted and enacted by Liberal politicians, without any concern for adequate protections for rural and regional communities who bear the brunt of the transition;
• The failure to force monopolies such a supermarkets and banks to provide adequate services to rural and regional communities and, in the case of supermarkets, to adequately compensate rural producers for their supplies;
• Allowing long-term contracts for the sale of LNG to Japanese companies, another Howard Government decision. According to a report in today’s Australian Financial Review, in 2024, Japanese companies sold-on between 627 and 812 petajoules of LNG originally sourced from Australia – up to 1.6 times the entire annual gas consumption of eastern Australia, according to an analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). IEEFA estimates the value of those resales at between $11 billion to $14 billion – which could have been used to help finance the National’s proposed Regional Australia Future Fund. Without the Howard Government’s decision, those funds would have been available decades ago and Eastern Australia would have had access to cheap, affordable gas.

The consequences for the Nationals cannot be understated. Rural and regional voters, feeling that the Nationals were becoming the understudy to the Liberals, drifted away to minor parties and to independents. Membership numbers dropped.

So, far from being the end of democracy as we know, it is actually an opportunity for both the National and Liberal parties to have some time to focus upon their own organisations and to develop polices which reflect the views of their supporters. For the Nationals in particular it is an opportunity to demonstrate that rather than being the political dinosaur which many Liberals and the media wish to present them as being, they are actually a very effective political machine representing a diverse array of electorates across a massive expanse of territory whose principal objective is actually quite simple – the provision of practical solutions to improve the well-being of rural and regional Australians. If that comes at the cost of some salary and superannuation for some National Party MPs, so be it, that is not why their party and their supporters put them there.