Coalition marriage hits the rocks

In the aftermath of the recent federal election debacle, the much-vaunted, seemingly permanent Coalition between the Liberals and the Nationals that has dominated Australian national politics since it was first formed in 1923, looks precarious.

While the initial threatened break by the Nationals after the election has been patched up, the issue has now turned to the net zero emissions issue.

Important as this is, the real issue is the very viability of the Coalition and what the Liberal Party stands for.

The future of the Coalition and the survival of both parties will depend on the Liberal Party's decision this week on whether to support their junior partner in opposition to any net zero target, or for both parties to go their separate ways.

The net zero issue highlights the issue that has long plagued the Coalition of the "tail wagging the dog" – of the Nationals setting the agenda for its larger senior partner, seen largely in terms in order of meeting its policy and political agenda with scant regard to the Liberals' position.

Will the Liberals sign up to the Nationals' net zero policy because they believe it is the right policy for Australia?

Or is it merely a compromise to preserve the Coalition, which is not a real partnership of shared values but just a "marriage of convenience" driven by political expediency to gain office?

Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce was blunter, describing the Coalition as a "business partnership and not a marriage", best measured in transactional terms such as deals gained, ministries held, seats won and power exercised.

What makes the marriage no longer convenient for some Liberals is that the disparities between them and the Nationals - demographically, educationally, ideologically, economically, socially and personally - have grown too great, making it harder to maintain agreed policy unity on contentious policy issues.

For some Liberals, the Coalition has always come at a high price in terms of policy compromises and even the national interest, and now, on an issue like net zero, potentially undermines their ability to connect to the modern, changing, urban Australia where they need to pitch their policies and where their votes are.

Adding to the Liberals' difficulties is that, given their urban base, they have always been more electorally vulnerable than the Nationals, losing more seats whenever the tide turns. The Liberals shed 34 seats at the last two elections while the Nationals have, as in the past, remained relatively stable, largely because of the location and demography of their seats.

The Nationals disagree with the Liberals' assessment about net zero, arguing that it is in the senior party's interests to reject the policy because it is economically disastrous, while opposition would be a vote winner if only Coalition presented a united front and pursued viable alternatives vigorously.

Indeed, the Nationals blame the Coalition's recent election losses on this policy "me-tooism" with Labor, preventing the parties from having real points of difference, betraying the Liberals' its core values and disillusioning its base.

Unless the Coalition comes together in rejecting net zero, both parties will be cannibalised by the growing array of right-of-centre minor parties and independents seeking to take their place

That will only result in fracturing the non-Labor cause and keeping Labor in office for years to come. Labor, of course, will make hay at any disunity.

Many Liberals might well wonder why in the 21st century they are in this current predicament and that the tail seems to be still wagging the dog, possibly threatening their survival.

Expectations that the Nationals would have withered on the vine as demographic and economic trends moved exorbitantly against them have not been fulfilled. Nor have Liberal attempts at amalgamation been successful federally, though it has occurred at the state level, most recently in Queensland with the formation of the Liberal National Party in 2008 that ended decades of fighting.

Nevertheless, the National Party persists. Its resilience and the attraction of their views to a wider cross-section of the electorate is greater than thought. Remember, the Nationals pre-empted the Liberals in rejecting the Voice referendum and were proven correct.

If the Liberals support the Nationals' views on net zero purely in terms of its political convenience of keeping the Coalition together without any real conviction that it is the right policy, then the electorate will see it for what it is and mark it down.

Now is the time for the Liberals to resolve just who they are and to reset the coalition as real partnership.