If the Coalition is a big ship, does that mean the National party is the front that fell off?
this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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They're running out of feet to shoot themselves in.
That barrel has no bottom
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!
Littleproud said his party remained committed to the introduction of nuclear power in Australia, saying renewable energy had lost its social licence and country communities wanted change.
Yes, this is definitely what the election results showed.
'Lost it's social licence'? Who with? Surely only with people who should lose their 'social licence', whatever that is.
They're completely incapable of changing direction.
No one wants nuclear. Transmission distance is too far in Australia. It's just a license to keep burning coal for another 30 years.
It's so transparent it's almost laughable.
What gets me about the Nationals, is they barely advocate for the region's interests at all.
Climate change has, and is going to keep increasing the frequency and severity of droughts.
If I recall correctly, droughts in this country are strongly correlated with an increased rate of suicides of farmers, for fairly obvious reasons.
The Nationals ought to be on the "hey, how about we mitigate climate change" bandwagon.
But they're so captured by Gina Rhinehart and other moneyed interests and apparently the voters in rural areas don't care.
I don't get it, honestly.
Regional seats often held for or swung to the LNP. The election results aren't as much of a glowing endorsement for renewables as you suggest. Still, it is rich for that statement to be coming from the Nationals, considering that their long history of lies about renewables are partly to blame for the loss of their social license.
Has renewable energy really lost its social license?
Farmers don't like wind because all their neighbours are putting up noisy turbines.
Meanwhile every house in my street has solar because it's a no-brainer.
I don't know why solar isn't mandatory for all new constructions.
Rooftop solar causes some issues for the grid and especially with every person getting their own battery it's not very efficient.
On rural properties it would make sense to mandate them, but it would also be political suicide.
Aren't the issues it causes mostly because the grid was designed to deliver power from plants?
I mean, aren't they solvable problems?
I wouldn't really know. I just know there's some kind of issue with that.
And regardless it's true that it'd be a waste of resources to duplicate a "margin-for-error" on every single house to ensure the fridge keeps running all year round.
Not really. If the solar on people's roofs is part of the network. The network needs to be able to manage peaks and troughs in demand no matter how the power is produced.
Advance Australia has been committing millions to whipping up a frothing frenzy against wind, solar and batteries in rural communities.
Advance Australia
I'm not familiar with them so I looked them up. First sentence on the 'Our Story' page: "In 2018, woke politicians and elitist activist groups .."
That's enough. [close tab] Fucking bigots.
Bakers Delight donated to them.
Probably more companies to, but Bakers Delight has been the most inconvenient. I haven't been able to find good bread anywhere else (or indeed, even at Bakers Delight these days).
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?
My mate said “Huge news coming out of Canberra right now!”.
I guessed exactly what it was. The only bigger news would be if Russia or ‘Murica were performing a hostile takeover, which isn’t likely to happen while Labor is in power.
It means the Liberals finally have the dead weight slackened from their necks. They have a chance now, and more clear air than they've had in years to develop some good policy.
If the Nationals really want Nuclear, then they'd make a long term argument for setting up a pathway toward a sustainable industry that inserts alongside the renewable rollout as the energy requirements of the nation expand. But i predict they won't, because technology isn't their goal, coal, is their goal.
Will the Libs use their freedom to move back towards the pragmatic centre and bring the teals back into the fold (or replace them with better-supported candidates of a similarly moderate persuasion), or will they instead invite One Nation and Family First to dance?
Its the million dollar question isn't it. But i hope their new leader has seen reason, and understood good policy necessarily means a lretty central line most of the time, (by no means not all the time).
So i'd hope this is a sign that Sussan Ley, (the second 's' is so dumb, next she's gona be asking for her own pronouns... ;) /j), is trying to steer the party to the centre. Whether they actually sit down and develop any good policy in that process is a genuine hope i hold.
Good policy, even if i disagree with its direction, will always be better for the nation and the competition of ideas than the trollip they've 'mostly' been coming out with for most of the last decade or more.
You expect reason from someone that changes the spelling of her name, and I'm not making this up, because of numerology? OK.
I knew that, its weird, and not in a good way. But i also know that people can be weird in some ways but surprisingly reasonable and good, even talented, with other subjects.
Nobody's experience leaves them with all the faculties needed to run a country or create an effective alternative government.
Part of her job will be selecting people for her frontbench that make up for her own deficiencies. If she turns out to be a better leader than i expect she'll be very good at this, and maybe pick some people who can set her on an even keel when the numerology starts slippin into the mix.
I'm always happy to be surprised by people.
Does that mean 9 Nationals go to the HoR crossbench?
Technically, yes.
I don’t know what this means as far as pragmatic effects like voting on legislation
I expect the vast majority of the time, the Liberals and Nationals will vote together. But this opens up the possibility that on a few bills, they might split.
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While as some have said, this is probably just political theatre and they'll renegotiate an agreement before the next federal election. It does however pose some interesting points depending on who broke off.
You've got the nats breaking the coalition possibly feeling emboldened by the most recent results. However I can't see how they really gain any seats outside electorates they already hold seats for.
I think it's far more interesting if you look at it from the libs breaking the coalition. You now have the libs free from far right policy agreements that they would have passed in a coalition so you could see the libs in the senate being able to help vote more centre labor policies. Might shift power away from the greens in the senate.
Definitely an interesting development and not something I would have expected as an outcome from the election!
As much as I hate the Liberals, if it effectively shifts the Overton Window left, I'll call the Liberals working with Labor in the senate a win
Agreed, will be good as it will require all parties to compete to pass bills!
Though sadly it probably is just temporary until a liberal spill occurs in a few years. Sounds like the Nats leader did a bit of a dog act announcing this now to Sussan
The Liberals only ever work with Labor in the Senate when Labor is trying to do undemocratic authoritarian shit like the social media age verification law or the pro-major-party campaign finance law.
I listened to Littleproud on TripleJ spruiking nuclear power. He STILL can't say the costings out loud in public...
If he did, his scheme cooked up by his donors to delay clean energy would be revealed.
This technically means that now the Opposition has 28 seats, and the crossbench has 27.
[Labor Treasurer] Jim Chalmers has described the Nationals split from the Coalition as a "nuclear meltdown" that is a "smoking ruin".
Brilliant wordplay.
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?"
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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
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