ANDREW GREENE: Labor attack dog Tony Burke savages Nationals and Liberals in Parliament

If dejected Liberal and National party members were looking for reasons why they should quickly end the damaging Coalition split, they got it loud and clear during their first parliamentary question time, sitting as a newly divided opposition.

On a day where the Government would ordinarily have expected to be pummelled over the Reserve Bank’s first interest rate rise in over two years, the new-look Liberal-only frontbench struggled to properly lay a glove on their Labor opponents.

Just before Tuesday’s question time, the revamped seating arrangements for Parliament post Coalition implosion were unveiled, confirming former Nationals members of shadow cabinet, including leader David Littleproud, now sitting on the backbenches.

As well as a new seating plan in the House of Representatives, Leader of the House Tony Burke added insult to injury for the Liberal Opposition, by introducing new rules reducing the number of questions the party can ask the government during question time.

Members of the crossbench, which includes the Nationals party, are now granted more opportunities to put questions to ministers, making it very difficult for the Liberal Opposition to sustain a line and rhythm of attack against the Government.

Just before 2pm, members of the National party began wandering into the chamber, looking for their new seats in a block next to the Liberal backbench, and close to the members of the regular crossbench, including One Nation defector Barnaby Joyce.

Earlier, Mr Burke had taunted the former Coalition over its spectacular bust up last week, while explaining to Parliament the need to change parliamentary procedures to accommodate the new-look chamber.

“Effectively when the Member for New England (Barnaby Joyce) moved to the cross bench it had not occurred to us at the time that the entire National party was going to move to the cross bench with him,” he quipped.

“While he’s not their leader, they appear to be his followers in the pathway over there,” Mr Burke said while pointing to the area where the Nationals MPs would now be sitting in question time as a separate crossbench party.

Once question time began, the Government did not wait for the looming bad news on interest rates to be announced before it began taking pre-emptive potshots at the opposition parties for their ongoing leadership dramas.

In his response to the first question from the Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese taunted Sussan Ley by saying many of the people seated behind her at already called time on her future.

Then at precisely 2.30pm Treasurer Jim Chalmers came to the despatch box to inform the Parliament that “as expected the independent Reserve Bank has increased the cash rate by 25 basis points”.

“This will be difficult news for millions of Australians with a mortgage, and we understand the pressure that this puts on Australian families and businesses,” Dr Chalmers said over a roar of interjections from the opposite side of the chamber.

The former Coalition’s first chance to attack the Treasurer on the rate hike came immediately via a question from Nationals leader David Littleproud who demanded to know from the backbench: “when will you apologise to mortgage holders in Australia?”

Without hesitating, Dr Chalmers instantly responded by highlighting the division on the other side: “Well Mr Speaker — I thank the leader of one of the three far-right parties in this country for his question”.

And so the Government continued with every question put to a minister during question time.

Education Minister Jason Clare joked about the Opposition looking more dysfunctional than the Beckham family, while Energy Minister Chris Bowen entertained Labor MPs by joking about the “numbers” between leadership rivals in the Liberal Party.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers brushed off attacks from his Opposition counterpart Ted O’Brien by pointing out that the shadow treasurer was now also having to fill the role of shadow assistant treasurer in Sussan Ley’s Liberal only frontbench.

“They found the only bloke who would work with him, and they are still not convinced there won’t be leaking of private conversations,” Dr Chalmers said in response to another question on the interest rate hike.

Then at just before 3.45pm, Anthony Albanese mercifully ended the much-longer than usual question time, which had seen the Liberal Party given just six opportunities to question the government out of 26 questions.

In the end, the new crossbench had a total of 7 questions, of which three were given to the National Party, which is no longer compelled to co-ordinate its question time strategy with its former Liberal partners.