ELLEN RANSLEY: Coalition split may have ended but Nationals ‘messy’ moves have eroded trust with Liberals

They haven’t quite kissed and made up, but the Liberals and the Nationals have left the door ajar and agreed to give a Coalition agreement another go.

In their second party room meeting in as many days, Liberal MPs on Friday afternoon agreed “in principle” to a series of demands from the Nationals, while reserving the right to negotiate on details.

It means Opposition Leader Sussan Ley can now resume negotiations with Nationals leader David Littleproud in the aim of reuniting as a collective before parliament resumes in late July. If all goes well, a shadow frontbench, made up of members from both parties, would be announced next week.

The in-principle deal includes a watered down nuclear policy: a lifting of the Howard-era moratorium on the energy source that stops short of Peter Dutton’s commitment to build and run state-owned reactors.

The Liberals, some begrudgingly, have also accepted on face value to retain internally contentious divestiture powers for supermarket and other retailers found to be abusing their market share.

The other demands - a $20 billion regional future fund and regional mobile service connectivity - were also canvassed in the Friday virtual meeting. The Liberal Party still wants the time to review and assess all four, with details to be subject to shadow cabinet processes.

The chaotically instigated, likely short-lived separation spearheaded by some trigger happy Nationals may amount to nothing more than a blip in a storied relationship.

While that would be better that than a messy divorce, it’s nevertheless not been a great look for the party of the bush to be so focused on internal squabbling while large parts of their constituency have been dealing with life-threatening floods, extreme droughts, and contentious taxes courtesy of the Victorian government.

“My personal view, and I’ve made this quite clear over several days, is the longer we’re talking about ourselves, the more we’re neglecting issues that really matter,” Gippsland MP Darren Chester said on Friday.

“Right now, (we’ve got) flooding events in central and northern New South Wales, in Victoria we’ve got drought across the central and western parts of the state, right into South Australia. These are the issues that we need to refocus on, so the sooner we can put this week behind us, work together on issues… I think the better will be as a political organisation, and the better Australians will be as well.”

Inside the National party there are now rumblings over how Littleproud, whose leadership was secured just 11 days ago, has handled the matter and whether his position remains tenable.

Michael McCormack, a former leader, said Littleproud’s behaviour was “really messy” and his future “would be up to the party room”.

“He’s been messy, he’s been really messy and for people on the outside looking in, they just wonder what the hell is going on,” he said.

The former deputy prime minister also channelled his inner Scott Morrison to declare he was “ambitious” for Littleproud when asked if the leader has his full support.

It set politico tongues wagging, the choice of words echoing what Morrison said with his arms around Malcolm Turnbull just days before he rolled him as prime minister in August 2018.

McCormack’s own former leadership rival Barnaby Joyce reportedly canvassed to colleagues that Littleproud’s leadership was “irreparably damaged” and McCormack should be returned to the top spot.

McCormack on Friday afternoon tried to quiet the alarm bells, saying “I am not planning to roll David any time soon”.

“David Littleproud is safe in the position for as long as the Party wants to keep him there. The Nationals … can have a spill motion at any given meeting… but I can’t see that happening anytime soon. But who knows? Politics is strange,” he told ABC News.

Not exactly a rousing endorsement.

One Liberal MP mused that Ley had played the whole week well - not just because she was dealing with losing her mother - but because she was dealing with someone who didn’t even have the full support of their party room.

Part of the discontent now bubbling in the Nationals party room looks to have sprung from the issue of cabinet solidarity - and Littleproud’s request to Ley that his party not be beholden to it, unbeknown to his own MPs.

Ley had said repeatedly since Tuesday that had been the sticking point in their attempts to form an agreement.

Outgoing NSW senator Perin Davey said the matter hadn’t been a non-negotiable within the party room like the four policies had been.

“I only heard about the shadow cabinet solidarity thing through news reports,” she told Sky News on Friday, saying it had left her “a bit perplexed and confused”.

Mr Chester, one of a number of Nationals MPs who had privately tried to broker peace talks with Ms Ley, said he had told Liberal colleagues that cabinet solidarity was “not something that I think should have been a non-negotiable point”.

“The principles about shadow cabinet solidarity are well understood. If you can’t agree with a position taken by the shadow cabinet, you stand down. Which is what Julian Leeser did during (the Voice). I don’t think that should have been a dealbreaker,” he said.

McCormack had also been involved in talks with Ley about ending the split.

“Sussan and I are very close and we speak together very regularly. The Nationals walked away from the Liberals, and Sussan was the newly anointed Liberal leader, it’s important that I did talk to her to try and get things patched up,” Mr McCormack said on Friday morning.

Littleproud kept his head down on Friday, with meetings with Ley now set to resume after the Liberal Party gave her the green light to agree “in principle” to those four demands.

Even if this mess does end, as expected, in a reconciliation of the Coalition, there’s no doubt trust between the partners has been eroded.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull didn’t hold back in his assessment, lamenting that while there was “no prospect” of returning to government without being a Coalition, he accused the Nationals of “holding a gun to the Liberal Party’s head”.

He said the minor party should “back off” and cautioned the Liberal Party against agreeing to any policies before a proper review so soon after a brutal and bruising election defeat.

“The next election is three years away, you don’t know what the economy is going to be like then, you don’t know what anything is going to be like, really, and so it’s far better to be totally flexible on policy at this stage, the voters have given their verdict, and have a review,” he told an ABC podcast.

“This is not to say you have no policies, but you say we will finalise and formalise our policies closer to the election. And you can do that as a Coalition.

“I think this holding a gun to the Liberal Party’s head, which is what the National Party is doing, is really, really unwise. It’s stupid politically, because if Sussan Ley agrees to it then people will say, there you go again … the tail is wagging the dog, the Liberals are doing the Nationals’ bidding. This is so bad politically for them, so unwise.”

Both parties went into this split hoping for a reconciliation. After years of a “united front” culminating in a large scale electoral defeat, they needed some time apart.

The breakup was only ever meant to be temporary, and it might just wind up being very short-lived. The real test for a reunited Coalition will be what they learn from this messy saga.