Nationals MP Colin Boyce announces challenge to David Littleproud

A Queensland Nationals MP has announced he will challenge David Littleproud for the Party’s leadership on Monday.

Member for Flynn Colin Boyce told Sky News that he would move a spill motion when his colleagues meet in Canberra ahead of the return of Parliament, and run to be leader himself.

“David has made some bad decisions recently. He’s upset just about everybody he can possibly upset,” he said.

Mr Littleproud walked away from the Coalition with the Liberal Party last week after a disagreement over the new laws banning hate groups and the shadow cabinet’s internal processes.

All of the Nationals ministers quit the frontbench in solidarity with the three senators who tendered their resignations to Opposition Leader Sussan Ley after crossing the floor.

While some within the Liberal and National parties have reportedly been in talks to bring the Coalition partners back together before the split becomes entrenched, there is a widespread view that the animosity between Ms Ley and Mr Littleproud is so great a reconciliation is unlikely unless one or both leaders change.

Leadership tension within the Liberals has been growing, with expectations that either Andrew Hastie or Angus Taylor will challenge Ms Ley in the near future.

But Mr Boyce surprised colleagues by using a live interview on Sky News on Wednesday to pull the pin on the Nationals’ leadership.

“We do have to get this Coalition back together again. It’s a bit like trying to weld square pipe to round pipe,” the former gas industry welder said.

“I will be moving a spill motion on Monday afternoon in the National Party party room to give my colleagues an option. Because the reality is, if they follow the course they’re on now, we are going over the political cliff.”

He said Ms Ley had left the door open to re-establishing the Coalition and that doing so was “the most viable way forward” for conservative politics.

He also warned that if the split continued, Nationals politicians would be the losers who would miss out on parliamentary resources, travel entitlements and devoted staff who had worked with them for years.

Speculation has mounted in recent weeks that One Nation was courting Mr Boyce to follow Barnaby Joyce in joining the minor party’s ranks.

However, he categorically ruled out doing so on Wednesday, saying, “That’s not happening for me. I am a member of the LNP.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Littleproud said he’d had discussions with the Prime Minister’s office about staffing allocations as he worked through allocating portfolios to his Nationals colleagues.

“We’re in no rush, but we’ll work constructively with anybody that’s prepared to take the fight up to the Albanese government,” he said.

He insisted the “convention of our coalition” had been broken twice by the Liberals over the past year, not the Nationals.

“The National Party has a right to have values and principles and to stand up for them, and I’m proud of the fact that we did stand up for them,” he said.