Steve Price: Australia Correspondent on the dissolution of the Liberal-National Coalition

Australia's Liberal-National Coalition has called it quits after more than 60 years in partnership.

National's leader David Littleproud says the parties couldn't come to an agreement on policy after days of negotiations.  

Australian Correspondent Steve Price told Mike Hosking the decision was unexpected, and is probably the destruction of the Liberal Party in Australia for a very long time. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
See price. Very good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Get adau how.

Speaker 1 (00:04):
One historic and two out of left field was yesterday.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'll start with the latter, completely left field. I couldn't
believe it when I heard it. I was in the car.
It came up on Talkbak radio and I said, what
I mean. The result two weeks ago in the election
obviously was a disaster for the coalition, and there had
been mutterings about whether the coalition could survive, but everybody
thought they would. There's no I mean to explain to people.

(00:32):
The Liberal Party in the National Party in the Federal
Parliament had been a coalition for more than one hundred years.
They split once in nineteen eighty seven for about four months.
John Howard was the leader of the Liberal Party at
that time, the former Queensland Premiers to Joeviokimpeters and decided
he wanted to become prime minister and decided to start

(00:52):
this thing called Joe for Camera, which was a disaster
and they got thrashed by Bob Hawke in that election
and John Howard another three years to come back and
win win the prime ministership. So everyone thought, oh, well,
you know, cooler heads will get together and I can
this will all get sorted out. The coalition much diminish,
but they'll get back together again and they'll fight the

(01:13):
election in three years time. That's not going to happen,
and the reports today suggest that this split could last
all the way to the next election. And to put
it into some sort of understandable context, when Parliament resumes,
which is late next month in June, the Liberal Party
will sit there with twenty eight members in the lower House.

(01:34):
The Natural Nationals will have fifteen, and they'll look across
the dispatch box table and there'll be ninety three Labor
MPs sitting there staring at them. And I can only
imagine what John Howard, with his akubra off sitting on
a jet flying back from Rome, would have said when

(01:55):
his phone rang and I presume they can ring our
version of air Force one that coalition had split. He
could not believe his luck. I mean this probably without
overstating it is probably the destruction of the Liberal Party
in Australia for a yea, it.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Is one for the ages. I mean, if you guess
go back, I think about this last night and looking
forward to talking to you about it. You go back
six months and what was the conversation. The conversation was
Dutton was credible, Elbow was in trouble. It was a
tight race. He might get back probably a minority. The
economy stunk, They weren't overly happy. And here we are
six months later, ninety three seats bang, and the opposition

(02:34):
has blown to pieces.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
And out of government for generations, I mean, without overstating it.
And when we have three year terms here, everyone was
suggesting after the election result, well Labour's back for at
least two Well it could be three now, I mean
it could be much longer than that. And when you
look around the world, and I know you have a
global beewond these things. You look at the split of

(02:58):
the Conservatives in the UK, Nigel for ours basically now
the face of conservative politics in the UK up against
a weak ki Starma. That's what's happened here. And I
just don't know whether Australia has a Nigel Faraars for
a start. But the Nationals will now drift further to

(03:20):
the right. I hate using that term, but they will
become the face of conservative politics. And what's going on
in this country is really fascinating because the regional politicians
that represent people who grow the food and work in
the regions. I mean they are now saying, well, you
don't care about us, and the Liberals don't care about us.

(03:42):
We're out here, we've got power lines being plowed through
our farms that we don't want. We've got wind turbines
being built on our property that we don't want being
built there. And that's just making the regional farmers of
Australia angry. So they're turning toward their own natural party,
the Nationals, and I think will probably end up doing

(04:02):
some sort of deal perhaps down the line with the
National Party. And the Libs are just left out stranded.
As I said to you on Monday, they don't even
have one seat in all of metropolitan Atelaide. Where are
they going to go?

Speaker 1 (04:16):
What happened? Just to explain it? So little proud and
why didn't they just do the Look, we'll have a review,
so especially the Liberals, we'll have a review of where
we're at, how we blew it, what's gone wrong. Once
we've done that, let's come back together, have a chat
and we'll carry on as per what blew it apart.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Now, one thing blew at apart the Nationals said, listen,
if we're going to go back into coalition with you
and you did really badly at the election, this is
little proud to lurk like. What we want to be
able to do is we want to be able to
have front bench ministers in the joint cabinet to be
able to say I don't agree with that policy. And

(04:54):
it came down to net zero. So the Nationals are saying,
there's no way Australia it's going to get to net
zero by twenty thirty or twenty fifty, and we don't
want any part of that. And so we want to
be able to stand up and say no, no, you
can say that you want to agree to that, we don't.
And that's what blew apart. There was a couple of
other things the Nationals wanted. They set up this really

(05:15):
hard one deal with the Liberal Party where they were
going to have a future fund for the Bush Australian Bush,
so you'd have a bunch of money stuck away in
a bank account earning interest and the interests would then
go to wood pet projects of the Nationals. They got
that through the party room, and the Libs have not
guaranteed that they could keep that policy in place. So
it was over policies they fell apart.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Wow. Fortunately Victoria looks really good at the moment, I
was fine, Have I got my numbers right? The debt's
only going from one hundred and sixty seven billion dollars
to one hundred and ninety four billion dollars.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
You've got your numbers right. The place is a complete disaster.
I mean, the one thing about the federal result is
hopefully Victorians will wake up and at the end of
next year get rid of a really bad state. Labor
government have listened to these numbers. Tax take on Victorian
so these are state taxes will by twenty thirty be
fifty billion dollars a year. That's up one hundred and

(06:11):
seventy three percent since the Labor Party were elected in
twenty fourteen, So ten years the tax take has gone
up one hundred and seventy three percent. And the fool
who is now the Treasurer, Jacqueline Simes said yesterday when
asked about the tax take, she said, well, unlike Western
Australia who dig money literally out of the ground, all

(06:34):
we have is payroll tax and property taxes to keep
the state running. I mean that is just ridiculous. The
public service wages bill has gone up thirty eight percent
in ten years. I mean seriously, and we're still paying
something I forgot. We're still paying the COVID debt level.
I mean what COVID? I mean serious, unreal?

Speaker 1 (06:59):
All right, go well, for see you next week. Steve
Price in Victoria in Australia.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
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