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.
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.
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 don't know why solar isn't mandatory for all new constructions.
'Lost it's social licence'? Who with? Surely only with people who should lose their 'social licence', whatever that is.
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.
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.
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.
They can probably get more stuff done that way than being the junior coalition partner of a party that routinely does things that will screw the voter base of the nationals.
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!
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
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.
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
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?"
I'm not sure if you can simplify it that much. It sounds like it's more a case of the Liberals being unwilling to cede some policy power to The Nationals despite the election results.
Wait. Does that mean the Nats think the Coalition lost because they weren't implementing enough of their policies? That's adorable. I say let 'em keep thinking that.
libs want inner city seats, nats seem content with regional areas
OoooOOOoooOOOHHH!
My words exactly
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
I expect they'll be back together in some form come next election, I can't see the Libs - let alone the Nationals - forming government in their own right.
I am curious as to what will happen in Queensland state level now the federal parties have split - will they split the LNP party there?
The ABC live blog gave an answer to this. The LNP will keep doing what it's doing. Federal members will sit in whichever of the two party rooms they used to sit in, and the state and council LNP members will stay unified. The latter is pretty obvious, since the federal Coalition has always been separate from state ones. NSW and Victorian coalitions have come close to splitting before, and that wouldn't have directly necessitated a split federally. They each have separate coalition agreements.
What does it take for the Liberals to form government anymore? I’ve always been a bit unclear on the whole LNP distinction. How do you actually come PM if you don’t have a party that can get a majority vote? Article suggestions welcome.
Edit: The video explained it a bit. Is it essentially you need to get a majority of senators voted in to agree on a leader?
How do you actually come PM if you don’t have a party that can get a majority vote?
You convince a majority of the members of the House of Reps to agree to support you in passing bills required for operating the government (basically bills allowing them to spend money, also known as supply) and to support you if a motion of no confidence is put forward.
Regarding your edit, no, you don't need a majority of Senators and no party has in a couple decades. What you need to form government is a majority in the House. However, at times when a majority has nog been possible, a PM can be decided when they have a majority of MPs in the House that will vote with them on confidence and supply. Confidence is a literal vote of confidence that happens, where if it fails, the PM is ousted and an election happens. Supply being the budget, which, if it can't be passed, also triggers an election. Hence why Australia could never have a US-style government shutdown.
Not senators, Members of Parliament. From the House of Representatives. It's equivalent to Majority Leader in the US House of Representatives, Chancellor in Germany, etc. As long as you can command majority support on matters of confidence, you can become Prime Minister. That's the most important thing the Liberal-National Coalition agreement did for them: the Nationals agreed to provide support for the Liberal leader as Prime Minister. It was similar to the Gillard Government, where Labor didn't have a majority on their own, so they reached an agreement with the Greens and the 4 or 5 independents that they would support Labor on matters of confidence, in exchange for whatever was in their agreement.
They're running out of feet to shoot themselves in.
If the Coalition is a big ship, does that mean the National party is the front that fell off?
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