The Liberals and Nationals announced a deal to reunite on Sunday afternoon, 17 days after Nationals leader David Littleproud declared their alliance was “untenable”.
Liberal Party leader Sussan Ley held a press conference with Littleproud to announce the reunification, with Ley saying the Coalition is “looking to the future, not the past”.
The Coalition split after three Nationals senators voted against the government’s hate speech bills and were fired from the shadow frontbench.
Under the reunification, Ley has agreed that these former Nationals frontbenchers will be suspended from the shadow ministry until 1 March when they can resume their former portfolios.
The deal is a concession from Ley, who had initially wanted them to be suspended for six months.
All of this comes as the latest Newspoll shows the Coalition’s primary plummeting to a meager 18 per cent. This compares to 27 per cent for One Nation and 33 per cent for Labor. According to the poll, Ley is also the most unpopular major party leader in 23 years.
The reunification of the Coalition has highlighted the schism within the Liberal Party, which is still grappling with an identity crisis in the wake of its crushing election defeat last year.
One senior Liberal frontbecher told the Australian Financial Review it was “50:50” on whether a leadership challenge would go ahead this week. Angus Taylor, whose supporters urged Ley to reunify the Coalition, is the key contender for the leadership. He is from the right-wing of the party.
A leadership spill may come as soon as this week.
‘We are a rabble’: Jane Hume
On Monday morning, Liberal senator Jane Hume offered some scathing commentary about the state of the Liberal Party, and the Coalition more broadly.
“I do believe that it’s time for the leaders to take a good, hard look at themselves and decide what it is that they’re going to do to get us out of this hole,” she told Sky News.
“It’s more than just coming together, shaking hands and saying ‘we’ve kissed and made up’.”
Hume did not specifically call for leadership change but said Australians have stopped listening to the Coalition’s internal drama.
“Who is it that we’re fighting for? What are our policies? Because people have stopped listening to us because we are a rabble,” she said.
Hume went further, also suggesting the Liberal Party could be obliterated in the House of Representatives at the next election unless there was a shift.
“Unless something changes, we will be wiped out. I’ve been looking at the numbers. Just running a ruler over the pendulum and I don’t think that at this point there will be a single member of the House of Representatives from Victoria. There won’t be a single member of the House of Representatives from New South Wales,” she said.
“Something has to give.”
On Sunday, Ley brushed off the prospect of leadership challenge, saying: “I am very confident of the overwhelming support of my party room.”
“They elected me nine months ago to lead. I said then I was up for the job,” she said.
But with the Coalition in such disarray and Ley’s leadership so precarious, it’s worth considering if they are capable of holding the government to account over policy, an essential part of a functioning democracy.
Without any legitimate policies of its own, the Coalition does not have a leg to stand on.