Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has been blamed for the shock Coalition split, as the Nationals ended its 80-year agreement with the Liberals.
Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell broke the new on Tuesday afternoon that a source inside the Nationals said there “will be no Coalition agreement”.
The party’s leader David Littleproud later held a press conference saying the party needs to “rediscover who they are” as they sit alone in the new parliament.
The Nationals leader added another factor in the decision to leave the Coalition was the Liberals’ landslide defeat to Labor in the federal election weeks earlier.
But the main trigger was Ms Ley not being able to guarantee four key policies – including divestiture powers to break up supermarket, nuclear power, creating a $20 billion regional future fund and minimum standards for communications services in the regions – which the Nationals wanted to remain in the Coalition agreement.
Asked directly by Sky News chief anchor Kieran Gilbert if Ms Ley had “cut you loose”, Nationals deputy leader Kevin Hogan said the Liberal leader’s failure to agree to adopt the four existing Coalition policies had forced the decision.
“She could not agree to four things that are really important to us who represent regional communities,” Mr Hogan said.
Mr Hogan echoed the remarks of his colleague saying Ms Ley was “putting a position to us that those things no longer stood”.
“So, the position to us is we can now no longer stand by the policies that were previously agreed… those four policies were important to our room,” he said.
“We don’t want to have to go back for our people and re-prosecute those four policies again. That means we’d start from zero and we’d have to get that through a whole process that would not be easy and we would not guarantee that.”
He also claimed Ms Ley had imposed a rapid timeline to agree on a deal.
“The timeline was initially put on us by the Liberals. The timeline was ‘we want you to sign up to the Coalition agreement by the weekend’,” Mr Hogan said.
Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie also accused Ms Ley of making “decisions on behalf” of the Liberals.
“We didn’t take this decision lightly. This is a historic decision,” Ms McKenzie told Sky News.
“But our room and we as a leadership group felt that particularly those policy principles we… were fighting an election on, were unable to be honoured by the leader of the Liberal Party. And so for us, that was the instigation for us to leave the Coalition.”
Earlier at the Nationals partyroom press conference, Ms McKenzie said her party had made a “reasonable request” to a “trusted partner” which was refused.
She said the policy requests were issues the two parties fought on only a month earlier in the election.
The Nationals’ decision to split came just hours before the Liberal Party met.
Gilbert questioned Senator McKenzie whether her party had “rushed” the decision given Ms Ley had been in the role for a week and her mother died on Saturday.
“Are you trying to distance yourself from the Liberal brand?” he asked.
Senator McKenzie insisted they had taken into account Ms Ley’s personal circumstances and made sure there was “no urgency”, but there was no use of further discussions between the two parties “when you can’t get past the first gate”.
Asked if Senator Jacinta Price’s defection to the Liberals also weighed into their decision, Ms McKenzie said it was not about “soured views”.
Senator McKenzie again pointed to her party’s four policies on which it did not want to budge and that no guarantee from Ms Ley left the Nationals with little choice.
It has since emerged the Liberals were likely to agree to the Nationals’ demands.
But Mr Littleproud was not confident and gave the Opposition Leader a 30-minute warning before deciding to break away from the Coalition, The Australian reported.
Liberal and National sources say Mr Littleproud’s decision was related to concerns he could not keep his party together due to the net zero emissions policy by 2050.
Deputy Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs Daniel Wild said the split gives “an opportunity for debate about the values of Australia’s main centre-right parties”.
“However, the split will only be worthwhile if it leads to a considered rebuilding of both parties, based on values which are in the interests of mainstream Australians. It will fail if it descends into base political horse-trading,” he said in a statement.
“The intellectual cupboard has been bare on the centre-right for some time, as sheeted home by the 2025 election result. Now is the time to rebuild the centre-right’s intellectual horsepower.
“More voices and more alternatives in the political system is a positive thing. This split may strengthen both the National and Liberal parties and in doing so Australia.”
