Liberal sources say National party gave Ley less than an hour’s warning of their decision
After an embarrassing defeat in the latest election, The Nationals David Littleproud, announced earlier today they will not be entering into the coalition agreement with the Liberal Party for the first time since 1987.
for context to non aussies, the coalition is our "second major party" (of two).
The Liberal Party is our conservative major party (yes we know), whom since 1980 has formed a joint coalition with The Nationals. Liberals ussually perform in urban areas and the Nats in regional.
Since a crushing defeat in the recent election to Labor (our centre left major party), many fingers have been pointed at previous Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton for destroying Coalition chances due to playing a Trump-like campaign and focussing on "culture-war" talking points rather than real world issues.
A little more detail on how big this is. Since 1980, the Liberals and Nationals have been so tied together that we very often call them "the Coalition". Our news media reports on election results by saying how many seats the combined Coalition has won. In the state of Queensland, the two parties are fully merged into the Liberal National Party, or LNP, and the term LNP is sometimes unofficially used to refer to the Coalition elsewhere. In federal politics, LNP members choose whether they sit in the Liberal party room or the National party room. Peter Dutton was a Liberal-aligned Queensland LNP member.
For Germans, you can kinda think of this as equivalent to CDU/CSU splitting, with the main difference being that instead of different states, the Nationals represent rural areas and the Liberals represent urban and suburban areas. But it's fuzzy and they do sometimes softly compete against each other.
Also quick note: they're called the Liberals because they ostensibly stand for individual liberty. Personal freedoms etc. But they've evolved into crony capitalism and conservative culture wars.
They're called the Liberals, because that's what liberalism is. Americans might better know this as classic liberalism, but the rest of the world knows it as liberalism.
Centre-to-right major party. Labor haven't been left since the 70s with their embrace of neoliberal policies. The unions and workers have basically no influence on the party over the big business side now.
The Nationals can now go back to their roots as a farmers’ party. Though they seem more interested in railing against solar/wind power and promoting coal (“nuclear power, to be ready in a generation’s time”). Maybe they’re angling for Clive Palmer to buy them out?
I doubt much will change. Much the same as the Greens funnel into Lab, Nat votes and support will still go to Lib.
There's very little to reach across the aisle with in terms of policy or party support. Unless Lab look at dropping Greens and trying to pick up Nats, which well they're politically not that unaligned.