SYDNEY: Australia’s right-leaning coalition opposition broke apart Thursday in a bitter policy bust-up, casting doubt over their prospects for a return to government.
The centre-right Liberal Party and the rural-focused Nationals have jointly governed Australia under various guises for most of the past century.
They suffered a crushing election defeat in May 2025, which led to a brief split.
Now, the partners have clashed again, this time over new hate crime laws passed this week in response to the mass shooting at a Jewish festival on Bondi Beach on Dec 14.
Liberal Party leader Sussan Ley forced three Nationals senators to resign from senior coalition roles after they voted against the laws.
The senators said they did so because of concerns about the scope of the legislation.
But Ley said their opposition flouted an earlier coalition agreement to support the legislation.
The row escalated into a full-blown walk-out by the Nationals from all posts in the coalition’s “shadow cabinet” of senior lawmakers.
“We’re at a juncture where no one in our ministry could work in a Sussan Ley ministry,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told a news conference.
“The coalition was made untenable.”
In the lead-up to their latest split, the conservative marriage was already under pressure.
The latest Newspoll survey put the far-right One Nation party’s primary vote at 22%, for the first time ahead of the coalition at 21%.
The next general election must be held by May 2028 after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s centre-left Labor Party won power by a wide margin last year.
If the coalition parties are unwilling to reunite, the spat could have a “huge impact” on Australian politics, said Monash University head of politics Zareh Ghazarian.
“Any dissolution of the coalition essentially would make the right of centre look brittle and fragile and disunited,” he told AFP.
When the coalition partners have been divided over personnel and policy in the past, he said, “voters have abandoned them”.
