TRANSCRIPT
It's a partnership that has lasted the better part of eighty years - but it's now no more.
The Coalition, made up of the Liberal and National Parties, has collapsed- a victim of its own crushing electoral defeat on May the 3rd.
It was the National Party who quit the deal, as their leader, David Littleproud, explains.
"Our party room has got to a position we will not be re-entering a Coalition agreement with the Liberal Party after this election. What we have got to a position is that the National Party will sit alone on a principle basis."
It's not the first time a coalition agreement hasn't been reached- they briefly split in 1972, and again before the federal election of 1987.
And Deputy Nationals Leader Kevin Hogan has left the door open for them to come back together again.
"Sometimes, if you have a relationship breakup, when you get back, and I hope we do get back together. And my intention is we do get back together, it will be greater clarity and greater focus from the time that was spent apart."
So how did they get into this situation in the first place?
To start off, you need to understand a bit about the parties.
The National Party of Australia- originally the Country Party- has been around for a lot longer than the Liberal Party - more than 100 years.
And it has a simple mandate - represent rural, remote, and regional Australia, as Dr Jill Sheppard from the Australian National University explains.
"They have a clear sense of their purpose, and generally, they are a pretty cohesive group who have a shared set of principles and a really strong identity around representing Australian agricultural interests."
The Liberal Party on the other hand is a relative newcomer to the game - established in 1944 by Sir Robert Menzies.
Dr Sheppard explains that his assessment at the time was that no one spoke for middle Australia, so that's who the Liberal Party would represent.
"So the Liberal Party really just formed in response to the Labor Party. Leaders have always found it really difficult to keep a cohesive sense of why are we here? You know, what are we doing? Except for opposing Labor."
When the Liberal Party came around, the Nationals were no strangers to coalitions.
The first coalition was with the now extinct Nationalist Party in 1922.
In 1946, the Liberals and Nationals signed the first coalition agreement, and in 1949 they formed government together for the first time, with Robert Menzies as Prime Minister.
That was the longest serving government in history - lasting 23 years.
But despite working together for a long time, Dr Sheppard says they are ideologically different parties, often with opposing views on issues.
"Deep down, they really don't like each other."
But because the Nationals have never had the numbers to govern in their own right, and the Liberals have only been able to score an outright majority twice, the two have consistently worked together.
Coalition agreements are secret, so we don't know for sure what was in the last one.
The Liberal Party claims that they're just about logistics, like who gets to be the official spokesperson on various portfolios.
But the Nationals say they can include promises on policies.
This time around, Mr Littleproud says the policy sticking points have been around energy, regional funding, and supermarkets.
"Those positions that we couldn't get comfort around nuclear being a part of an energy grid into the future. About the Regional Australia Future Fund - a $20 billion fund paying a $1 billion dividend every year to change the lives of regional Australians. To training doctors, filling in potholes, to giving young families the hope of childcare. What we fight for every day, that's the principled position that we took that we needed to have comfort around. It's around divestiture powers for supermarkets. We've been very principled about that, about the impact it's had on farmers but the impact that it had on the Australian consumer."
Another issue, according to Ms Ley, was around how they would vote on the floor of parliament.
"The Liberal Party also insisted that Shadow Cabinet solidarity be maintained in any coalition agreement, and that was unable to be resolved."
Basically, under coalition agreements, the Nationals and Liberals share positions in what is known as the shadow cabinet.
When you have a position in that shadow cabinet, you generally have to vote with the position of the coalition.
The Nationals wanted to have those cabinet positions, but be able to vote against the positions of the Liberals.
The dissolution of the coalition means the Liberal Party is the official opposition.
By not holding any so-called shadow ministries, the Nationals sacrifice entitlements, including additional staff, and a 25 per cent pay bonus.
Exactly how many staff the Nationals will be allocated is up to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Ms Ley says she wanted a shadow cabinet in place as soon as possible.
"Our perspective is not about the individual policies themselves, but the approach that we said we would take to our party room about policies. I asked the Nationals to respect those party room processes, and similarly, I would respect their attachment to the policies that they announced as very important to them. In good faith, I proposed that we stand up a joint shadow ministry and that we go forward in a united way and that we then work separately on policies. And the Nationals did not agree to that approach."
Both party leaders say the door remains open for negotiations, and want the two parties to come back together in the future.
In the mean time, the divorce allows both parties the space for introspection, recovering from one of their worst election results in decades.
