For the sake of the kids, for your own sakes, draw up the divorce papers.

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Do it now. There's no future in this relationship. Everyone sees that except you, who cling to the vain hope that things will improve. That this is just a rough patch. That the good old days will return.

They won't.

It's not about whether the Liberals will drop their commitment to net zero. Or whether Sussan Ley can hold on to her leadership after a string of self-inflicted injuries. Or whether the tail is wagging the dog.

It's about whether reasonable people see a future partnered with neanderthals. Not just in the Nationals but in their own ranks as well.

Bit harsh, you say?

Then perhaps you didn't see Barnaby, beet red and blustery, fronting the cameras to claim credit for the chaos, frothing himself for setting the agenda from the far back paddock. This was the bloke who signed up to net zero in the first place in an opaque deal with Scott Morrison, triumphant about making the Coalition more unelectable than it already was.

Or you missed slippery Ted O'Brien withdrawing his support for the Paris Agreement and net zero. Hardly helped his leader who was backed in with support from moderates who want the party to stick to its climate commitments.

Or maybe you missed the gang of Coalition silverbacks - Barnaby among them - trying to link reforms to paid parental leave, that would give grieving parents time off after a stillbirth, to late-term abortion. That stunt appalled a lot of people, none more so than the women in the Coalition. Labor didn't have to voice outrage. The Liberal women did it instead.

All the talk about keeping the Coalition together papers over the fact that it's not only the relationship between the Nationals and Liberals that's dysfunctional. The relationship between the loony right and the moderates within the Liberal Party is also on the........

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