If there was ever any question about the dire state of conservative politics in Australia after the Coalition’s comprehensive election rout, the self-indulgent posturing of the past week leaves no doubt.

The Coalition has just recorded the worst result in its 80-year history, with 43 seats out of 150 in the House of Representatives to Labor’s 94 – and counting. Within the now splintering Coalition, the National party has 15 seats and, with just five Senators, does not even reach “major party” status in the Senate. The Liberal party was the election’s biggest loser in the Labor landslide to now have 28 seats.

It is a staggering loss and one that augurs the end of the Liberal party as a political force unless the need for wholesale changes at every level — organisational, membership, pre-selection and, above all, policies — is acknowledged and acted on. To her credit, the new Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, in her first major statement recognised this, declaring that a defeat of such scale demanded a root and branch review of every aspect of the party’s election campaign. This was an essential recognition of the need for renewal and rebuilding that faces every party in opposition, to make it “relevant and electable” again.

Ley’s election was itself historic. Not only is she the first woman to lead the Liberal party, most telling in this tawdry internecine power play, is that she is also therefore the first female leader of the Coalition. And therein lies a tale, one that ought to be central to any understanding of the National Party’s petulant refusal to accept Ley’s authority over her own party, let alone over the Coalition.

Ley had been leader for barely a week when, in a moment of post-election denial and delusion, the leader of the National Party, David Littleproud, demanded that she pre-empt the slated election review and lock in place the very policies that had driven the Liberal’s disastrous electoral showing. Littleproud handed Ley an ultimatum – that she pre-emptively accept four key policy positions before the planned review had even begun. If not, he would pull the Nationals out of the Coalition and, not to put too fine a point on it, wreck the joint. Those demands were: a recommitment to Peter Dutton’s failed nuclear energy policy, a $20 billion regional infrastructure fund, communication services guarantees in........

© Pearls and Irritations