Enter Canavan, hyper-nationalist, coal enthusiast and protector of jokes around the barbie
The story of the federal Coalition since last May’s election has been utterly grim; a period of dysfunction and self-destruction that will fascinate political scientists for years to come.
After a major defeat, the Liberal and National parties saddled themselves with leaders who were wrong for their jobs and for each other. Susan Ley was the first to go. He completely distanced himself from politics. And now David Littleproud is gone too, falling on his sword. New sheriffs came to town for the coalition. Both parties moved towards cleansing, appointing new leaders and new MPs. Angus Taylor and Jane Hume have barely established themselves as Liberal leaders and MPs, and now Matt Canavan and Darren Chester hold the respective positions in the National Party.
There is a double-barreled question facing the coalition: can it rebuild itself, or is it too late as One Nation advances and seemingly swallows up a large chunk of its supporter base? Bringing in new leadership teams is a start, at least in a technical sense. This is an acknowledgment that a problem exists. We have yet to see how much progress the new leadership players have made over their predecessors. Taylor and Hume did not start well. They were rightfully laughed off the stage with their opening gambit denouncing their pre-Bachelor rivals as “the worst government in the history of this nation.” It was their first calling card and they followed it up with strange tactics on Question Time focusing on ISIS brides; a niche topic in a time when inflation and interest rates are rising.
Things have improved since the US and Israel launched their latest attack on Iran. Taylor and foreign affairs spokesman Ted O’Brien (for those trying to keep score, O’Brien was Ley’s deputy) were measured by their reactions to the government’s response to the conflict that was rapidly spreading across the Middle East. They haven’t become belligerent or tried to politicize issues – at least not yet.
It’s a counterfactual, but to get a sense of how things went under Ley, with the help of the ever-excitable foreign affairs shadow Michaelia Cash (if that’s the right word), would she have opened fire in the same way? Ley’s overheated behavior in the weeks after the Bondi massacre, which ultimately damaged his political career and damaged the Coalition parties, shows this is not the case. The problem with the coalition in recent years is that it appears impulsive and not serious enough to be trusted with the task. The new leadership’s shift in this regard provides some encouragement to Coalition supporters, or what’s left of them, at least initially.
It remains to be seen what the move to Canavan will mean for the rebuilding of the Coalition. He is a people’s artist without intermediaries, an old-school politician in a sense who is never likely to turn down an opportunity to appear in the media. These days Canavan is known as a “real” politician who “speaks his mind”. This was evident in his first media conference as leader on Wednesday; here he despaired at the loss of Australia’s “relaxed and cheerful nature” and said “we are losing our country”. His is an ultranationalist position where we produce and grow the things we need while joking around the barbecue.
Like Littleproud, he is a Queenslander, but has a much higher profile as an advocate for the coal industry, particularly with his involvement in the widespread role of energy and renewables. Unlike Littleproud, he doesn’t have a sizzling personality. Fulfilling the role of a politician, especially a political leader, seems much easier from the outside. It was a harrowing listen to Littleproud’s boastful and defensive musings about his leadership performance as he announced his resignation on Tuesday afternoon.
From the beginning, Littleproud had a very broad view of the National Party’s role in policy-making and the national debate and had no reservations about acting unilaterally at the expense of the Coalition. He described himself as a servant of the National Party chamber and said he was proud to show “courage” and “character” in defending what the party chamber wanted him to represent. The sadness in all of this was that he felt he had to say it; Her colleagues at nationals weren’t exactly lining up to praise her the way she was praising herself.
This party room must be placed in its proper context. Only 18 of the country’s 226 federal parliamentarians identify as National Party MPs. That’s enough so they don’t need anything larger than a minivan to get them where they want to go. When it comes to politics, the current National Party chamber has shown that it knows how to punch above its weight. Last year Littleproud abandoned net zero at the urging of colleagues in the party room, of whom Canavan was his chief advocate. The Liberals, led by Ley, soon followed suit. It wasn’t a bad result for the National Party, which won 3.8 per cent of the national vote under its banner in the election a few months ago, a small share of the 7.3 per cent achieved by the combined Liberal and National formations in Queensland and the Northern Territory.
It’s hard to see how success in getting rid of net zero helps the Liberals win back the old voter base they need to form government in big cities. As for the citizens, Canavan speaks the basic language of One Nation with ease and nature, evoking the Australia of the past and also condemning Pauline Hanson for her divisive “identity politics on the Right”. He is a better communicator than Littleproud. It has to be so because the National Party is now struggling to survive outside the Australian metropolis against One Nation. Originally called the Country Party, the National Party was founded federally after the First World War as a community-oriented populist insurgency that curbed discontent with established parties in rural and regional Australia. Sound familiar?
Shaun Carney is a regular columnist, author and former associate editor. Age.
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Shaun Carney is a regular columnist, author and former deputy editor of The Age.
