Coalition Unity Call Crumbles as Policy Confusion, Internal Tensions Persist
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A high-profile push for Liberal Party unity dissolved into public discord Wednesday, as opposition figures failed to articulate clear policy positions and engaged in bitter exchanges with government ministers, exposing the coalition’s struggle to move beyond its catastrophic election defeat.
Just one day after Liberal Senator James Patterson urged the party to end its “public therapy session” and unite against Labor, coalition members displayed the exact self-absorption and confusion Patterson had warned against, leaving senior Nationals and Liberals scrambling to defend the opposition’s effectiveness.
The breakdown played out across multiple media appearances Wednesday, with Liberal Senator Jane Hume unable to commit to policy positions, opposition leader Susan Ley holding a Melbourne crime event without Victorian coalition MPs present, and heated clashes erupting over housing and spending that underscored deep divisions over both substance and strategy.
“They’re talking about themselves. They’re fighting amongst themselves. They’re tearing each other apart,” Assistant Defence Minister Peter Khalil said during an ABC interview. “The opposition has a responsibility to actually come out of its introspection and its infighting and be the alternative government. And they’re certainly not that at the moment.”
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Patterson’s Warning Goes Unheeded
Patterson delivered his unity plea Tuesday night during the Tom Hughes oration, warning that marginal voices calling for the Liberal Party to split could destroy the party and condemn it to extended opposition.
“And yet despite the economic and political success of Australian Liberalism, there are some marginal voices arguing that the Liberal Party should split,” Patterson said. “They argue that the differences between people who call themselves Conservatives and Liberals today are unbridgeable and we should go our separate ways. Our task is to make sure those voices remain marginal. Because if they succeeded, it would be a disaster for the Liberal Party and for Australia.”
The senator characterized recent public debates over the party’s direction as normal following its worst electoral result in 81 years, but warned the time for introspection must end.
“If we are still debating the future and the purpose of the Liberal Party and what we believe in at the end of the term rather than the start, then it will send a message to the Australian people that we’re focused on ourselves instead of being focused on them,” Patterson said.
Nationals Push to Move On
Senior coalition figures from the National Party echoed Patterson’s call to shift focus from internal debates to government accountability, though they struggled to demonstrate what that would look like in practice.
Nationals Senate Leader Bridget McKenzie said Patterson was right that the party needed to “draw a line under going through the entrails of a catastrophic election loss.”
“There will be a review handed down. Those recommendations need to be adopted and we need to avoid such a situation occurring again,” McKenzie said during a Sky News interview. “I think Australians take a dim view of politicians who are self-absorbed, focusing only on themselves.”
She urged the opposition to concentrate on what she called Labor’s failures across economic, social and environmental policy.
“I think we need to get on with our day job, focus on the government and highlighting the failures of Labor’s agenda to put us in the best position for the next election,” McKenzie said.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack defended the coalition’s resilience despite ongoing questions about its unity, pointing to successful opposition to the government’s proposed unrealized capital gains tax as evidence the coalition can function effectively.
“At the end of the day, people have been writing off the Liberal and National parties for as long as we’ve existed,” McCormack said. “The National Party goes back more than a century, the Liberal Party 81 years this month, and they’ve been writing us off. We’re still there.”
He characterized internal disagreements as a strength rather than weakness, contrasting the coalition’s “broad church” philosophy with what he described as Labor’s rigid discipline.
“We’re a broad church. We have different views. We have different views sometimes from the Liberal Party and the National Party,” McCormack said. “If you actually oppose and you’re a Labor member and you oppose the party structure and you oppose the unions and the doctrine that they put forward, you get expelled from the party. That’s the difference.”
Policy Vacuum Undermines Unity Message
But the coalition’s attempts to project unity collapsed when members failed to articulate clear positions on key policy questions, most notably the government’s revised superannuation tax changes.
During an ABC Afternoon Briefing interview, Hume praised Patterson’s speech and called for an end to what she termed the “worldwide apology tour,” but repeatedly declined to say whether the coalition would support superannuation tax changes that addressed the opposition’s main objections.
“It’s so dull, it’s so boring when Liberals talk about themselves,” Hume said. “It is about time that we stopped this worldwide apology tour and started getting together that legislative agenda, that alternative policy agenda that we can take to the next election.”
Yet when pressed multiple times on whether the coalition would support the revised superannuation policy, which now includes indexation and only taxes realized gains, Hume deflected.
“We’ll wait to see exactly what the legislation says, because there’s always a sting in the tail with Labor,” Hume said. “We have to take this to our shadow cabinet and we haven’t seen the legislation yet. They only back flipped on Monday, Mel. Show us the legislation. We’ll take a look at it and then we’ll tell you.”
Khalil criticized Hume for clearly understanding the policy details but refusing to provide a position.
“It’s instructive. Senator Hume knows a fair bit of the detail, but will not answer your question,” Khalil said.
Ley Backs Patterson, Offers No Timeline
Ley welcomed Patterson’s speech Wednesday morning, revealing the senator sent it to her before delivery, but provided no specifics on when the coalition would release detailed policies on contentious issues including climate, taxation and spending.
“He actually sent it to me before he delivered it. Julian was there as custodian of the oration, the Tom Hughes oration, and it’s an excellent speech,” Ley said. “What it does is remind all Australians of our liberal values, where we back aspiration, where we back hardworking Australians that want to get ahead and play by the rules.”
Asked repeatedly about policy development timelines, Ley said: “Watch closely in the next few weeks and there’ll be more policy announcements.”
She confirmed the party has established five separate policy committees and shadow ministers are reviewing existing positions while developing new proposals, but declined to provide firm dates for announcements on major policy areas.
“What I said when I became leader was I wanted to enfranchise every single member of my party room who has a valuable contribution to make in the development of our policies going forward,” Ley said. “And that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
Geographic Tensions Surface
The unity message suffered another blow when no Victorian coalition MPs attended Ley’s Wednesday morning press conference in Melbourne about Victorian crime, despite the state-specific focus.
Ley was flanked instead by Shadow Education Minister Julian Leeser from New South Wales and Shadow Attorney-General Andrew Wallace from Queensland, both discussing issues facing Melbourne residents.
Khalil highlighted the absence during his afternoon interview.
“It is instructive, Mel, that none of the Victorian federal senators or MPs were actually there for whatever press conference they had,” Khalil said. “Instead, they were making speeches about the existential issues with the Liberal Party.”
Hume defended the event’s focus on Victorian crime while explaining she was “very happy being a conscientious and diligent senator for Victoria, making sure that I’m fighting for the issues that are important to ordinary Victorians every single day.”
Broad Church or Breaking Point
McCormack’s defense of the coalition’s “broad church” philosophy came with an acknowledgment that unity remains elusive.
Asked whether the coalition can navigate this period without further splits between the Liberals and Nationals or within the Liberal Party itself, McCormack expressed cautious optimism while noting the election occurred just five or six months ago.
“Let’s hope so. But you’ve got to remember too that the election was only five or six months ago,” he said. “So we’re still in the early part of another term of Labor.”
McKenzie outlined competing visions of the party’s ideological heritage in her response to Patterson’s speech, noting multiple coalition figures have articulated different interpretations of Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies’ legacy.
“James has outlined, like Hastie, like Jacinta, like even Susan Ley has outlined who he believes Menzies was and what Menzies believed and what the great liberal tradition is, and that’s his right,” McKenzie said.
Hume emphasized the party’s 1940s origins bringing together 11 different non-Labor political groups as a model for current unity efforts.
“Those 11 political groups sorted out their differences, worked out the values that bound them together and the objectives they had presenting a solid opposition, an alternative government to a Labor government,” Hume said. “And that’s exactly what we’re facing today and exactly what we should be doing.”
She argued the party should focus on winning the 33 seats needed to form government rather than debating ideological direction.
“We should be talking about the 33 seats that we need to attract, we need to win, that we need to build our policy platform for to win the next election,” Hume said. “Not talking about veering one way, left, right, somewhere in the middle. Doesn’t matter. We need to concentrate on those 33 seats and no-one else right now.”
Government Seizes Opening
Labor ministers used the coalition’s visible disarray to attack the opposition’s credibility as an alternative government.
Khalil characterized the opposition as consumed by internal battles rather than policy development.
“We are a responsible government. We’re getting on with doing the work necessary to represent the people of Australia and put forward good policies for the people of Australia,” Khalil said. “And the opposition has a responsibility to actually come out of its introspection and its infighting and be the alternative government. And they’re certainly not that at the moment.”
He said the coalition was “tearing each other apart” in a way that undermines democratic accountability.
“As Senator Hume has said, they are in the midst of actually tearing each other apart. And it’s not good for democracy overall,” Khalil said. “We want a responsible government, which we are. We want to have an opposition that does its job as well.”
Path Forward Unclear
The coalition’s challenge extends beyond rhetorical calls for unity to demonstrating actual coordination on policy, messaging and parliamentary strategy.
Patterson’s speech and the responses from Ley, McKenzie, McCormack and Hume all emphasized the need to move past election introspection, yet Wednesday’s events showed the party remains mired in exactly the self-focused debates Patterson warned against.
The superannuation tax debate represents a test case. The coalition successfully pressured the government to abandon taxing unrealized gains and include indexation, yet remains unable or unwilling to clearly state whether these changes address their concerns.
The absence of Victorian MPs from Ley’s Melbourne event, while Patterson delivered his unity speech in Sydney, highlighted ongoing coordination challenges even on basic political activities.
With another term of Labor government stretching ahead, the coalition faces sustained scrutiny over whether it can translate calls for unity into cohesive policy positions and effective government accountability.
The next few weeks will test whether the party’s five policy committees can produce the detailed alternative agenda both Patterson and Hume called for, or whether internal divisions over ideology, strategy and leadership will continue to dominate.
For now, the gap between the coalition’s unity rhetoric and its actual performance remains vast, providing Labor with political opportunities to question the opposition’s readiness to govern.
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