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Australia’s Liberal-National Coalition, the country’s main opposition, has split after a row over hate speech laws, casting the future of Liberal leader Sussan Ley into doubt.
The centre-right Coalition, which has been on rocky ground since a resounding election loss last year, had been divided over how to respond to reforms moved by the government after a terror attack targeting a Jewish festival at Bondi Beach killed 15 people last month.
The Nationals ultimately refused to follow the shadow cabinet decision, a breach of longstanding Coalition rules.
“Our party room has made it clear that we cannot be part of a shadow ministry under Sussan Ley,” leader David Littleproud told reporters.
Announcing the split on Thursday – a national day of mourning for those killed in the shooting on 14 December – Littleproud said the Coalition “was made untenable”.
He did not rule out a return to the Coalition, refusing to “speculate”, but said it was “probably a good thing” if Australia’s two main conservative parties spent “some time apart”.
It is the second time in less than a year that the Nationals have pulled out of the Coalition, with a brief split – largely over climate and energy policy – in May last year resolved within a week.
Ley, whose leadership is under pressure, is yet to comment on the split. She released a statement on Thursday to mark the national day of mourning, saying “my responsibility as leader of the opposition and leader of the Liberal party is to Australians in mourning”.
Though both parties in the Coalition voted against legislation tightening gun controls, the Liberals had sided with the Labor government on Tuesday to pass hate speech reforms introduced after the Bondi Beach attack.
But their Nationals colleagues abstained from the vote in the lower house and voted against the measure in the senate, despite a shadow cabinet agreement, citing concerns that the legislation had been rushed and posed a threat to free speech.
The laws includes provisions that will ban groups deemed to spread hate and introduce tougher penalties for preachers who advocate violence.
On Wednesday three Nationals frontbenchers offered their resignations, which Ley accepted despite a warning from Littleproud that if she accepted them the rest of the Nationals front bench would follow. The rest of the shadow cabinet duly resigned.
“This process was wasn’t all Sussan Ley’s fault,” Littleproud said. “Prime Minister Anthony Albanese put her in this process. But it has been mismanaged by Sussan Ley.”
Ley had already been struggling to assert her authority over the Coalition after being elected the Liberal party’s first female leader after last year’s bruising election defeat.
Some political analysts and observers had predicted she would be ousted by the end of last year and Thursday’s events have reignited those conversations.
The Coalition, in its current form, dates back to the 1940s, and before the brief break-up last year, had not parted way since 1987.
The Nationals mainly represent regional communities and often lean more conservative than the Liberals.
On local radio, senior Nationals member Bridget McKenzie – who was one of the senators who went rogue – was asked: “Why on earth are you playing leadership games today?”
“I think the timing’s appalling,” McKenzie told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), but said the question was unfair.
Former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, himself no stranger to scuffles with the Nationals, told the ABC both Coalition party leaders had “mismanaged” the disagreement and now faced an un-electability crisis.
“It looks like just a smouldering wreckage, doesn’t it?” he said of the Coalition.
Another former Liberal leader and one of the nation’s longest serving prime ministers, John Howard, told The Australian Ley had had “no choice” after the Nationals senators’ revolt and had “behaved absolutely correctly”.
