Nationals MPs have put their money where their mouth is as they abandon a coalition arrangement.
Half a dozen members have taken a haircut worth tens of thousands of dollars to their pay packet after walking away from leadership positions.
Party leader David Littleproud has pulled the Nationals out of a partnership with the Liberals after they failed to agree on the retention of policies following an election defeat.
With the Liberals now holding all the cards in opposition, the shadow cabinet – made up of just over 20 of the opposition’s top generals with portfolios shadowing government ministers – will not contain any Nationals.
The two parties carve up spots in government and opposition on a proportional basis dependent on seats won.
Seven Nationals will step back from shadow cabinet, including Mr Littleproud, meaning they lose their 20 to 25 per cent loading on their base salary rates of about $230,000.
Five are actively taking pay cuts, while two others will forego a promotion.
There was an expectation the two parties would get back together, political expert Henry Maher said.
The time apart would give the Liberals the opportunity to develop policies without pressure from the Nationals as they fight to win back inner-city seats lost to teal independents and Labor.
But they were ultimately stronger together, Dr Maher said.
“The closer we get to the election, the more pressure there will be to rejoin,” he told AAP.
Former Queensland Legislative Assembly speaker John Mickel went further, calling for a formal amalgamation at a federal level to solve the parties’ problems.
It could model the Liberal-National Party merger in Queensland in 2008, he said, adding it would stop competition between the two in some federal seats such as Bullwinkel in Western Australia, where they ran against each other.
Former WA Liberal premier Colin Barnett has also made the case for a federal amalgamation.
The first coalition split in nearly 40 years comes after Mr Littleproud and Liberal leader Sussan Ley failed to reach an agreement on four key policies.
The Nationals remain committed to nuclear energy, divestiture powers to pressure big supermarkets against anti-competitive behaviour and a regional investment fund which the coalition took to the last election.
Ms Ley hasn’t ruled any policy in or out as her party rebuilds after an electoral drubbing cost them at least a dozen seats.
The coalition’s nuclear energy policy, where seven plants would be built at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, was a bandaid solution to get the Nationals to sign up to an emissions reduction target, Dr Maher said.
A compromise could be an agreement to end the moratorium on nuclear power without committing to funding power plants, he said.
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