Mark Riley: A functional opposition is a key part of a healthy democracy, and right now there isn’t one

There are few absolute truths in politics, as in life itself. But here’s one: If you act like a bunch of self-obsessed, unelectable numbskulls, the voters will believe you. The Nationals and, to a lesser extent, the Liberals are being slapped in the face by that reality right now. They are feeling the sting almost every day as poll after poll exposes their self-inflicted wounds in gory detail. It is bad for them. Very bad. But it is also bad for our democracy. Why? Because the health of our political system relies on the government being held to account by a functional and effective opposition. At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, there isn’t one at present. The Albanese Government should be on the ropes this week. There is something happening in politics that actually affects people. Interest rates are going up. And they are going up just after the Government effectively told us it had the inflation problem licked. But the Liberal and National parties’ attacks are being deflected with casual ease. The Government is simply holding up a mirror to the discordant rabble the former Coalition has become. The Liberals are scattered illiberally across the front bench, with the Nationals like Brown’s cows behind them as members of a crossbench that has rarely been so cross. “We’ve got the cross, the really cross and the apoplectic!” the Leader of the House, Tony Burke, guffawed this week. Even some Nationals giggled at that. But while the personality clashes between the two parties and within them is capturing most of the attention, too little is being paid to the cause of the latest Coalition convulsions. Three National senators claim they were sacked unfairly from the frontbench for bravely defending the noble cause of free speech. But what did Senators Bridget McKenzie, Susan McDonald and Ross Cadell actually do? They resigned from shadow cabinet after crossing the floor to vote against tougher hate speech laws. Those laws, according to the explanatory memorandum, will “further criminalise hateful conduct” to address “the rising levels of anti-Semitic and other hate speech, violence and extremism” and strengthen protections “banning nazi salutes and hate symbols” such as the ISIS flag. How could any parliamentarian vote against that? The Nationals renegades say they did because the Bill could have unintended consequences on people who express legitimate gripes, but who aren’t neo-nazis, anti-Semites or Islamic extremists. And who are these people? Labor suspects it is those Treasurer Jim Chalmers describes as “the cookers and the crackpots” on the far-right. The Nationals are apparently unconcerned by the implications of putting their broader reputation on the line to support these political fringe dwellers. But they shouldn’t be. In the past 24 hours, they have had both Clive Palmer and Pauline Hanson offer to help bail them out in different forms. Palmer is talking about joining them with his fat wallet and helping them survive independently of the Liberals, whom he describes in an undiluted fashion as “a bunch of wankers”. Hanson is talking more broadly about bringing her fat polling numbers to form a kind-of-but-not-really Coalition between One Nation, the Nationals and the Liberals to fight the common enemy — Labor. Hanson says she would use her House of Representatives numbers after the next election to support the former Coalition partners form government by guaranteeing them supply and confidence. That assumes some rather large things happening. Hanson would first need to win House seats. She only has Barnaby Joyce’s at the moment, which he has rustled from the Nationals. And he is planning to vacate that at the election to join the Senate. It would also require the Liberals and Nationals to win something north of 20 seats from Labor to be in any position to negotiate support for a minority government. Liberal Leader Sussan Ley has given the Nationals until Monday to rejoin the Coalition or she will appoint Liberals to the Nationals’ frontbench vacancies, effectively setting the split in stone. Nationals Leader David Littleproud says his party will only consider doing that if Ley agrees to reinstate the three renegades to the frontbench immediately. Ley says she won’t. Unless either one of them buckles over the next few days, the conservative political landscape in Australia will be changed forever. And that is an absolute truth. Mark Riley is the Seven Network’s political editor