The Coalition has split – again. How did we get here?

The federal Coalition has split for the second time in less than a year after National Party leader David Littleproud announced on Thursday morning that the junior Coalition partner would split from the Liberals.

The split occurred after the parliament was recalled early to debate the government’s gun and hate speech legislation in response to the Bondi massacre.

As it stands, the Liberal Party will be the official party of opposition in federal parliament, with just 28 seats to the government’s 94. The Nationals will sit on the crossbench.

But how did we get here?

Why has the Coalition split?

Ructions in the Coalition have been prevalent since the May election. Ley and Littleproud have had a strained relationship for years, and the parties never fully recovered after the Nationals leader blew up the Coalition partnership in May, just weeks after the election. That split, the first in 38 years, lasted eight days. The parties could sit apart for much longer this time.

The latest split was sparked by the government’s gun and hate laws, rushed through parliament on Tuesday in response to the Bondi massacre.

On the weekend, the opposition had demanded the government drop its controversial racial vilification offence from the laws, which would have lowered the threshold for what constituted hate speech. With that concession, and pending a few more minor amendments to the bill, the Coalition joint party room agreed on Sunday to pass the laws.

Over the next two days, Coalition shadow ministers secured those concessions from Labor, executing the will of the shadow cabinet.

But on Monday and Tuesday, the Nationals party room held a flurry of meetings to discuss the bill, as right-wing backbencher Matt Canavan – a leadership threat to Littleproud – raised issues with the bill, including that the “hate groups” definition would potentially capture mainstream political and religious groups, a view shared by the Greens.

Nationals MPs abstained from the first vote in the House of Representatives on Tuesday afternoon, hoping to add amendments to the bill in the Senate. Those amendments failed, and National senators voted against the bill in a session that ran late into the night.

Nationals frontbenchers Bridget McKenzie, Susan McDonald, and Ross Cadell broke shadow cabinet solidarity by doing so. The convention is that those who hold portfolio positions are required to vote in line with leadership positions.

The three senators sent resignation letters to Ley on Wednesday morning, and Littleproud gave Ley an ultimatum at the same time.

“If these resignations are accepted, the entire National Party ministry will resign to take collective responsibility,” Littleproud wrote in a hand-signed letter.

Why did Sussan Ley accept their resignations?

Ley met with her Liberal leadership team before accepting the resignations on Wednesday afternoon, maintaining the convention of shadow cabinet solidarity. On Wednesday night, Littleproud and 10 Nationals frontbenchers followed through on the threat to quit the frontbench.

Ley tried to convince Littleproud to stay, saying the extra resignations were unnecessary. On Thursday morning, Littleproud called a press conference to announce that the Coalition partnership was finished.

Ley had asked Littleproud not to make a statement on Thursday, due to the national day of mourning for the Bondi attack. Ley issued a statement on Thursday morning while Littleproud was speaking to the media in Brisbane. She did not address the Coalition split.

“Today the focus must be on Jewish Australians, indeed all Australians, as we mourn the victims of the Bondi terrorist attack,” She said. “This is a national day of mourning and my responsibility as leader of the opposition and leader of the Liberal Party is to Australians in mourning.”

Why are the Nationals opposed to Labor’s hate speech bill?

Littleproud argued the final bill with all the amendments should have returned to another shadow cabinet meeting or joint party room meeting, neither of which occurred.

“I’ve never been in a cabinet or shadow cabinet where a final decision has been made on a bill that hasn’t even been drafted yet, hasn’t even been presented yet, and that didn’t go through a joint party room. I mean, with all due respect, I get the circumstances that were presented, but process was important,” Littleproud said on Thursday.

Liberals believed there was no need for another joint meeting, and also no time given how many Nationals meetings were occurring and how rushed Labor’s legislative process was.

Ley said immediately after the resignations that she wanted to keep the Coalition together because it was the most effective political alliance for good governance.

Is Sussan Ley’s leadership safe and what happens now?

When the Coalition split in May, it was just a week into Ley’s leadership after she took the helm following the election wipeout and centred on four points of policy. On Thursday, Littleproud was more explicit that the rift was about the Coalition leadership when he said the Nationals “cannot be part of a shadow ministry under Sussan Ley”.

In May, the Nationals leader’s four policy demands of Ley included a commitment to lift Australia’s ban on nuclear energy. But a point of contention outside those policy points was the Nationals not immediately agreeing to maintain shadow cabinet solidarity.

Late last year, the Nationals also pushed the Liberals to dump the Coalition commitment to net zero emissions by 2050, a position the opposition leader confirmed in November.

But the chances of the Coalition reuniting under a Ley-Littleproud leadership ticket appear vanishingly small this time.

Conservative Liberals, including Andrew Hastie and Angus Taylor, have been stalking Ley’s leadership since she won the position in a contest with Taylor after the party’s wipeout at the May election.

As for the makeup of parliament, the Liberals have 28 lower house seats and the Nationals 15, meaning the Liberals will be the official party of opposition.

What is the history of the Liberal-National Coalition?

The Liberal-National Coalition has existed since the 1940s, but coalitions on the conservative side of politics have existed in several guises in Australia since 1922.

It is not the first time the two parties have split. It happened at least twice in 1972 and the last time in 1987, prompted by the late Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s ill-judged tilt at becoming prime minister.

Traditionally, the Liberal Party has targeted urban seats, and former prime minister John Howard famously described it as a “broad church” which can encompass the views of moderate liberals, economic conservatives and the Nationals.

The Nationals represent rural electorates and have been described as agrarian socialists due to their preference for policies that distribute resources to primary producers and communities in the bush.

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