John Barilaro’s latest, but most extreme, round of brinkmanship may well win him friends in the bush but it will be at the expense of a stable functioning government.
The NSW Nationals’ leader, with the overwhelming support of his party room, has taken the unprecedented step of leading his troops to the edge of the cliff and they are ready to follow him over.
When NSW Parliament resumes next week, 18 of 19 Nationals MPs (with the exception of Port Macquarie’s Leslie Williams) plan to sit on the crossbench and hold the Liberals to ransom.
But Premier Gladys Berejiklian has shown she will not be railroaded. In the past, Barilaro has managed to tease concessions out of Berejiklian and to keep the regions happy.
But Berejiklian has chosen her moment – and this time she will not back down. She has made a calculated political decision that this is not the right time or the right issue to jeopardise a functioning government.
She will not tolerate the threats to her government and has given an ultimatum to the junior coalition partner.
Barilaro and his team must withdraw their threats by first thing Friday, or they are out of her cabinet. She is prepared to go to Government House on Friday and swear in a new (all-Liberal) ministry.
It is an extraordinary development for a government that is the envy of the country for its competent handling of a global pandemic.
On the surface, the issue that appears to have sparked the crisis in the Coalition is a little known planning policy relating to the protection of koala habitat.
It became law just before last Christmas, but has been the source of simmering tension between the Nationals and Liberals ever since. The Nationals argue the policy will lock up land for farmers. The Liberals insist it does nothing more than provide mechanisms for koalas to be protected.
For the Coalition to face a nasty split over the issue of koalas seems unfathomable. But the cracks in the relationship – routinely described as an unhappy marriage of convenience – have been widening.
The underlying issue is not about koalas. The National Party feels betrayed by the Liberals. They believe the people in the bush are treated like second-class citizens and they have had enough.
This time Barilaro had no choice but to follow through. He has a long history of empty threats, whether it be threatening to quit as leader, or threatening to give up his title of deputy premier.
He has become known as the boy who cried wolf. But he has also been effective.
There is no doubt that while Berejiklian, along with her chief health officer Kerry Chant, have been lauded for the NSW’s response to the pandemic, Barilaro has also been integral in NSW’s success.
He championed the issues of communities on the Victorian border and was instrumental in reinstating a desperately wanted bubble zone. Barilaro has also helped keep the NSW economy open.
But in a global pandemic, with a recession not seen since the 1990s, what is needed is a strong stable government and united leadership.
The Nationals have chosen their moment to strike, but so has Berejiklian. Barilaro’s strategy to demand better treatment for the bush may well have been right, but his tactic was wrong.
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