Australian Politics

They're completely incapable of changing direction.

No one wants nuclear. Transmission distance is too far in Australia. It's just a license to keep burning coal for another 30 years.

Regional seats often held for or swung to the LNP. The election results aren't as much of a glowing endorsement for renewables as you suggest. Still, it is rich for that statement to be coming from the Nationals, considering that their long history of lies about renewables are partly to blame for the loss of their social license.

The ABC live blog gave an answer to this. The LNP will keep doing what it's doing. Federal members will sit in whichever of the two party rooms they used to sit in, and the state and council LNP members will stay unified. The latter is pretty obvious, since the federal Coalition has always been separate from state ones. NSW and Victorian coalitions have come close to splitting before, and that wouldn't have directly necessitated a split federally. They each have separate coalition agreements.

It's pretty funny seeing the Wiki page for the Coalition listing six dissolution dates

Not senators, Members of Parliament. From the House of Representatives. It's equivalent to Majority Leader in the US House of Representatives, Chancellor in Germany, etc. As long as you can command majority support on matters of confidence, you can become Prime Minister. That's the most important thing the Liberal-National Coalition agreement did for them: the Nationals agreed to provide support for the Liberal leader as Prime Minister. It was similar to the Gillard Government, where Labor didn't have a majority on their own, so they reached an agreement with the Greens and the 4 or 5 independents that they would support Labor on matters of confidence, in exchange for whatever was in their agreement.

How do you actually come PM if you don’t have a party that can get a majority vote?

You convince a majority of the members of the House of Reps to agree to support you in passing bills required for operating the government (basically bills allowing them to spend money, also known as supply) and to support you if a motion of no confidence is put forward.

It means the Liberals finally have the dead weight slackened from their necks. They have a chance now, and more clear air than they've had in years to develop some good policy.

If the Nationals really want Nuclear, then they'd make a long term argument for setting up a pathway toward a sustainable industry that inserts alongside the renewable rollout as the energy requirements of the nation expand. But i predict they won't, because technology isn't their goal, coal, is their goal.

My mate said “Huge news coming out of Canberra right now!”.

I guessed exactly what it was. The only bigger news would be if Russia or ‘Murica were performing a hostile takeover, which isn’t likely to happen while Labor is in power.

Does that mean 9 Nationals go to the HoR crossbench?

Technically, yes.

I don’t know what this means as far as pragmatic effects like voting on legislation

I expect the vast majority of the time, the Liberals and Nationals will vote together. But this opens up the possibility that on a few bills, they might split.

They can probably get more stuff done that way than being the junior coalition partner of a party that routinely does things that will screw the voter base of the nationals.

libs want inner city seats, nats seem content with regional areas

I'm not sure if you can simplify it that much. It sounds like it's more a case of the Liberals being unwilling to cede some policy power to The Nationals despite the election results.

Nah that's the great thing about Lemmy, it seems you shared the same URL (let me guess, you first saw it on the ABC live blog and then went searching for a less ephemeral source to submit?), it automatically links the two posts. That's how I found yours in !world@lemmy.world.

My words exactly