I watched a hostage video on Monday.

With four Australian flags hanging in agony as a backdrop, Sussan Ley and David Littleproud gave the weirdest performance of their careers.

Sussan Ley, clearly the dominant force, gritted her jaw. She then engaged in an elite-level of question avoidance, giving barely coherent replies to a room full of frustrated reporters.

When one of them asked why the reunification deal was first described by the Nationals as ‘a joke’ and not a ‘serious offer’ and then accepted, Ms Ley replied:

‘Lots of people have said lots of things. And some have been attributed to people who are not named, and some have been. The point is that we did have differences, David and I, and our party rooms. We’ve resolved those differences. We’ve strengthened our processes, and we’re going forward as a united Coalition.’

For those who have worked in the real world, do you imagine that sort of reply would keep you employed after a national catastrophe?

Ley insisted that they will now take the fight up to Labor for the ‘millions of Australians who are cheering us on’.

‘Out of this process, we are stronger,’ she insisted. No doubt.

I have anonymous sources too and they tell me that the Nationals are shit scared of One Nation in South Australia as well as deeply disgruntled by the loss of their Shadow Cabinet staff and salaries. They have, apparently, agreed to surrender most of their autonomy in Shadow Cabinet decisions to expedite their return from the wilderness of the backbenches. In other words, they sold their soul to a collapsing broad church while being punished for … doing the right thing.

Time will decide the accuracy of these assessments.

No doubt Sussan Ley will find the Nationals more obedient to Shadow Cabinet solidarity, which won’t matter for a while because the default position of the Coalition is to go softly-softly with Labor’s policies. Or worse, they are the original architects and so there is nothing to oppose.

While the Liberal Leader looked to be under immense pressure, Littleproud was closer to ‘perpetual misery’. Ley certainly watched him awfully closely as he fielded questions about the hate speech bill which triggered this breakdown.

At least Littleproud did not apologise for defying the Liberals. ‘There were people in my party room crying because they knew the substantive nature of what we were voting on and what that could lead to.’

Did Ley concede her party made a mistake? Nope.

Littleproud continued:

‘But I would rather stand with the men and women of the National Party, who believe in something, and knew the problems that would cause, but they believed so passionately this [bill] was wrong, and I would rather look the people of Australia in the eye and say we did it because we believe in it,’ he added. ‘That’s leadership. That’s courage.’

‘If the ground rules are laid down, we are prepared to live by them,’ he finished.

Asked if they felt sorry or ashamed, and if they trust each other, Ley took the question, ‘Yes, 100 per cent, I trust David.’ And then called the Coalition ‘the greatest political partnership in history’.

When a reporter brought up that Littleproud was alleged to have yelled, ‘Resign!’ at Ley, he gave a little smirk.

‘Sussan and I were working calmly behind the scenes getting the show back to where it needs to be.’

Ley could not resist throwing in a line about One Nation being a ‘party of protest’ that is ‘good at identifying problems’. Which is true. All Oppositions should be a protest against the government and its bad policy.

The obvious problem is what Ley said next: ‘Every election, what we fight hard to do is for people to give us their number one vote. We’re stronger together doing exactly that.’

Do you know how One Nation answer this question? We fight hard to save you, save the nation, and give you back power of your future. Or something to that effect.

And yes, Ley went onto talk about aspiration and dreams, but it matters to the voter what you say first.

There was something of interest. Ley dropped that they would soon be announcing migration policy principles. Not a policy. But the bones of one. It is rather amusing, given the Liberal MPs and Senators have spent the week accusing One Nation of not having any policies when they have a whole page of policies and the Liberals are scrambling.

Ley did post a series of extremely brief policy tiles on her X account, but no link to anything of detail.

The Albanese Labor Government has failed Australians on the economy, failed on the cost of living and failed to back the businesses that create jobs and opportunity.

When families see their mortgage repayments climb, their grocery bills rise and their power costs surge, they are… pic.twitter.com/UZvSHKHEki

— Sussan Ley (@sussanley) February 9, 2026

These were: lower taxes, fix the budget, make energy affordable, and grow the economy.

Not particularly enlightening.

I went to the Liberal Party official X account to see if there was anything more, but they haven’t posted since December 23, 2025. Modernise the party? Ha!

The only policies I could find were from the 2025 election, with no word as to whether they are current as they retain the Peter Dutton branding.

Voters look at this mess with utter contempt. It is not a victory – for either party or the Coalition. It is a demonstration of their failure.

I have been thinking about what’s gone wrong with the Coalition, and in particular the Liberals, and I have whittled it down to instinct.

It was most noticeable with the Voice to Parliament. Racial segregation and racial privileges in law is morally reprehensible. No ifs, no buts, no discussion needed. No detail needs to be expanded on. It is the sort of idea that should provoke an immediate act of revulsion and yet the Liberal Party had to be dragged kicking and screaming into a position of opposition and even then it took far too long. That stretch of indecision alarmed conservatives. And it wasn’t a one-off either. Almost every state Liberal opposition leader has either supported state-based treaties, supported the Voice, or expressed tangible sympathy for these measures, this is despite knowing full well what the public think. Even those who now oppose treaty did so after so much indecision that no one has the slightest bit of confidence that they have the fortitude to deliver on those promises if the ABC print a few mean headlines.

The same is true of Net Zero. The second those rainforests started being bulldozed and mountain ranges blown up, the Liberals should have abandoned the whole thing and yet in Queensland, some of the worst environmental destruction is proceeding while the federal party likes to keep renewables as a buzz word on their website. They were eventually bullied out of Net Zero targets, but made no meaningful change to their overall Paris commitments or renewable energy rollouts. Australians know that life would be exactly the same for them under a Coalition government, and that simply isn’t good enough.

We could go through so many of these examples, but this lack of conservative instinct is a very serious problem.

They are white-anting themselves and no one can talk them out of it. Either they are not actually conservatives, or they are afraid of being conservatives.

Stitching the Coalition back together again is not going to solve any problems while ever they are moving in different directions with mutually exclusive policy viewpoints.