‘Smoking gun': Liberals claim leaked letter proves the Nationals planned to blow up Coalition
A bombshell leaked letter is the 'smoking gun' according to furious Liberals that Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie was hellbent on splitting up the Coalition after the election and the defection of a high-profile senator.
Despite the Nationals claims that the Coalition agreement was blown up over a standoff over key policies including nuclear power, the letter obtained by news.com.au makes clear that a split was on the cards as an option before Sussan Ley was even elected leader.
It was sent to Liberal Senate leader Michaelia Cash on May 12, 2025, just days after Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price quit the Nationals party room to join the Liberal Party.
At the time, she announced she was running for deputy Liberal leader on a ticket with Angus Taylor before she 'chickened out' when Angus Taylor lost the ballot.
She declined to put her hand up in the party room despite publicly announcing her candidacy.
But the leaked letter lays bare the Nationals' fury over the defection because of the impact it would have on the Nationals own status in the Senate.
Titled 'Resignation of Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price from The Nationals Senate Party Room', the letter expressly warns that a Coalition split is a one option on the table.
'On 9 May 2025 Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price wrote to inform me of her resignation from the Nationals Senate Party room,'' Senator McKenzie wrote.
'It is understood Senator Nampijinpa Price's defection to sit in the Liberal Party room is associated with overtures from the Liberal Party and an intention to stand for a leadership position in the Parliamentary Liberal Party.
'As a result of her defection, together with the severe drop in Liberal Party vote in New South Wales, from 1 July 2025 The Nationals will hold only four seats in the Senate.
'This is below what is required to maintain party status in the Senate as a party that is 'part of the Government or the Opposition' under the Parliamentary Business Resources Regulations 2017.
'Losing party status in the Senate would have significant implications for The Nationals Senate team as well as the wider Coalition.'
The final sentence in the letter contains the clear warning that a split is a real possibility.
'Depending on the outcome of negotiations between our two parties over coming weeks, The Nationals Senate Party room will need to consider our position with respect to sitting with the Liberal Party as Coalition in the Senate chamber,'' Ms McKenzie wrote.
Just 24 hours later Sussan Ley was elected the Liberal leader on Tuesday, May 13 and just seven days later the Coalition would implode for the first time since the 1980s.
Negotiations with the Nationals had commenced immediately with Nationals leader David Littleproud travelling to Albury to hold talks with Ms Ley as she cared for her dying mother who was in end of life care.
Her mother, the late Angela Braybrooks, died just a few days later on Saturday, May 17.
The Nationals negotiations with Ms Ley continued as she planned the funeral with a series of texts exchanged between the pair before the Nationals met in Canberra on Tuesday, May 20.
Liberal sources have described the letter as a 'smoking gun' that the Nationals list of 'impossible demands' was a negotiation that had one destination in mind: a split in the Coalition.
But contacted over the Liberals claims, Senator McKenzie denied that she expected the Coalition would split when she wrote the letter to Senator Michaelia Cash.
'In no way could I have foreseen the current situation when I penned that letter,'' Senator McKenzie told news.com.au.
'I knew I had till June 30 to find a solution and hoped we could find a resolution.'
Overnight, the Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie has also taken a swipe at Liberal leader Sussan Ley insisting the real issue was that key policies including nuclear power could not be guaranteed by the party's new leader moving forward.
'The issue here is that Sussan Ley could not give our party room the guarantee we sought to actually ensure that divestiture powers for supermarkets, mobile phone coverage for our communities in emergencies and to run their businesses, lifting the moratorium on nuclear, and the retention of the Regional Australia Future Fund – the $20 billion Future Fund that would underpin our local economies going forward – were going to be Coalition policies going forward,' Senator McKenzie told ABC's 7.30 on Wednesday.
'She couldn't give that guarantee to us. She refused to. She put it in writing. We put that to our party room, and our party room decided we were to leave the Coalition.'
'In our game, we actually ask for this in writing. And it was provided to our leader in writing that she could not guarantee those four policies,' she continued.
'And that was enough for our party room to make the decision that it did.'
However, news.com.au understands that rather than a letter, Sussan Ley was texting David Littleproud as she was trying to organise her mother's funeral.
Former Prime Minister John Howard has described the split as 'stupid'.
Tony Abbott has called for the immediate reformation of the Coalition to bring a 'strong critique' to the current government.
'I deeply regret the Coalition split and hope that it can be re-formed as soon as possible,' he wrote on X.
'History shows that the Liberals and the Nationals win together and fail separately. What's needed right now is a strong critique of a deeply underwhelming government and the development of a clear policy alternative.
It's understood that former Nationals leaders Michael McCormack and Barnaby Joyce voiced concerns about the split in the Nationals party room.
Veteran Nationals MP Darren Chester revealed he's talking with colleagues 'across the political divide' to get the Coalition back together.
'My concern is that we will be giving Labor a free pass if we go back to parliament some time in the next month or so as two divided parties,' he told the ABC.
'We owe it to our supporters to have another crack at forming a coalition in the interests of providing a strong and stable opposition … if we want to deliver for regional Australia as Nationals, we need to be in government.'
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