Liberals and Nationals Avoid Split, Focus on Unity
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The Liberals have finally seen sense and they have decided not to split with the Nationals in State Parliament. It would be electoral suicide. Over what? It's a catfight. Much of this fight was over some dissatisfaction with Mark Speakman's leadership of the Coalition and from what I understand a very small number of people in the Nationals. Whatever you think about Mark Speakman, he's a good man.

But the Liberals also have few choices. It seems that Dominic Perrottet has been a key here to achieving a peace deal. He's been a facilitator between different Liberals and Nationals. And honestly, I believe he's a loss to New South Wales politics. It's my understanding he'll be resigning soon. And I think that's disappointing because he's been wasted on the back bench. But there's also some suggestions. Others played a role in here. And I'll speak to Mark Speakman after 3.30pm.

But the bottom line is here, we've had the same side of politics warring over pretty much nothing for days now. Disunity in politics is death. Mark Speakman, after addressing the Liberal Party room meeting this morning where Liberals were called to this urgent gathering, he released a statement jointly with Dougal Saunders. And the statement says, we have reaffirmed our commitment to the coalition partnership. We are focused on working together to hold the Minsk government to account.

the Honourable Wes Fang, MLC, has been removed from his shadow assistant ministerial roles.

Our job and our common objective is to hold this bad government to account with a strong alternative. And then Mark has spoken publicly and he'll join me after 3.30. The bottom line is, though, this is an internal fight that the public wouldn't actually care about. The public, it's born out of Mark Speakman visiting Wagga Wagga and Wes being upset about that because he wasn't told. And Wes Fang lives in Wagga Wagga. He's actually not the MP for Wagga, he's an Upper House MP. But effectively, it's his patch.

And this has been happening with other national MPs as well. They haven't been happy about it. But in the end, all it does is divert attention away from real policy matters, the coalition fighting amongst themselves. They're no chance of winning the next election if this sort of behaviour continues. Chris Minns will be the favourite for the next election. But it must be remembered, he holds government with a minority. So he relies on independents, the likes of Alex Greenwich, for support to get legislation through.

So the coalition is not without hope. But if they keep fighting like this, they'll have no hope.