00:00The Nationals are saying that they wanted a solid agreement from the Liberals on four
00:06key policies, saying we took them to the Australian electorate just a few weeks ago so we want
00:11to maintain them to keep representing those in regional Australia.
00:16The key policies they're talking about are nuclear power, divestiture power to be able
00:20to break up the supermarkets, a big regional fund to help support infrastructure in the
00:25regions and things like that and also having universal phone communication access in the
00:31bush.
00:32Now the Liberals are saying because of the size of the defeat on May 3 that they want
00:37to put all of their policies up for review and have this sort of big review process to
00:43try and learn the lessons from the election.
00:46So what's really gone on here according to the Liberals is sort of a disagreement about
00:51the process to reach these policies rather than the policies themselves because they're
00:56actually arguing.
00:57We hadn't said no to any of them, we just wanted to go through our process.
01:01But look there's people on both sides of the party that do want to eventually get back together.
01:07And former Prime Minister John Howard Evelyn has been scathing.
01:10Why is he so concerned?
01:12John Howard says he's very concerned about this split.
01:16He's gone as far as calling it stupid.
01:18He says the longer the two parties spend apart, the harder it will be to get back together
01:23on the same page.
01:26Policy differences are best resolved within the framework of a coalition.
01:31If the two parties remain separate for too long, away from a coalition, then the differences
01:38on policy will harden and it will be more difficult to resolve them.
01:45He says the glory days are when the two parties are working together.
01:49There are some on the Liberal side though that are trying to look for those silver linings
01:53and saying that now that they've got some space away from the Nationals, they've got
01:58that space to really reflect on what they need to do to move forward.
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