By Mark Kenny

A version of this article was originally published by The Canberra Times.

Just three weeks ago, the Liberal-Nationals Coalition was boasting that it alone was fit for the rigours of national leadership.

Australians were assured that the unique city-country partnership was rock-solid, bursting with purpose and singularly focused on you, the voter.

Now, it has turned on itself and an arrangement considered so institutional that its title warranted capitalisation, has collapsed, its sworn life-partners unwilling to reconcile, unable to cohabitate.

Feelings are hurt and angry words are flying. Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie told reporters that "a reasonable request was put to a trusted partner, and it was refused". This pointed lament referred to the Nats' commitment to forced divestiture powers over the major players in the supermarket duopoly.

The Nats wanted a renegotiated Coalition agreement to lock in the policies the political duopoly had just pledged to voters - divesture, nuclear energy, a $20 billion regional future fund, and regional telecommunications. No dice.

Amid the anger, there is also schadenfreude.

"The parties of divide-and-conquer have thoroughly conquered themselves," noted Thomas Mayo drily, a prominent advocate for the defeated Voice referendum.

The Nats had effectively forced the Liberals' hand in 2022 by campaigning against the Voice five months before Peter Dutton officially followed suit.

Now in damage control mode, opposition "pollies" insist their life-long bond is merely in abeyance, asleep rather than dead. But this is one deceased-looking parrot.

For a start, only one of these parties will be the official opposition. Post-divorce, the smaller Nats will lose that status and thus forego frontbench salary loadings and additional shadow ministerial staff allocations.

The House Representatives will be transformed, and not just because of Labor's eye-watering 50-seat lead.

Geological and geographical metaphors are common in politics - think landslide wins, tectonic shifts and steep mountains to climb.

So where does the end of the Coalition as-we-know-it, stand metaphorically?

While to most voters, its passing will fall well short of an earthquake, because that already happened on May 3, it qualifies more as an aftershock. But this is an aftershock of the decisive kind, the rumble that finally brings a weakened house in on itself.

And further ructions are imaginable including resignations and even byelections.

Back in 1987, when the two conservative parties last split, ensuring their electoral failure in the federal election that year, Bob Hawke had famously quipped "if you can't govern yourselves, you can't govern the country".

There is much in this. For, whatever differences and tensions the coalition arrangement had papered over, its joint branding has been a sellable package, with the LNP (as it is often shorthanded) winning and governing more often than its common enemy, the ALP.

For all that though, this bust-up might be an opportunity in disguise - especially for Sussan Ley who faces the daunting but existential task of rebuilding the Liberals' decimated city base.

A frank assessment of Peter Dutton's disastrous leadership will inflame divisions between sane Liberals in the urban centre-ground and the party's "Foxified" right wing, but corralling the conservative Nats into any realigned public presentation would have only added to the difficulty.

Ley's mission involves reforming a structurally decrepit Liberal Party and renewing its base in order to attract disaffected urbanites in what she calls "modern Australia" - especially younger voters and women.

Rebuilding might just be easier without Barnaby Joyce and the nuclear Nats in her backpack.

Mark Kenny is the Director of the ANU Australian Studies Institute and host of the Democracy Sausage podcast.