Can the National Party end its Australian-style leadership woes?

The National Party had better get this right. If there’s one thing the party should be trying to avoid at all costs, it’s the Australian political disease: a conga line of leaders rolled on the strength of a few bad polls, personal animosities or craven ambition by low-rent MPs.

The best result from here would most probably be a factional deal, stitched up behind closed doors, that everyone in the party can live with to some degree. As it currently stands, that looks most likely like some sort of Bridges/Luxon or Luxon/ Bridges team.

The last thing National wants is to get into an Australian culture leader-rolling. Yet there is every chance that this could occur if the party doesn’t settle its leadership question with a finality that will be observed up until the 2023 election.

While the Government’s leadership is stable and confirmed, National is about to get its sixth leader in five years. Labour had six in nine, until Ardern came along.

A look to Australia is instructive. From 2008 to 2018, after the long stability of the early 12 John Howard years, over nine years the Australian Liberal Party ran through five leaders and even more spills. Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and current Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

During the same period, the Australian Labor Party got Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Rudd again, Bill Shorten and now Anthony Albanese.

The two interesting cases are Rudd and Turnbull – Rudd in particular. He got rolled in 2010 by Gillard after his polling fell of a cliff as he progressively drove his caucus nuts by being rude, dictatorial and treating ministers like the hired help.

Despite being made foreign minister, he spent the next three years leaking, sniping and undermining Gillard. In the end her position was so compromised that her caucus colleagues voted for Rudd to come back to fix the very situation he had caused.

The reason for this was the irreducible logic of numbers: despite most of his colleagues thinking he was a bastard, he was much more popular with the public than Gillard and would save some of their jobs.

In 2015, this time a Liberal Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, was rolled by the man he had deposed in opposition six years earlier, Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull lasted until 2018, before losing the leadership to Scott Morrison.

As with Rudd, Turnbull regained the job after undermining Abbott, who in turn white-anted Turnbull to the point where Turnbull was destabilised and lost the leadership. Morrison, by winning an election he was widely expected to lose, became a Liberal legend and finally closed the revolving door. It took a decade to shut.

That all sounds pretty bad, but it was only five years ago that National ministers, when in Government, used to joke about what a cot case Australia was. Now the party is about to have its sixth leader in five years. Granted the first two, John Key and Bill English, both resigned and bowed out of politics, but the cumulative effect is the same: a revolving door of leaders, a lot of instability at the top and a party struggling to reimagine itself after a long, successful period in Government.

Swirling around the firming options for the big chair, there are plenty of enemies and backbiters in the caucus. Of the four contenders being floated there are now only really three, and that even assumes they are all actually going to run: Simon Bridges, Christopher Luxon and Chris Bishop.

The way it is shaping up, it will likely turn on whether

Luxon decides he wants to take the top job. He is only a year into being an MP and being a successful corporate boss is orders of magnitude different from being a political boss.

If he decides to run it will mark a break from the past, he won’t owe anyone anything and hasn’t created any internal enmities.

Both Bishop and Bridges – who would both be good for different reasons – do have baggage that could make an Australian situation more likely. Judith Collins, who just tried to blast Simon Bridges’ career out of the water, will also still be a potentially destabilising force in caucus.

If either were to perform below par for too long, the whispers could start, and they could be gone.

That said, if Luxon proves inadequate once taking the job – and he is fundamentally untested – it could go south very quickly. The job of politics is professional, but the practice of politics is a craft, honed with experience and repetition. Luxon has not yet had the chance to hone his skills much.

Ultimately, some hammeredout deal will provide the freshest start. National doesn’t want to be doing this again in a year’s time.

The best result from here would most probably be a factional deal, stitched up behind closed doors, that everyone in the party can live with to some degree.