On rodent parasites and also the National Party

One manipulates from within and eventually kills its host. The other is Toxoplasma gondii.

There’s a particularly nasty parasite that rodents can catch called Toxoplasma gondii. One day, a rat will be hanging around, doing its usual pestilent business, when it will accidentally eat or drink something that’s contaminated with the parasite. It’ll be fine for a while, but slowly the rat’s behaviour will start to change.

You see, while Toxoplasma gondii can infect pretty much any warm-blooded vertebrate, it only reproduces in the guts of cats. But how to reach those rich, felid lands? The parasite has a plan.

The Toxoplasma protozoa start to manipulate the rodent. They strip away the animal’s sense of fear and self-preservation; they make the rat reckless and attracted to the smell of cat urine. Eventually, if all goes well, the host animal will be killed and consumed by a cat.

Toxoplasma gondii – a single-celled entity driven by primitive self-interest – cares not.

Which brings me to the National Party.

Last week their leader David Littleproud, a man whose eyes always seem to be focused on the tip of his nose, held a press conference announcing the coalition would be splitting up.

He said there were four key policy demands the Liberals were refusing to agree on. The first three were relatively inoffensive: a multibillion-dollar regional investment fund, improved regional phone coverage, and a plan to break up the supermarket duopoly. Sure, the investment fund sounded like a New Coke rebrand of pork barrelling, but this was all vaguely within the remit of a party whose purpose is ostensibly to represent regional constituents.

But the other policy the Nationals were determined to keep alive? It was the shiny central jewel in the turd crown of pre-election promises made by the coalition: extravagantly expensive, election-losing, water-guzzling nuclear power.

“We will not walk away from the potential of nuclear power as a necessary element of a balanced energy mix,” Littleproud wrote on his Facebook page.

The Nationals appeared to be pushing the Liberal Party to, once again, back the construction of state-owned nuclear power plants (costing around $100 billion) across Australia. In recent days, the message has been clarified. It is the moratorium on nuclear energy they would like to see lifted – a final desperate attempt to keep their policy on life support.

Who knows why the Nats are choosing this particular hill to die on? It has been posited by many that nuclear power is a convenient stalling tactic to slow the adoption of renewables. While there are symposiums, studies, debates on location, law changes, and all the other millions of things that must happen to enable nuclear energy, coal-powered electricity will continue to live past its expiration date.

A wiley plan, perhaps. But it only works if you get elected. Which the coalition very decidedly failed to achieve.

Sussan Ley has at least realised the tremendous depth and breadth of their defeat. Ley didn’t agree to the Nationals’ demands because all of their policies were going to be reexamined. Everything would be subject to the same scrutiny as a funny-looking mole on someone’s back. Support for nuclear was surely going to be top of that list for appraisal and, likely, excision.

In due course, they would have come up with a more palatable energy policy. Ideally, something else that’s big, expensive and that takes many years to build. The Snowy Hydro 3.0, maybe? Probably too soon. Their 2.0 version is, after all, 6 years late, still in construction, and a smidge over budget — $12 billion instead of the predicted $2 billion. But no doubt they’d find some other Cold War-era technology to dust off, tart up, and trot out. One thing the Liberal party has in spades is rat cunning.

Or they had it in spades. The National Party seems to have bypassed that particular system.

At the time of writing, Ley has agreed to Littleproud’s four policy demands ‘in principal’. The coalition is on track to reform after their embarrassingly public spat.

Considering how much power the National Party is publicly wielding at the moment, you would be forgiven for thinking they are a large political force. Or, perhaps, that they are rightfully emboldened thanks to their election success and the sheer amount of Australians they speak for.

But the numbers don’t add up.

According to the most recent census data, the fifteen seats held by the National Party, represent around 2.4 million people. Not a small number, sure. But let’s not forget, in the last election, the Liberal Party lost thirteen seats to Labor. Those electorates alone have a combined population of around 2.1 million. Of course, that isn’t even taking into account the seats lost in the 2022 election and the unanswered Teal wave.

Frankly, they’re haemorrhaging moderate Australians. If they don’t stop the bleeding, neither the Liberal Party nor the National Party will ever see government again. At this juncture, the country party seems incapable of seeing a bigger picture.

The single-celled parasite Toxoplasma gondii also suffers from a lack of foresight. Sure, tinkering around in the brain of a rodent might sometimes achieve its cat-ingestion goal. But that recklessness can also result in an unpleasant death, well away from the maw of a predator. Mutual destruction results.

Parasites are forced to collude with their host – they haven’t the size or power to exist alone – but only only so long as it serves their own purpose.

The sooner you can find a way to rid yourself of such unwelcome passengers, the better.